Maritzia’s Thoughts

Lay off as of August 15.  15 days notice, no severence, nothing.

If my stomach could tolerate it, I’d go home and get drunk.

This week’s Blogging Chicks Carnival is about our favorite things. Take some time to browse through the entries. I know you’ll enjoy it.

The next Blogging Chicks Carnival is about Favorite Things.  I thought about doing a generic favorites post, but I just like too many things, so I’m going to stick to favorite books, since there more than enough of those.  In fact, this won’t come close to covering all of my favorites, but selected favorites in the hopes of brevity.  So…without further adieu…my favorite books:

Dune is absolutely one of my all time favorite books.  There’s just so much depth to it.  The characters are well written and thoughtfully drawn.  The cultures of the peoples are complex and finely detailed.  The story is about political intrigue, economics, war, social mores, religion…all set in a sci/fi setting.  Honestly, if you haven’t read it yet, put it on your must read list.  It is easily one of the best novels ever.

 Next must read is Lucifer’s Hammer.  Written long before the rash of asteriod hits the earth doomsday novels, this novel is the classic.  The cast of characters is so large they had to put a listing in the front of the book so you could keep track of who’s who (at least the first time you read it.  By the 4th or 5th time, you’ll know them all well).  Really, I have to recommend any novel by the Niven/Pournelle team.  I like them both as individual writers (Niven wrote the Ringworld series, and Pournelle is known for King David’s Spaceship, among others), but together they strike the right balance between adventure and science.  Their topics almost always have an underlying theme about societal evolution, and they don’t take the route many authors have that everything in the future is sunny and good.  They see humanity for what it is, and that is often dirty and less than laudatory.  Again, if you haven’t read their novels, I recommend them.  The best of theirs, after Lucifer’s Hammer, would be Oath of Fealty and Mote in God’s Eye.

Now, let’s move on from Sci/Fi and head to romance.  Yes, I said romance…I’ve always loved romance novels.  My very favorite romance author is Judith McNaught.  Her books will have you laughing and crying all the way through them.  Her characters are well written and wonderfully flawed, and her writing is just what you want on a rainy Saturday afternoon when all you want to do is lay in bed and lose yourself in a story.  The very best of her books is Kingdom of Dreams.  The plot is pretty basic, Scottish daughter is forced to wed English noble to secure peace.  If you like historical romances, this one is a winner.  However, McNaught also writes modern romances, and they’re just as good as the historicals.  You know their good because they are hard as heck to find in the used bookstores.  People keep them to read again and again.

On to a new genre….I guess you’d put this in contemporary fiction….The Earth’s Children series starting with Clan of the Cave Bear.  In Clan, a young girl named Ayla is orphaned and adopted by a tribe of neanderthals.  I love this book because of the strength of the main character.  She’s a woman who, while trying to fit into a society so different from her own, learns to be true to herself regardless of the consequences.  I also like it for it’s discussion of Ayla’s spirituality, which is very deep.  I’ve always been attracted to shamanistic cultures, so this spoke to me a great deal and had a profound impact on my own belief system.  Probably, above all other books I’ve listed here today, this is my number 1 recommendation.  Buy it…read it…ponder it…read it again…repeat several times.  I usually read this book at least once a year, and the rest of the series at least every 2 or 3 years.

And now I’m tired from doing that much, so I’ll give you a reprieve on the rest of the list.  Maybe one day I’ll do another list with additions to.  Until then, enjoy this little glimpse into My Favorite Books.

Today would have been my mother’s 71st birthday.  She died in 2002 from cirrhosis secondary to hepatitis C.  I took care of her for 2 years before she died.  I’ve probably mentioned here somewhere before that my mother was the primary abuser in our household.  Daddy was an alcoholic, but he was always good to us, if a somewhat absent parent much of the time.  My mother was the primary parental figure, but…well…let’s just say she was a bit unstable.  She had a terrible temper, and you never knew from one time to the next whether she’d be laughing with you or beating the shit out of you.

It’s taken a lot of time (not to mention therapy) to really understand what happened with Momma.  To give Mom her due, she was a hell of a lot better parent than her own mother.  Granny was certifiably nuts.  The stories my mom and uncles used to tell about her abuse would just make your hair stand on end.  So, in many ways, Mom broke away from the parenting skills she learned at her mother’s hands.  But the abuse by her mother left it’s scars and caused, I believe, most of the instability in my mother’s personality. 

