Sounds like Ally is doing "OK," which is good. The amnesia is a blessing. I suppose it's the pain meds that interfere with the formation of short-term memories; there are lots of things that can. Sedative/hypnotics like lorazepam [Ativan] or midazolam come immediately to mind. Have to be careful with those patches [DON'T PUT A HEATING PAD ON THEM!], but used properly they can give better long-term pain control, and especially for a munchkin they will be far easier to use than time-release pills. Tolerance of morphine and related drugs can wear off very quickly, but just when it kicks in and when it goes away is, as I understand it, not predictable. Here's pulling for our little one.
Having spent 17 hours on a dead thread yesterday, would like to remind my homies that it's nice to let the peeps on the old thread know that there's a new one. . . .
The description kinda reminds me of the "twilight" sleep that so many obstetricians loved during the period I was having my babies. I eschewed it 'cause it doesn't do all that much for pain, just makes you forget the pain. Afterwards. I thought then that it was just a cheat. . . I want to remember my life. For one as little as Ally? After as much pain as she's already been through? Likely a blessing. . . .
Thanks, Alan. ♡ Yeah it's probably Versed or Ativan or one of those types. As for the patch, little ones aren't allowed to use heating pads anyway, so it's probably a non-issue in this case. We'll be glad when this round is over and they've got good pain medication information for Ally's next round of 3f8 treatments next month.
I'm with you, puddle. Those meds for labor were a cheat. I didn't use any and wasn't sorry (well, except for one terrible hour once). It's one thing to be an adult woman feeling the pain of childbirth (which is not an illness), and another to be a little child feeling the pain of cancer treatments. I'm so glad Ally can't remember the pain, but I'll be even happier when she can't feel it in the first place. We assume there's no trauma if we can't remember, but I wonder what our "monkey" remembers in subtle ways.
Sorry, puddle. I thought I had covered it. But I made the assumption that folks would log in and see the newest thread and miss the earlier one from the same day, so I put a link to the earlier thread in the new one. Maybe no one went back over and discovered you? How is it that in getting in you got the old thread instead of the new one? I'll try remember to link in both directions next time. ♥
My habit, lol! I put up the new thread for the day, and don't go back to the main page till midnight. . . . We've been so steady with the midnight post, that it didn't even occur to me to do so. We've been so slow for so long, I just thought it was another manifestation. . . .
(BTW, when I shut down for the night, firefox just keeps/stores the set up I closed with and all I have to do is refresh the pages to get the day before's close.)
Beautiful day here, about mid sixties. I'm burning my winter's worth of trash, and beginning washing in my big garden tubs down by the wash line. Stevie's in and out and out and in, but getting a fair amount of tummy sun when he's out.
And no, Cat, the foreshadowing is nearly perfect. Don't know where the leftie kid with the coke is going though. I'm very good at picking up on foreshadowing though, maybe because I loved Nancy Drew so much. Or maybe it's the N in INFP. . . . ?
Puddle, you and my Sis with Nancy Drew. LOL The kid isn't going anywhere, any more than the girl Emma and Packer talk to at the college. Just a bit of color. Only, I have wondered about finding a way to bring that girl in again somehow. And, the kid seems so vivid to me that I did vaguely wonder if I could bring him back in somehow, sometime. As of now, though, He's just a walk on.
Do you think it would be an awful usurpation if I just stuck Chapter Six up here for you to eyeball? It isn't all that long...
Chapter 6 I waited till the lift door closed before striding into the servants' hall to pursue my investigations. Eager as I was to start for home, I could spare an hour to satisfy my curiosity. Only no one seemed to know why Mr. Morrow was out of sorts. Several people had noticed that he' been nervous like for a few days, but no one could think of an explanation for it. Miss Emma was mildly ill, but that wouldn't trouble Mr. Morrow once he'd satisfied himself that she was as well cared for and comfortable as might be. Maybe someone would know at the Exchange. No one mentioned Mrs. Morrow or her travel plans; so, I didn't either.
