The Travails of August
This
is going to be my last blog for a while, because I’m having lumbar surgery on
September 11, and will be recovering for several weeks after that. And probably
sore and grumpy. Maybe even really, really grouchy, mean-tempered and hateful. However,
some interesting things happened during August, and one of them was even good.
I’ll start with the mayhem.
On
the 15th the cataract that developed when I recovered from the
surgery to reattach my left retina got removed. Yay! That required a two-day stay in Albuquerque. I'm really sick of driving back and forth to Albuquerque. Still can’t see very well,
but the surgery went well, and I’ll be able to get corrective glasses one of
these weeks. The surgery was NOT painless, no matter what they tell you. Well .
. . actually, the next day when I went in for my follow-up appointment, a
little old lady sitting in the lobby said hers was totally painless, so maybe
it was just me. The eye still bothers me some, but it’s only been a couple of
weeks, and I’ll survive. Whether those around me will is another question
entirely, although I’d better be nice to them since they’ll be taking care of
me after my back surgery. I hope to heaven I’ll be knocked out completely for
the back surgery.
And
then, shortly after the cataract operation, Freckles, my latest foster wiener,
managed to nearly rip a toenail off somehow (I was at the grocery store at the
time so didn't see it happen). I came home with grocery bags, and there
was blood all over the place. I couldn’t tell which dog was hurt (due to the
aforementioned semi-blindness) so I called my dear neighbor, she came over, and
we discovered it was Freckles doing the bleeding. So I took her to the vet, she
had an operation, stayed overnight, and came home with a cone around her neck.
If you’ve never seen a dachshund in a cone, it’s worth a look. Here she is:
After
that, all seemed well for a few days, until Freckles went bananas and tried to
murder poor little Bella, the most timid of my herd. Bella and Bam-Bam came to
me from a puppy mill in Texas, and they’re both quite shy dogs. Freckles meant
business, and Bella went to the hospital on Monday morning. Why do disasters
always happen on weekends? Anyhow, it’s now Thursday, July 30, and Bella’s
STILL in the hospital. I have to go to Albuquerque for another blankety-blank
eye appointment tomorrow, so I won’t be able to pick her up until Saturday
morning. I’ve been visiting her, though, and she’s a real mess. She has more
than twenty holes in her poor little butt. The vet’s been giving her pain meds
and antibiotics. Sigh. God alone knows how much this will cost. But Bella’s
worth it. Truly. Really. Honest. As for Freckles, she’s now in another foster
home in Fort Stanton, New Mexico, where she’s being closely watched, and we’re trying
to find a home where she’ll be the only dog.
But
then something good actually happened! A fellow author and friend, Jackie
Griffey, told me some of her books were coming out in audiobook format and will
be available on Audible.com. I was fascinated, since I’ve longed for years to
have my books available in audiobook format (I listen to audiobooks all the
time because of hideous arthritis and . . . well, semi-blindness). Jackie told
me what to do to get my books considered for Audible, and I went and did it! I
uploaded all my Daisy Gumm Majesty books and most of my Mercy Allcutt books to
a place called ACX. What you do when you’re an author-type person is upload
your book’s information and then wait until a narrator gets interested and
auditions to narrate the book. I figured it would take months and months and
probably nobody would want to audition. I mean, I’m not Nora Roberts or Stephen
King, y’know?
However
. . . ta-da! The very next day someone auditioned for ANGEL’S FLIGHT. The
narrator wasn’t awfully good, but I was pleased she was interested. And then,
by gum, other people began auditioning! I found someone I think is going to be
excellent to do my Daisy books. I have no idea how long this process will take,
but I suspect months, if not years.
And
THEN, by golly, an old, old friend (okay, he’s younger than I am, but almost everyone
is these days), Jim Hull, who’s a voice-over artist and who narrates
books for the Braille Institute, said he’d be willing to narrate one of my
books as an experiment if I had one that could use a male narrator. So I sent
him SIERRA RANSOM (an historical romance novel set during the California Gold
Rush), he did a great job, and he’s going to narrate that book!
In
the meantime, since I’ll be out of it and not able to fiddle with my rotten,
lousy hair after my surgery, I got a permanent. I now look like an elderly
French poodle with truly, TRULY stupid smile. I really ought to remember to wear makeup
when somebody’s going to take my picture. Sigh. But at least I’m eventually
going to have some books available in audio!
