Book Review: The St. Simon Trilogy and a Feminist Rant

I was in my early teens - possibly not even into the technical teens, but what is now referred to as a "tween" - when I first read the St. Simon trilogy by Eugenia Price. The first volume, entitled Lighthouse, tells the story of James Gould, a young man who leaves his family in late eighteenth century Massachusetts, and travels to Spanish Florida to make his fortune. The spell in Florida, traveling to Baltimore, and a stopover in Georgia are all steps on the way to James achieving his dream: to build a lighthouse.

As a youngster who was beginning to understand what architecture was, I was enthralled by Lighthouse, and the way that the author spoke about James's struggle with proportion and materiality. (Later, I would learn that the most accurate portion of the novel is actually the bureaucratic entanglements and unreliable contractors.)

In the years since I first read the novels, which were originally published in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they remained in my imagination as the pinnacle of architectural romanticism, if that makes any sense. In my early 20s, I read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, and briefly fell in love with Howard Roark, before deciding that the whole "screw everyone else, just worry about yourself, and the others can all go to hell" idea was callous and selfish and inhumane.

But I digress.

After my love affair with Ayn Rand came to an end, my passion for the Lighthouse novels was rekindled, and I decided to reread them, after twenty-something years.

I ordered the books on Amazon - all three of them - and eagerly awaited their arrival two days later.

The books arrived, and I withdrew from the cardboard box the pastel volumes with their impressionist portraits of anonymous ladies in white tea dresses and straw hats. The fact that Lighthouse - a book set in the late 1700s to early 1800s, I remind you - was adorned with an impressionist portrait of a woman in 1890s-era clothes on the cover should probably have been a tip-off.

Either my memory was sorely damaged, or my taste in novels has changed entirely since my tween years.

I was a die hard romantic as a young girl - I mean "sweep me off my feet", "tall, dark and handsome", "night in shining armor" romantic. As I've grown up, I've learned more about what it means to be controlled by men, and how important it is to NOT be controlled by men. I was raised to question everything I was told, to think for myself, and not to be afraid to ask "Why?".

For those reasons, the books are now almost impossible to read.

Almost, I said. Because I will force myself to slog my way through a book, even if I end up writing notes on the book's shortcomings on the fly leaf to keep me sane.

The women in the books - who are not the main characters, despite the prominent pastel wasp-waisted women on the covers - are insufferably meek. The author seems to think that the ideal woman is child-like, incapable of thinking critically, and in need of a man to tell her what to do.

In the second book, New Moon Rising, the protagonist's sister is held up as a paragon of womanly "can-do" spirit, because she runs a plantation single-handed. And yet, despite the fact that she undoubtedly has to make decisions about her land and crops based on the national and local economy, she still has to ask her brother, Horace, for his advice at every turn. When war looms (we're in the mid-1800s now, folks), she questions whether the South will really go to war with the North.

Honey, the South has already shelled Fort Sumter and captured the Federal Navy. Yes, we're going to have a bloody war.

In Lighthouse, one of the secondary characters - a woman, of course, because women are second-class citizens - has a husband who is constantly chasing "big ideas" that invariably lead to their financial ruin. He's a terrible businessman with little intellect, but a ton of bravado and a pretty face, so he's likeable. He makes his wife's life a living hell because he won't go find a job working for someone else.

And his wife just says, "Oh well. I love him, so I'm happy."

She's just blissfully happy while her children are malnourished, and under-clothed, and sponging off of her poverty-stricken mother. Because a wife shouldn't stand up for the physical needs of herself or her children if it might embarrass her husband. No, it's the wife's job to support the husband no matter how selfish and inadequate he is.

One of the biggest things about the St. Simon Trilogy - and I mean, something that really sticks in my craw - is its treatment of the slaves held by just about everyone in the South.