At the Exchange, an imposing, rather discomfiting edifice in the heart of the Financial District, I heard more vague murmurs about nervousness and an unsettled mood but no one, not even Morrow's personal secretary, knew anything solid or helpful. Finally, I decided to abandon the wild bandy fowl chase and go to the gallery before it closed.
The assistant gallery manager gave me a quick, comprehensive survey, taking in my sea boots and dungarees, my work roughened hands and well kept but demonstrably not new seaman's jacket with the master's pin on the collar and my businesslike air. I wasn't the kind of gallery patron who usually went to the back to ask about buying paintings. But, since I had done so, she assumed I knew what I was about.
"How may I help you, Captain?" she asked.
"'Bouquet at Sunset,'" I said, consulting the catalogue in my hand. "C782S. Has it been sold yet?"
"Ah," the assistant director said, smiling. "I think Mr. Cartwright is going to sell a good many prints of that. They've proved very popular already. But, as it happens, the original hasn't yet been sold. Come this way, if you would, please."
In the back office, I waited for the assistant director's word and then slid my hands into the scanner. It only took a moment for the system at the bank, a couple blocks away, to recognize my fingerprints and open a connection to my account. Speaking quietly but firmly, I gave the order for the transfer of funds. I felt a small pang on speaking the amount aloud. Almost a year's earnings. Oh, well, it was worth it. Besides, as my mother always said, "What else is money for except to spend? You can't take it with you." So, I closed the connection to the account and the assistant manager closed the connection to the bank.
She took the shipping information and then led me back to the discrete baize door beside the information counter. "Thank you, Captain Shepard," she said, smiling. "Fair winds and following seas."
I returned her smile. "and to you, Ms. Birdcaller."
As I turned away, a woman approached the information counter. Something about her caught my attention, though at first I couldn't think what. She was perhaps somewhat shorter than average; perhaps rather plump, though that was hard to tell under the unfashionably shapeless coat she wore despite the warm, sunny weather. Her hair was covered and her face shaded by a similarly anonymous hat. I lingered in the shadow of the door, watching her, puzzled by the vague sense of recognition.
When she spoke to the attendant behind the counter, I had to stifle a sharp indrawn breath, although her words were commonplace enough. "I'd like to purchase 'Bouquet at Sunset.'"
The coincidence of the woman inquiring about the picture I had just bought wasn't what struck me at that moment. What struck me was that the woman was Mrs. Muriel Morrow. Not in Splangliborn, or back early. Emma and Sinclair had had a close shave!
"I'm sorry, Madam," the woman at the counter said after a moment. "That painting has been sold."
Mrs. Morrow stood sill for a moment. Then, bursting into tears, she rushed blindly out of the gallery, brushing past other patrons as if she weren't aware they were there. I stared after her in silent astonishment, which gave way to a pang of pity. She must have had her heart set on that picture. I slowly made my way out of the gallery and down the avenue. Mrs. Morrow distraught, or at least thwarted, was a new concept to me.
I was so absorbed in this novelty that it was some minutes before I remembered something else, something far more important. I had just seen here in Raklebad a person who was supposed to be in Sprolsbad, on the other side of the world. What was she up to? To this disquieting question, I had no answer.
Ah, Cat. Nice. Very nice. I'm going to *so* love this when it's done!! Thank you for keeping up the work on it.
My friend, Trish, works like you. Coming back, adding, going over, enhancing. It's beyond me. Most of my work goes on *before* I start. And very little gets changed afterwards. A word here or there. More cutting than adding. . . .
Well, different things, different pieces of work require different approaches. Once in a while something will come to me essentially fully blown, just requiring a little tinkering once it's set down in black and white.More often I get an idear, a beginning, and have to struggle with it. Actually, sort of a lot of writers say they have to keep writing to find out what's going to happen next. My problem is that I run in to ginormous blocks and it takes what feels like forever to wear them down or inch around them in order, sometimes literally, to see the light.