It would be easy to let myself grow old and bitter like my mother was, but I refuse to be that way.  I remember one day in my twenties, looking at my mother frothing at the mouth over nothing, and thinking that I didn’t want to be like that.  I didn’t want to be old and sick and bitter before my time.  For all of us there are watershed moments in our lives, and that was one for me.  It’s when I started to seriously look at my behaviors and my thought patterns and conciously trying to be a different person.  I think, to a great extent, I’ve achieved that.  Goodness knows the temptation to be bitter has been strong lately with all of this layoff talk, but I’m still trying to resist it.  Although, to be fair, I must admit that my husband and I have decided to blame everything negative on Chyerl for the forseeable future *laughs*.  We even blamed her for the heat wave next week.  It’s petty, but it makes us laugh and that makes us feel better.

There have been a number of watershed events in my life as well as my spirituality.  Maybe I’ll go into some of the others some day.  But today is about Momma.  It’s about forgiveness and love.  And being grateful that she gave me enough strength to not turn out like her.

Thanks, Momma, and Happy Birthday!

Let’s just say, things have been stressful here.

First of all, I forgot to post the Carnival of Blogging Chicks #6. Your’s truly has a link in there. Our theme this week is Dreams.

Now, onto why life is so stressful. You all know that my boss is leaving (he got a great job back east). He and I had talked last week about what would happen to me when he left and he was working on making sure I had a place here somewhere if that’s what I want. That was a week ago Wednesday. Well, on the next Tuesday, the Associate Director, who is taking his place, comes to me and tells me that she intends to lay me off effective when the boss leaves next month. Needless to say, much freaking out ensued. I talked to my boss the next day and he was just as freaked out *laughs*. Evidently, she didn’t tell him what she was planning either. Anyway, he talked to his boss about the situation and he and the Associate Director are working something out. I don’t know any details yet, but I have a feeling it will be some kind of severance package that will give me a bit more time to find a new job and, most importantly, will keep my group health insurance in effect until I get more. Health insurance is a *very* big deal for me with all of my health problems. So, now it’s just a matter of maintaining some semblence of calm until I find out what’s going on and I can freak out properly *laughs*.

Okay, must hurry off to get my hair cut so I’ll look decent for interviews *sighs*. I hate *expletive deleted* interviews!

I sent out 51 letters on Saturday to doctors in my county and the neighboring one.  I got several immediate responses from doctors who only called to tell me that what I wanted was dangerous (*expletive deleted* doctors).  However, last night I got a very nice e-mail from a doctor who agrees that there is some merit to the theory of thyroid resistance and is currently treating patients with supraphysiological doses.  She said that as long as I understand the possible side effects and agree to adequate monitoring, she’s willing to treat me.  Hooray!

I figured it’d take me months to find someone who was willing to help me and would probably have to pay out of pocket.  But this woman is actually on my insurance!  Granted, she’s over an hour away, but my doctor in Houston was too.  Heck, I’d drive across the state if I could find a doctor open to helping me.

On the same day, I got a call from a local clinic about a clinical trial for a new antidepressant that they’ve had really good results with in treating the pain and fatigue of fibromyalgia.  So Mark is picking up the information on it for me this morning.  It’s called milnacipran, and they’ve had really good results with it in Europe, where several trials have been run.  So, I’m excited about that possibility.  While the thyroid helps most of my symptoms, it really never did anything for the pain.  That has always continued to be a problem.  So, with any luck I’ll get in on that trial as well.

In other news, I had a talk with my boss this week about my future after he leaves.  He tried to work it so I could get enough money out of unemployment that I could take a layoff package and go back to school full time, but that didn’t work out.  So, he said he would make sure there is a place for me where I don’t have to take a substantial pay cut.  So keep your fingers crossed for me.

I took some new pictures of the puppies, but I haven’t downloaded them yet.  I’ll post them when I do.  They’re just so darn cute!  Even if I do say so myself.

So, all in all, I’m much less stressed out (which is good because I’m all broken out with shingles and my bowel is in an uproar) and feeling quite a bit more positive.  Now we just need to find a place just on the other side of the border that’s still close enough for me to commute!

Don’t forget to check out the fouth Carnival of Blogging Chicks. I’m posting this Saturday night, but the Carnival won’t be posted until Sunday morning, but I might forget in the morning, so I’m posting it tonight.

Woohoo! I love runon sentences *laughs*.