Every slave in the books, with one short-lived exception (he gets mentions on 5 or 6 pages, tops), is a "happy darky" caricature. They are all grinning, happy, contented people, who adore their masters and don't want to be freed. The author, Price, writes her dialogue in dialect, but only when the slaves are speaking. And though I myself write in dialect when I compose dialogue for my characters (who none of you have encountered, because I'm a closet novelist), the way she writes her slaves' spoken words upsets me. Example:

Horace (white slave owner): Are there any more hot biscuits?
Larney (slave): Yes, sir, Mausa Horace - jis' one minute! ...Larney's boy wants more biscuits, an' dey ain' nobody gon' stop 'im- an' ah's got another pan ready to put on de fire.

There's reams of dialogue written in the slave's dialect, and I feel slightly queasy every time I read it. There's something about it that's just so... patronizing. Condescending. Maybe it's the fact that everything they say adds to the depiction of Georgia slaves as happy children who need to be taken care of by their white owners.

Add to the blackface atmosphere (the slaves literally sing and dance for the reader's enjoyment, in dialect, of course) the fact that almost all of the slaveholders depicted don't want to own slaves, and it's all a little too saccharine sweet. The men who are slaveholders are good men, because they don't want to own slaves, but they have to, you see, or they can't compete economically with their neighbors. And they only bought their slaves because they felt sorry for them, in the first place.

No, really.

One of the characters buys something like fifteen slaves, and since it's illegal to free them in Georgia, he just decides he has to keep them. Aw, shucks. Because it would be impossible to take them to - just spitballing, here - Massachusetts, maybe, to free them. You know, send 'em up to his relatives who live in the northern states and free them.

Just an idea.

Another thing that's driving me nuts about these books is the fact that the characters are all fairly static and lack depth. They're all too perfect, from the strong, handsome manly men, who know how to operate sawmills and plantations, and can capably manage "poor white trash" employees, to the sweet little wife, whose highest ambition in life is to pop out a baby each year, like a pre-antibiotic version of the Duggars (but not as creepy). All the women - even the intelligent ones! - are written as "dumb bunnies" who worship their husbands unquestioningly and live only for baby-making. And if there's a gal who doesn't meet this cartoonish standard, she is immediately portrayed as a virago who makes her husband miserable, or she's ugly, and therefore unworthy of either the characters' or the reader's attention.

Since I first read the books, my spiritual outlook has changed. Sort of. It had nothing to do with the books, this change, but it has altered my viewpoint of the books.

I didn't remember the St. Simon's Trilogy having such heavy-handed Christian undertones, and though they probably didn't rankle as a tween, they sure do, now.

[EDIT: Okay, they're not undertones, by the third book, they're the whole story, essentially.]

Up until I was in high school, I struggled with my faith. I was confirmed in the Methodist church as a 12 year old, but I didn't exactly believe everything I professed at the confirmation ceremony.

I don't know many 12 year olds who will stand up to their parents and say, "Hey, guys? I know you believe this, and that's great, and I respect your beliefs, but I'm not sure I buy this. Can we wait a few years to have me join the church? Until I've really had time to figure this out?"

Heaven knows, I didn't say it.

I felt guilty, up until my final year of undergraduate education, because I didn't feel the whole "Christ is Risen!" hallelujah thing. I wrestled with my spirituality, sometimes deciding I could maybe force myself to believe, or at least to pretend, and other times realizing that I would be lying to myself and to everyone around me if I claimed to be a Good Christian.

As a 12 year old who was frequently exposed to Christianity (church and those confirmation classes, all of my friends at school being either Baptist or Catholic or Nondenominational aka Southern Baptist), I probably went right along with the Christian messages of the books.

That Christian message is that, if you believe in God and Jesus, then your life will all get fixed up, somehow, and you'll be happy. Believing in God, in the Lighthouse universe, is literally a deus ex machina: when the male protagonists turn to God, their problems are solved almost immediately.

The "god from the machine" is literally God, you guys!

And it's never the women who doubt God. [EDIT: In book 3, it's a woman. Mea Culpa.] No, women unquestioningly believe that God will save them, no matter if the hurricane just destroyed all the cotton, or the Indians near the sawmill are scalping and burning settlers.

But it isn't enough for the women to believe, because ladies aren't strong enough to flag God's attention with our feeble little arms.

Lady arms are made for holding babies, not signalling monotheistic deities.

Duh.