In this case, my subconscious and from time to time my conscious have been worrying away at why Mama would be in Sprolsbad. Finally it occurred to me a couple days ago that much if not virtually all of her behavior that seems inexplicable to Charlie and Bronte is related in one way or another to Cartwright. It's going to be hard weaving this idear in, since at no point is Mama a viewpoint character. But the knowledge of how her thought processes are colored gives me a better grasp on the situation. Stupid of me not to see it before, really, but there it is. I tend to think in straight lines, also to get caught up in one character's standpoint and attitudes. That's okay for a short story, I guess, but for a novel, even a straight first person narration with only one narrator, you need a little more, a little wider scope.
8-) Slightly faster than the evolution of. species. I'm working now to incorporate the new insight into another chapter.
BTW when a new comment appears here but you have the window/tab minimized, do you get a sort of alarm chime? Can't think what else it could have been. I've never heard it before.
Victor Hugo is said to have written thing straight out with almost no changes. If memory serves me well, after writing the first draft of Les Miserables, he went back and changed two words and the title of a single chapter. Lafcadio Hearn would labor on and on and on over a single sentence (which meant he could never write a real novel). BTW, Hearn is noted for his unique (but very expressive) punctuation.
And apropos of nothing, but fun to recall:
Four and twenty Yankees, feeling very dry, Went across the border to get a drink of rye. When the rye was opened, theYanks began to sing, 'God bless America, but God save the King!'
Howard Dean is First and Vermont still misses his governance!
ReplyDeleteSounds like Ally is doing "OK," which is good. The amnesia is a blessing. I suppose it's the pain meds that interfere with the formation of short-term memories; there are lots of things that can. Sedative/hypnotics like lorazepam [Ativan] or midazolam come immediately to mind. Have to be careful with those patches [DON'T PUT A HEATING PAD ON THEM!], but used properly they can give better long-term pain control, and especially for a munchkin they will be far easier to use than time-release pills. Tolerance of morphine and related drugs can wear off very quickly, but just when it kicks in and when it goes away is, as I understand it, not predictable. Here's pulling for our little one.
ReplyDeleteHaving spent 17 hours on a dead thread yesterday, would like to remind my homies that it's nice to let the peeps on the old thread know that there's a new one. . . .
ReplyDeleteThe description kinda reminds me of the "twilight" sleep that so many obstetricians loved during the period I was having my babies. I eschewed it 'cause it doesn't do all that much for pain, just makes you forget the pain. Afterwards. I thought then that it was just a cheat. . . I want to remember my life. For one as little as Ally? After as much pain as she's already been through? Likely a blessing. . . .
ReplyDeleteThanks, Alan. ♡ Yeah it's probably Versed or Ativan or one of those types. As for the patch, little ones aren't allowed to use heating pads anyway, so it's probably a non-issue in this case. We'll be glad when this round is over and they've got good pain medication information for Ally's next round of 3f8 treatments next month.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, puddle. Those meds for labor were a cheat. I didn't use any and wasn't sorry (well, except for one terrible hour once). It's one thing to be an adult woman feeling the pain of childbirth (which is not an illness), and another to be a little child feeling the pain of cancer treatments. I'm so glad Ally can't remember the pain, but I'll be even happier when she can't feel it in the first place. We assume there's no trauma if we can't remember, but I wonder what our "monkey" remembers in subtle ways.
Sorry, puddle. I thought I had covered it. But I made the assumption that folks would log in and see the newest thread and miss the earlier one from the same day, so I put a link to the earlier thread in the new one. Maybe no one went back over and discovered you? How is it that in getting in you got the old thread instead of the new one? I'll try remember to link in both directions next time. ♥
ReplyDeleteHome sick today...but I slept until 1:00pm!!
ReplyDeleteNow I'm going to go take a nap.
Fever goes down when I'm down and up when I'm up.
My habit, lol! I put up the new thread for the day, and don't go back to the main page till midnight. . . . We've been so steady with the midnight post, that it didn't even occur to me to do so. We've been so slow for so long, I just thought it was another manifestation. . . .
