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nightdog_barksSunny and beautiful after yesterday's rain, and cooler. 54 degrees (12.2 Celsius), with a light wind out of the north. Making a pot of beans and smoked pork shanks for dinner tonight.
Wonderful article from Hilary Mantel, writer of Wolf Hall, in the Guardian today, all about being in hospital for a minor operation -- and nothing going right. Here is a quote:
For the month of July, my world is the size of the room that, as an undergraduate, I shared with a medical student, a box of bones under the bed and a skull on our shelf. I think of the long wards of the hospitals I visited as a child, fiercely disinfected but with walls too high to be cleaned properly: those walls receding, vanishing into grey mist, like clouds over a cathedral. Wheezing and fluttering, or slumped into stupor, my great aunts and uncles died in wards like those. Wrapping and muffling themselves, gazing at the long windows streaming rain, visitors would tell the patient, "You're in the best place." And as the last visitor was ushered out on the dot, doors were closed, curtains pulled, and the inner drama of the ward was free to begin again: the drama enacted without spectators, within each curtained arena a private play, and written within the confines of the body a still more secret drama. Death stays when the visitors have gone, and the nurses turn a blind eye; he leans back on his portable throne, he crosses his legs, he says, "Entertain me."
The article is here and is well worth a read.
And on that note, must put the laptop down for a moment to pay some bills so Mr. N can take them to the post office later. :-)
Wonderful article from Hilary Mantel, writer of Wolf Hall, in the Guardian today, all about being in hospital for a minor operation -- and nothing going right. Here is a quote:
For the month of July, my world is the size of the room that, as an undergraduate, I shared with a medical student, a box of bones under the bed and a skull on our shelf. I think of the long wards of the hospitals I visited as a child, fiercely disinfected but with walls too high to be cleaned properly: those walls receding, vanishing into grey mist, like clouds over a cathedral. Wheezing and fluttering, or slumped into stupor, my great aunts and uncles died in wards like those. Wrapping and muffling themselves, gazing at the long windows streaming rain, visitors would tell the patient, "You're in the best place." And as the last visitor was ushered out on the dot, doors were closed, curtains pulled, and the inner drama of the ward was free to begin again: the drama enacted without spectators, within each curtained arena a private play, and written within the confines of the body a still more secret drama. Death stays when the visitors have gone, and the nurses turn a blind eye; he leans back on his portable throne, he crosses his legs, he says, "Entertain me."
The article is here and is well worth a read.
And on that note, must put the laptop down for a moment to pay some bills so Mr. N can take them to the post office later. :-)
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Date: 2010-11-13 05:32 pm (UTC)Corgiguy was up all night working on-call, and so none of us slept well. Oliver's response to being up all night was to be hyperactive all morning, so there's been a fluffy dark gray streak tearing through the house and jumping on all the furniture. :)
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Date: 2010-11-13 05:46 pm (UTC)Me too, those exact same lines. Good god, but she is an awesome writer. I still need to read some of her previous books, the ones before Wolf Hall.
I slept a little better last night, although I was up very late. Heh, Ollie-cat. *g*
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Date: 2010-11-13 05:54 pm (UTC)I think that our culture, our health/medical culture, views death as UNNATURAL. Like it's not supposed to happen and it's somehow shameful when it does. So they fight to keep patients alive longer than they should, and dying people don't get the support they need. My $0.02.
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Date: 2010-11-13 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 07:52 pm (UTC)Z and I took the kitties to the vet this morning for their annual checkup while the Mr raked leaves (some more, and it's wet and fortunately not too cold, so he's going to go back out later to try to finish the whole yard before the snow comes), and now Z is napping and I'm on the big work laptop while sitting in my glider chair (oh how I love my glider chair), and I'm supposed to be working. Which I will be, in just a moment. I'm going to do a little work on the reference page in the MS. SRSLY, I'M'A GONNA START. RIGHT NOW.
...what?
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Date: 2010-11-13 08:00 pm (UTC)Heh, Chango had her actual checkup while we boarded her at the vet. I wrote some checks for some bills and now Mr. N's gone shopping and I tweaked the big AU a little bit more ...
But things are just annoying today, y'know? So I'm going to sweep the kitchen floor, see if that helps when the floor is all nice and clean. *g*
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Date: 2010-11-13 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 08:54 pm (UTC)Heh. That's what I think about books, AND LOOK WHERE IT'S GOTTEN ME!
... um. What?
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Date: 2010-11-13 09:00 pm (UTC)