No, our big, strong husbands/brothers/fathers have to believe that God will save us, otherwise nothing will happen.

Because God is a misogynist.

Apparently.

I'm almost finished with the second volume, and I was wrestling with whether to read the third volume or not. I've decided I will read it, despite my reservations.

That is, if my feeble lady arms can support the volume's weight.

Wide Awake

It's a little before 1:00 am on a Saturday morning, and I can't sleep.

I've never been "a good sleeper." As I've aged, the insomnia has only worsened. In theory, there's a physiological reason for it: a calcified pineal gland, preventing my body from properly synthesizing melatonin. So I take melatonin at night, so I can sleep.

Tonight, however, my insomnia is super awful. I'm wired. I need to be making, or doing, or something, but I don't know what I want to make.

I tried reading, but I'm not 100% into the book I'm reading, and I couldn't force myself to continue slogging through it in my current frame of mind.

I tried writing, but I've been bogged down lately on that, and am having trouble pushing myself forwards in my story. I don't know how George R.R. Martin does it, frankly.

I tried to order wedding photos online, but had trouble with my account, so that failed, too.

And I'd love to be organizing our office, re-styling the bookshelves and cleaning out the boxes of wedding ephemera that will go in our album (once I succeed in ordering photos), but that would be noisy, and my exhausted husband has long gone to sleep.

In all probability, the insomnia is a forewarning of a migraine to come. It's common for me to have a night of awful, restless insomnia, and to have a full-blown migraine, next day.

Or, the inability to settle myself down is a symptom of my anxiety and depression, which can also cause migraines, which then cause anxiety and depression and insomnia, and...

I'm still having migraines and am unable to work, and I've made a decision about my treatment: I want to cleanse myself.

I've been on so many drugs for so long that I no longer have any idea what it's like to just feel like myself. Back in 2010 - or possibly 2009 - my neurologist/best friend took me off of everything, so we would know what my baseline was. Since then, I've been on oodles of medications for various reasons: antidepressants and antipsychotics to prevent migraines, pain medicine for sciatic pain, muscle relaxants for muscle tension due to migraines.

I no longer know what it feels like to be me, without any chemical alterations.

For years, between the end of my chemotherapy and 2011, when a doctor put me back on antidepressants, I had very strong emotions. When I was happy, I was amazingly happy. When I was sad, I was completely devastated. But my emotions were true, and they were mine. I feel, these days, like I'm completely numb. I don't really feel, anymore. I try to, but really the only thing that gets through is sadness and anxiety.

I don't know if taking myself off of my medications* will make a difference. I don't know if I'll feel happier again. I don't know if my migraines will grow worse, or better, or stay the same.

But I do know that I'm tired of not feeling.

*taking myself off of my medications under doctor supervision and with their blessing, because some of this stuff will f*&$ you up if you just stop taking it

Smart Phones and Credit Card Fraud

About six months ago, I was perusing the Cracked website when I came across an article in their "personal experience" series. The personal experiences range from being a professional dominatrix to what it's like to have a hand transplant (that's rejected).

Six months ago, the personal experience series was about a guy who spent $9,000 playing Game of War, famously advertised using the breasts of Kate Upton and Mariah Carey.

And can I just say that it's awesome that they're using Mariah Carey as a sex symbol? I mean, aside from the whole "objectifying women to get money" thing, she's 46 (or 45, depending on who you ask), and she totally rocks that metal bustier. Look out, Wonder Woman, she's gunning for you!

More to the point, though, I thought that someone spending $9,000 to play a game on their phone was absolutely stupid. How the hell could someone sink that much money into their phone? I thought there was no game on earth that could make me drop that much cash - or, you know, credit - on a silly game. That was what happened to people who had no self control.

Ahem.

No, I haven't lost $9,000 to an iPhone game, but I did spend about $50 over the course of 3 days, without even realizing it. I was playing Bejeweled a lot, and kept seeing ads for Township, which seemed like a more involved version of the Farmville game that initially launched on Facebook 8 years ago (and which I enjoyed playing for a while). I thought, 'That would be a nice change. Something I can dip in and out of periodically throughout the day." I downloaded it. It was free, after all!

