A Bit Of A Medley, Today ....

from Jacqueline

Just when you thought you could not hear any more mind-blowingly unbelievable news, along comes a snippet that makes you think .... WHAT????

This is the sort of news that should have made it into Paul’s feelgood post this week – because there has to be an upside to it:

“Jalal Talabani, a former guerrilla fighter and now the Iraqi President, has checked into an American health clinic - in an effort to tackle his obesity problem Officials at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota confirmed this week that Mr. Talabani checked into the establishment for a series of tests. They declined to provide further details and added in a statement: "No further information updates are planned until completion of the President's comprehensive examination."
Mr. Talabani, 73, has recently complained of tiredness and suffering from the ill effects of being overweight. In February he was flown to the King Hussein Medical Centre in Amman, Jordan, on a medically equipped US military plane, for treatment for extreme fatigue and dehydration after he collapsed. He had been unconscious when he was rushed to a local hospital but recovered enough to be flown to Jordan. He returned home 17 days later.
When he left the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya in northeast Iraq on Sunday, his office quoted him as saying at a news conference several days earlier: "I don't have any health problems except my obesity and I will treat it, God willing." (The Independent).




Is it me, or is there something really whacky, something way off kilter in the world, when the leader (and I use that term loosely) of a country in the midst of a terrible war, not only has time to fill his face to the point of being unconscious, but is not using enough calories to burn it all off. And now he’s here in the USA – and let’s face it, this is nirvana for the rehab-bound – to be sorted out. In my humble opinion, of all the sortings-out of which this particular human being might be in need, eating issues don’t immediately spring to the top of the list.

As Leif Enger said in Peace Like A River: “Make of that what you will.”

Onward ...



I would like to explain why this is going to be one of my more nonsensical posts, and why I may be given to rambling: I hurt like hell this week. I am in agony. My two passions have come together again and I am trying to work through the pain. Not only have I ramped up the dressage training in the past two weeks, preparing for what they call a “clinic” with a trainer referred to as a “master of horsemanship” (and if my shoulder goes on like this, it’ll be another clinic I’ll be off to), but I am in the midst of revisions on my fifth novel. Tearing into the flesh of the story to sort out the kinks, streamline the prose and hopefully make a readable book out of it.



I am not a natural reworker of words (is there such a thing, by the way?), though I have come to enjoy the demands of the process. But I love that first blast when I am the storyteller, telling the tale that’s been rolling around in my head for months, transforming the pictures in my mind’s eye into words on the page. However, as we know, it doesn’t end there – now I have to be a technician of language, the advocate for the reader, questioning the right of every word to be in the book (Hey, you – yes, you, “ridged” – what makes you think you should be in that paragraph, eh? Come on, speak up, why should I have used you when there were plenty of other choices?”)

And on the riding front, I’m taking apart movements I know, deconstructing them to find out why I cannot perfect a certain routine, and I’m trying new things (raising that bloody bar on myself, the one I’m always going on about in connection with my writing) which is how I’ve managed to upset the arm that was broken so badly six years ago, and now I can hardly move the thing. Oh, it’s only a pulled this or that, probably my internal spare parts from Ace Hardware have gone a bit rusty, nothing forever painful (at least I hope not – the world doesn’t have enough Tylenol), but I’m wondering if there’s a lesson I can learn here, something bigger, something that will translate to the business of writing.



I told my husband about the injury today – he’s away from home until early next week (guess he heard me say I was starting the rewriting). I explained what happened, and he simply suggested finding the big rubber band exercise do-dads I had to use when I was in physical therapy following my accident, and gently working those muscles so that I get strong again. He emphasized “gently” knowing that, at times, I can be a bit of a bull in a china shop, a bit over-enthused, which is how this happened in the first place.



So I’ve decided to take that advice further, to go to the next stage in the rewriting process gently, quietly. I will not be a demon with the delete key and I will not say, “That’s staying where it is!” without due consideration of the big picture. And I am going to reach for the Tylenol so that it doesn’t hurt when I hit the keyboard.

Anybody know anything about voice recognition software?

Have a lovely weekend, one and all. And remember to remember, come Monday.