ReplyDelete(BTW, when I shut down for the night, firefox just keeps/stores the set up I closed with and all I have to do is refresh the pages to get the day before's close.)
Hi guys. Forecast high of seventy today. I donno if we made it, but certanly the high sixties. YAY!
ReplyDeleteGee, listener, you must really need the rest. Get well soon!
Beautiful day here, about mid sixties. I'm burning my winter's worth of trash, and beginning washing in my big garden tubs down by the wash line. Stevie's in and out and out and in, but getting a fair amount of tummy sun when he's out.
ReplyDeleteAnd no, Cat, the foreshadowing is nearly perfect. Don't know where the leftie kid with the coke is going though. I'm very good at picking up on foreshadowing though, maybe because I loved Nancy Drew so much. Or maybe it's the N in INFP. . . . ?
Awh, kitty in the sunshine.
ReplyDeletePuddle, you and my Sis with Nancy Drew. LOL The kid isn't going anywhere, any more than the girl Emma and Packer talk to at the college. Just a bit of color. Only, I have wondered about finding a way to bring that girl in again somehow. And, the kid seems so vivid to me that I did vaguely wonder if I could bring him back in somehow, sometime. As of now, though, He's just a walk on.
Do you think it would be an awful usurpation if I just stuck Chapter Six up here for you to eyeball? It isn't all that long...
Nope. No usurpation at all, lol! Goferit!!
ReplyDeleteChapter 6
ReplyDeleteI waited till the lift door closed before striding into the servants' hall to pursue my investigations. Eager as I was to start for home, I could spare an hour to satisfy my curiosity. Only no one seemed to know why Mr. Morrow was out of sorts. Several people had noticed that he' been nervous like for a few days, but no one could think of an explanation for it. Miss Emma was mildly ill, but that wouldn't trouble Mr. Morrow once he'd satisfied himself that she was as well cared for and comfortable as might be. Maybe someone would know at the Exchange. No one mentioned Mrs. Morrow or her travel plans; so, I didn't either.
At the Exchange, an imposing, rather discomfiting edifice in the heart of the Financial District, I heard more vague murmurs about nervousness and an unsettled mood but no one, not even Morrow's personal secretary, knew anything solid or helpful. Finally, I decided to abandon the wild bandy fowl chase and go to the gallery before it closed.
The assistant gallery manager gave me a quick, comprehensive survey, taking in my sea boots and dungarees, my work roughened hands and well kept but demonstrably not new seaman's jacket with the master's pin on the collar and my businesslike air. I wasn't the kind of gallery patron who usually went to the back to ask about buying paintings. But, since I had done so, she assumed I knew what I was about.
"How may I help you, Captain?" she asked.
"'Bouquet at Sunset,'" I said, consulting the catalogue in my hand. "C782S. Has it been sold yet?"
"Ah," the assistant director said, smiling. "I think Mr. Cartwright is going to sell a good many prints of that. They've proved very popular already. But, as it happens, the original hasn't yet been sold. Come this way, if you would, please."
In the back office, I waited for the assistant director's word and then slid my hands into the scanner. It only took a moment for the system at the bank, a couple blocks away, to recognize my fingerprints and open a connection to my account. Speaking quietly but firmly, I gave the order for the transfer of funds. I felt a small pang on speaking the amount aloud. Almost a year's earnings. Oh, well, it was worth it. Besides, as my mother always said, "What else is money for except to spend? You can't take it with you." So, I closed the connection to the account and the assistant manager closed the connection to the bank.
She took the shipping information and then led me back to the discrete baize door beside the information counter. "Thank you, Captain Shepard," she said, smiling. "Fair winds and following seas."
I returned her smile. "and to you, Ms. Birdcaller."
Continued...
As I turned away, a woman approached the information counter. Something about her caught my attention, though at first I couldn't think what. She was perhaps somewhat shorter than average; perhaps rather plump, though that was hard to tell under the unfashionably shapeless coat she wore despite the warm, sunny weather. Her hair was covered and her face shaded by a similarly anonymous hat. I lingered in the shadow of the door, watching her, puzzled by the vague sense of recognition.