Within about three hours, I was out of the valuable T-Bills (not treasury bills, but Township bills) that are required for... everything. Almost everything. I'd misunderstood how they were used, and only realized my error when they were all gone.

No worries, I thought. I'll just buy some more, just this once. Two dollars later, I was charged up, again. Easy.

But things have a way of snowballing, don't they? Instead of checking it occasionally, the game is timed so that some things are ready to be harvested after 1 minute, and some after hours have passed. So if you didn't constantly check in, you might miss the harvest, and with it the opportunity to earn more coins - not T-Bills - that were needed to do... stuff.

You could pay to build a market using the coins, but when you don't have enough building materials at the end of construction - and no contractor to chew out and threaten with a lawsuit - you have to use the T-Bills to buy materials.

And they go quickly.

One building required 100 T-Bills to complete, because the damned train kept delivering the wrong materials. (100 T-Bills is about equal to $5.00)

Fortunately, despite the fact that I eventually spent $50 on the game, I stopped myself after only three days. Three obsessive, can-hardly-watch-Sherlock-because-I'm-playing-the-game days.

This morning, I deleted the game - and the 1500 citizens for whom I'd worked so hard to create a lovely town. I'd started thinking, the night before, 'I need to delete this app. It's a money pit." But I didn't, because then the money I'd already spent would be wasted.

But I decided to drop the game at 6 am, after suffering a night of severe insomnia, possibly (probably) worsened by the game that had become somewhat addictive.

And then it happened.

At 9 a.m. I received a phone call from my credit card company, alerting me to possible fraud.

'Oh, good grief!' I thought. 'This is just what I need!'

Can you see where this is going?

The credit card company had noticed two suspicious transactions from 'a record store' (also known as the iTunes App Store), close together and for larger amounts than were typically charged 'at that location.'

So this afternoon, after guiltily informing my husband that the app had been deleted, and looking sheepish when he said, "It's not like you spent $20 on the game, or anything, right?", I called the credit card company and said, "Nope, that was me."

Except I said it to an automaton, not a real person.

Granted, I downloaded Tetris for my phone, but that doesn't require in-game payments to get ahead, just quick fingers.

Hey, a girl needs some variety in her digital life, right?

"Just Okay" is Sometimes Awesome

One of the things about being chronically ill is that I have a lot of bad days. There are a lot of days where I'm stuck in bed all day, feeling as if a vise is squeezing my temples, and the pain medicine I take only gives me so-so relief. And don't even get me started on migraine medications... Triptans are useless.

So when a day like today comes around, and I'm headache-free (knock on wood), and my neck is only hurting a little bit, it's an okay day.

Before this all started - AKA 6 years ago - if I woke up bloated and hormonal, with two or three zits sprouting on my forehead, it was disastrous.

Now, if I wake up bloated and hormonal, with a single zit on my forehead (being Paleo means I rarely break out, now), some slight back/neck pain, and sore legs, that's an okay day. It isn't great, but it's okay.

Okay has become, for me, the new great, is what I'm saying.

Okay is when I have the energy to go to the grocery store by myself, to put a roast in the crock pot, to clean out my car, and work on our taxes.

I need to take a moment to just process the fact that I'm filing an income tax return with a husband this year. Ack!

The thing about being "okay", though, is that I still have to pace myself. When I was huffing and puffing by the time I got to the car, my plans to take the groceries home and head out from the house again had to be cancelled. I realized I needed to rest, lest I work myself into a migraine, so my trip to Williams-Sonoma would just have to wait.

So, today was "okay", and I'm fine with that. I'm fine with the burning in my back muscles and neck from leaning over a pile of papers that desperately needed to be filed properly.

I'm fine with the fact that cleaning out my car left me winded - despite the fact that I sat down the whole time.

I'm fine with the sore legs, and the puffy stomach that's retaining water.

I'm fine with it all.

In fact, I'm more than fine: I'm great.

My Role in a Jane Austen Novel: Bedridden Lady of Leisure

I'm lying in bed with my dog, Frederic, curled up next to me. In a few minutes, I'll be working on a story I've started - for the tenth time, actually, but I think I really have it, this time - and drinking water.

I'm married, now - Frederic is actually my step-dog, I guess - and my husband is in the living room of our tiny three bedroom house in Houston. I can hear the narrator of Ken Burns' "Civil War" faintly, and last time I peeked into the living room, my beloved husband was working on a needlepoint project: a pillow with "Home Sweet Home" in blocky text at the top, with two palm trees flanking a smiling Predator below.

It's amazing.

No, he didn't know how to needlepoint before he met me. He learned about two months ago, first starting with a kit geared towards 5-year-olds that depicted a dog. The dog is named Toby, and will eventually be framed. The Predator is named Theodore, because we have a thing about naming stuff. (Frederic's current favorite toy is a stuffed fabric bone that has a handle for playing tug-o-war. It's named Bonaparte, because it's a bone that comes apart).

The last time I wrote was about a year ago, I think. Maybe a little less. I was still planning a wedding, at that point, preparing for the best day of my life.

That day has come and gone, and I still feel amazingly blessed. Even more so than I did before.

Our first 6 months of marriage haven't been easy. I was suffering chronic migraines - still am, actually - and my doctor at the time had decided I was faking it, seeing as she couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I guess she thought struggling to live on the 60% pay that came with my short-term disability insurance while paying $500 per month in medical bills was a walk in the park.

I (and my migraines) went back to work, and I averaged 3 days per week, for a while. Then that dwindled to two days per week. I was struggling to make the 30 hours per week I needed to keep my insurance.

I have since found a doctor who believes me, but we aren't any closer to my migraines going away. I was able to take Family and Medical Leave for three months, but when those were up, I ended up resigning my position, with support from my husband.

I have mercury toxicity, which could be contributing to the migraines, and I've since quit eating fish - unless I know where it comes from - and had the mercury-containing fillings in my mouth removed.

Despite all of that, I've had no relief. Occasionally, I'll feel awesome, but if I'm not careful, awesome can turn really quickly into just-kill-me. So I tend not to get out and do much. I'm afraid I'll be thirty minutes from home in my 10-year-old Civic and not be able to get back to our little bungalow.

I'm also seeing a new neurologist, whose office is five minutes away from Chez StrainedConsciousness. She specializes in headaches, unlike my old doctor who treated headaches alongside other neurological illnesses.

So we're still trying to figure out what's wrong with me, and hoping we'll find out sooner, rather than later.

And if that's "sooner", then my old job is still waiting for me. My wonderful boss told me, the day I cleaned out my desk, that the firm wants me back, once I'm healthy again. Even if it's just part-time, at first, I have a place (barring some economic catastrophe that wipes out all of the company's work).

I'm incredibly lucky that my boss is a kind, caring man, who I believe truly cares about his employees. It probably doesn't hurt that he has a daughter my age, either.

While I've been home, I've done a lot of reading - lots of different genres - and a lot of writing. I want to simultaneously write three different stories, but I don't know if I'm capable of that. I'm afraid I'd have difficulty maintaining the individual "voices" each book requires, because one is a young-adult fantasy book, one is an adult fantasy book (but not, you know, bow-chika-bow-wow adult), and one is historical fiction, set in the 1910s-1950s.

I've also considered opening an Etsy shop - don't laugh, now! - to sell embroidery. Not needlepoint, because I doubt people would want to pay $400 for a Christmas stocking, but simpler embroidery that could be framed. I'm still considering it, though my sister's voice is in the back of my head reminding me that I have yet to finish the needlepoint stockings I'm making for my niece and nephew.

So there's simultaneously a lot going on, and nothing going on. Lots of different stressors, but not a lot to do.

So if you have any ideas for what I could do without having to stare at a computer screen, all day, and also ones that I can do while completely horizontal (because sometimes, just sitting up hurts), I'd love to hear them.

Hopefully, they'll give me more to write about than just, you know, whining about my health.

Mawwiage is what bwings us togevah today.

I mentioned in my last post - just yesterday! - that I'm engaged to be married.