ReplyDeleteWhen she spoke to the attendant behind the counter, I had to stifle a sharp indrawn breath, although her words were commonplace enough. "I'd like to purchase 'Bouquet at Sunset.'"
The coincidence of the woman inquiring about the picture I had just bought wasn't what struck me at that moment. What struck me was that the woman was Mrs. Muriel Morrow. Not in Splangliborn, or back early. Emma and Sinclair had had a close shave!
"I'm sorry, Madam," the woman at the counter said after a moment. "That painting has been sold."
Mrs. Morrow stood sill for a moment. Then, bursting into tears, she rushed blindly out of the gallery, brushing past other patrons as if she weren't aware they were there. I stared after her in silent astonishment, which gave way to a pang of pity. She must have had her heart set on that picture. I slowly made my way out of the gallery and down the avenue. Mrs. Morrow distraught, or at least thwarted, was a new concept to me.
I was so absorbed in this novelty that it was some minutes before I remembered something else, something far more important. I had just seen here in Raklebad a person who was supposed to be in Sprolsbad, on the other side of the world. What was she up to? To this disquieting question, I had no answer.
Ah, Cat. Nice. Very nice. I'm going to *so* love this when it's done!! Thank you for keeping up the work on it.
ReplyDeleteMy friend, Trish, works like you. Coming back, adding, going over, enhancing. It's beyond me. Most of my work goes on *before* I start. And very little gets changed afterwards. A word here or there. More cutting than adding. . . .
Well, different things, different pieces of work require different approaches. Once in a while something will come to me essentially fully blown, just requiring a little tinkering once it's set down in black and white.More often I get an idear, a beginning, and have to struggle with it. Actually, sort of a lot of writers say they have to keep writing to find out what's going to happen next. My problem is that I run in to ginormous blocks and it takes what feels like forever to wear them down or inch around them in order, sometimes literally, to see the light.
ReplyDeleteIn this case, my subconscious and from time to time my conscious have been worrying away at why Mama would be in Sprolsbad. Finally it occurred to me a couple days ago that much if not virtually all of her behavior that seems inexplicable to Charlie and Bronte is related in one way or another to Cartwright. It's going to be hard weaving this idear in, since at no point is Mama a viewpoint character. But the knowledge of how her thought processes are colored gives me a better grasp on the situation. Stupid of me not to see it before, really, but there it is. I tend to think in straight lines, also to get caught up in one character's standpoint and attitudes. That's okay for a short story, I guess, but for a novel, even a straight first person narration with only one narrator, you need a little more, a little wider scope.
Not stupid at all: just need to let things evolve. . . . In any case, I'm loving watching that evolution. . . . ♥
ReplyDelete8-) Slightly faster than the evolution of. species. I'm working now to incorporate the new insight into another chapter.
ReplyDeleteBTW when a new comment appears here but you have the window/tab minimized, do you get a sort of alarm chime? Can't think what else it could have been. I've never heard it before.
It was mid-sixties here today. Wore a light-weight jacket to my science writers' meeting.
ReplyDeleteSaturday is the first day of sprinng. Prediction? Mixed sleet and snow.
LOL But, of course.
ReplyDeleteNo chimes here, Cat.
ReplyDeleteVictor Hugo is said to have written thing straight out with almost no changes. If memory serves me well, after writing the first draft of Les Miserables, he went back and changed two words and the title of a single chapter. Lafcadio Hearn would labor on and on and on over a single sentence (which meant he could never write a real novel). BTW, Hearn is noted for his unique (but very expressive) punctuation.
ReplyDeleteAnd apropos of nothing, but fun to recall:
Four and twenty Yankees, feeling very dry,
Went across the border to get a drink of rye.
When the rye was opened, theYanks began to sing,
'God bless America, but God save the King!'
Gotta admit it--John Stewart IS funny:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/16/jon-stewart-enlists-mick_n_500487.html
There is a brand spankin' new thread up!
ReplyDeleteAnd get well, listener!!