For a while, it seemed like it would never happen. I contemplated buying the China I wanted bit by bit, because I started to see myself as hip, single Aunt StrainedConsciousness for the rest of my life.

I'd been dating a fellow for a few months, and had informed him, on our third or fourth date, that I had some health problems, and that they weren't fun to deal with (I went whole hog and told him about the intestinal fungal infection, because that's attractive). His response was, "No problem."

At least, it wasn't a problem until it was a problem, until I didn't want to go to a concert because my infection was back, and I felt awful and exhausted and nauseous. And then, he just... stopped calling. Because five months of dating didn't warrant more than that, apparently.

When I realized that he had no interest in continuing to date me, I was pissed. Pissed that he didn't have the cojones to tell me himself, and pissed that I'd wasted my time on him, particularly since I'd straight up told him, in detail, how the infections affected me, when they happened.

I got on eHarmony that night, and responded to several messages that had been dropped into my InBox in the past two weeks.

One of those messages was from the man I will marry on May 30, 2015.

He was cute, judging by the picture, and wrote exceptionally well, and seemed to have a well-developed sense of humor. We met for coffee a few weeks later - we began corresponding over the Christmas holidays of 2013 - and I liked him immediately.

Except he needed a haircut. But hey, that's easily fixed, right?

He had a good sense of humor, a wide range of interests, and he was exactly like his picture on the eHarmony website. Except more handsome, so hooray!

Our second date was at the Museum of Natural History in Houston. I'd been wanting to see their Egyptian Hall, so we went. We also went through the butterfly exhibit, which was fun, but the best part was definitely the Egyptian Hall.

Why? Because of all of the amazingly hilarious jokes that can be made at the expense of mummies.

Yes, I know, I'm going to hell for mocking dead people. Or, at least their canopic jars.

As we wandered through the gift shop on the way out, a Triceratops mug caught my eye. Not just any triceratops mug, though: an over-sized triceraCHOPS mug, showing the different cuts of meat on a triceratops. My Future Husband bought it for me, and I still use it every day at the office.

By our fifth date - when he made me dinner at 9:30 at night because I was exhausted, on my anti-candida diet, and had just left work - I was hooked. I had to drive to my parents' house, the next day, and when I got there, I cancelled my eHarmony account. I'd found the one.

By our fifth date. Because I didn't feel like breaking my dad's record (He told my mom on their third date that he was going to marry her. She laughed at him.)

Jump ahead fifteen months, and I'm two months away from our wedding.

It's going to be pink. If you'd told me two years ago that I'd be having a pink wedding, I would have laughed in your face.

However, My Future Husband and I attend the Unitarian Universalist Church in Houston, and its interior is painted in two different tones of pink, with soft green accents and beautiful mid-tone wood paneling. It's a very Frank Lloyd Wright-ian building (as are many Unitarian Churches), and I'm thrilled to be having our ceremony there.

My niece was initially excited about it, because that means that her flower girl dress will be pink. Except she just told my sister/Matron of Honor that she wanted a gold dress.

TOO BAD, KIDDO. YOU WILL WEAR YOUR FAVORITE COLOR AND YOU WILL LIKE IT.

Anyways, we're having a morning ceremony - 11:00 a.m. - with a luncheon to follow at Ouisie's Table, a Houston institution, and also site of the one and only instance in which I've had a waiter pour a drink on me (it was a Bloody Mary, for the record, on my birthday. I think I was 22).

And then, the next day, My Future Husband and I will leave for almost a week in Santa Fe, New Mexico, one of my absolute favorite places to visit.

We've been living together since shortly after our engagement - I was very ill, unable to work, and could no longer afford the rent on my apartment - and My Future Husband has been doing an excellent job of dealing with Wedding Decisions.

For instance, he chose the wedding invitations. I stood in the living room, with six different invitation samples in hand, hemming and hawing about which ones I liked, and he took them, sorted through them, and held up the one we are about to mail out to our guests. "I like this one," he said.

It's pearlescent pink with black lettering. I would never in a million years have thought he'd pick it, but he did! And I like it.

When we went to pre-shop for our registry, I couldn't decide on the Formal Flatware I wanted, and he opened a drawer of flatware, said, "I like this one," and voila! It looked better with our China than any of the others I'd seen.

And then we bought chocolate at the fancy candy counter in the store where we registered (if you're ever in Houston, check out Bering's Hardware: you can buy chocolate, Herend porcelain, William Yeoward crystal, and lawn mowers).

It's nice to have someone who can defuse some of my OCDesign. And he hasn't built a bonfire out of my design magazines, either.

Yet...

Sisters. Sisters. There were never such adoring sisters.

I received a message via Facebook, today, informing me that I had been granted a "Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award." The awarder...

No.

The awardor...

No.

The award giver? Granter? Grantor? Grantor, according to Merriam-Webster.

Okay, here we go again. The award grantor is my third cousin, the daughter of my Cousin Thom. After Thom's death, she took over his blog, To Gyre and Gambol, and has definitely lived up to his legacy.

Since I blogged about Thom, I haven't written another entry, although I've meant to do so. I've mentally composed several posts, but then didn't get around to writing them.

I've been busy. I met the man of my dreams, and on May 30, 2015, I will marry him in a smallish ceremony here in Houston. We now share a home, and he has been through a round of everyone's favorite game: "Megan's Bedridden Again!"

So we have the whole "in sickness and in health" thing covered.

Lots going on. And that's part of why I haven't blogged: I felt there was too much to catch up on.

But now, I've been given an award, and so I will blog, tonight, for the first time in six months.

So here are the questions Amy sent me to answer:

• Why did you start blogging?

My sister suggested it. I was unemployed in 2008, and had nothing to do. I would write these loooooooong emails full of details about what it's like to be unemployed to her, and she told me how funny they were. I was reading constantly, and wanted a way to "discuss" my books with people, and so when my sister (also named Amy, by the way - total fluke in the family naming thing) suggested I start a blog, I decided to do so. I initially had a schedule: Monday was a review of the bar I went to on Friday for Architects' Happy Hour, Tuesday was some amusing anecdote related to being unemployed, Wednesday was also some amusing anecdote related to being unemployed, Thursday was often a book review, and Friday was either another random story or a picture of alcohol, because I was too busy going to Happy Hour at 5:30. Don't knock it. It's how I got my next job. "You can hold your booze and won't put up with alcoholics' shenanigans? You're hired!"

• Do you have a favorite scar? Tell us its story

I actually have three favorite scars. Is that cheating? Maybe? I never claimed not to be a cheater, you know.

Three favorite scars: one beneath my right breast - 1.5" long and 1/8" wide; quasi-symmetrical ones fanning out from my waist down to my hips. The fan-shaped scars used to be bright red, then purple, but now they're a shiny flesh-tone, almost invisible unless you see them in the right light. Or wrong light, depending on your feelings about scars.

All three come from chemotherapy treatment as a 17 year old. I got all of them within a three month period of time. On December 4, 1999, I had surgery to implant a port-a-cath, which is usually implanted above the breast in teenage patients, so it doesn't interfere with brassieres. When I was diagnosed, however, I weighed a skeletal 105 lbs, so there wasn't enough fat over my rib cage to implant the port-a-cath above my breast. So the placed it below my right breast, but out of the way of the band of my bra.

The other two scars are also related to my being 105 lbs of nothing when I was diagnosed with leukemia. My doctors put me on steroids, you see, as part of my treatment, and I proceeded to eat all the food ever. I would go through a gallon of whole milk and 1.5 lbs of ham in two days. And that doesn't include the 3 a.m. scrambled eggs I would make for myself, or the Oreos, or the microwaved frozen broccoli.

I gained a lot of weight in a short period of time, and after three months of chemotherapy and steroids - and the puffiness that comes with being on steroids - I noticed that I was getting funny marks on my hips. Stretch marks. From gaining weight.

I used to be ashamed of the scars on my hips. It's helped that they've faded, with time, but I also see them as a symbol of what I went through, and who it helped me to become.

• Are you sunrise, daylight, twilight, or night?

I am the walrus. Koo koo ka choo.

I used to think I was night. I'm still a bit of a night owl, but something I've learned in the past six months is that I crave sunlight. I've actually cured migraines by sitting in the sunlight and resting, so I think I'm now daylight.

• What's the best meal you've ever had?

The best meal I've ever had... I've had lots of great meals, memorable meals, but I think the best one was on November 1st of 2014. That was the day The Love of My Life asked me to marry him, and we went to Ruth's Chris for dinner, that night. (I thought he was going to propose at dinner, but then he stole a march on me and proposed before we went to lunch.) When we arrived, one of his friends had called the restaurant, told them what had happened, and paid for us to have a bottle of champagne. At first, I thought Robert - the fiance - had ordered the champagne. But then he asked if I'd done it. Nope. There was a card on the table, and that straightened things out pretty quickly. I had filet mignon, mushrooms, and asparagus with hollandaise with creme brulee for dessert.

It wasn't the best food I've ever had, but the company couldn't be beat.

• If you wrote a book, what would it be about? Write the inside front jacket.

I've actually written a book, but it's nowhere near being publishable. There's a ton of work to be done on it. If I had a year without a job, I'd work on it, and probably get it polished up in a couple of months. It's a fairy tale about a benevolent witch - it's a matriarchal society, and men are kind of (really) looked down on - who has to go on a journey to find a cure for the coven's matriarch, who will die without this cure. So she leaves, and eventually finds the cure, and on the way decides that neither humans nor males are so bad (in fact, some of them are smokin', but in a totally PG way), and she is also disappointed in some things. The character, as I initially wrote her, is too perfect, though, too cold, and too remote. She isn't someone you really want to read about. I've grown better about having relatable characters, in the intervening years (I wrote it 5 years ago), so I think I could turn it into something publishable, if I had the time.


But as for writing the inside front jacket? I don't know if my late-night mental muscles are up to that taxing task...

• Tattoos: yea or nay?

I certainly don't have any! Long ago, I wanted to be tan, but then I had cancer, and I decided I didn't want to get cancer again, so now I'm perfectly happy being fair-skinned. It isn't pale, it's porcelain, and I'm rocking it. And I work pretty hard to keep it nice, especially after the time I ended up with a striped sunburn after floating the Comal River in San Marcos, TX. No ink shall mar this creamy canvas.

• What do you wish you were better at?

Wow. There are so many possibilities here. One: getting off my duff and exercising. Two: socializing. I sort of have social anxiety, especially after bouts of illness, and then the idea of going out with a group of people can send me into a panic. Fortunately, my lifemate is good at talking me down (even when he thinks it's just me "not having anything to wear", which is a very convenient excuse for me). Three: riding a bike, snapping, and whistling. That's I lie, I wish I could actually do those things, not just be better at them. That's right: I refused to learn to ride a bike. I need three wheels under my caboose, or it's game over.

• Which young-adult bestseller-turned move do you dislike the most?

I can't really speak to this one, since I haven't seen any of them. I've heard the Hunger Games movies are actually really good, but I'm so madly in love with the books that I'm afraid I'd be disappointed if I saw them.

• Public school or private? Interpret whichever way you like.

I went to public school. I found out, within the past two years, that a lot of students in my district perceived my school as "ghetto". I couldn't figure out why, initially, and then I realized that we were one of the few schools on my side of town that had a racially diverse population. We had Hispanics and African Americans at my middle school! Gasp! It was good for me to be in a diverse population. I didn't realize until my parents pointed it out that two of my friends were Hispanic. ("Huh? Oh. I guess they are. Whaddaya know.")

• What fashion decision do you most regret?

Dream-catcher earrings in the sixth grade. Hands down.


I'm supposed to pass this on, now, and award it to someone else. The difficulty there is that I'm out of practice with reading blogs. I never really read other peoples' blogs, much. This blog was just a way for me to vent, and to be creative and maybe have 100 people read an entry on Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam series (which she finally finished. Helllo! That took a while!).

So I'm going to be a bad sister, in this Sisterhood of Bloggers, and break the chain.

Hopefully I don't have 7 years of bad luck.