So I was visiting Grandma and Grandpa the other day when Grandma brought out a couple books for my mom to read, borrowed from one of Mom's sisters. Grandma raved over the two books. "They were good! I think you'll like them. The library is completely out of the third one, but I'm on the list for it."

The books were Twilight and New Moon.

Yep, Grandma's into Twilight. And now Mom is being sucked in, too. Though she's harboring a little reluctance since she did just give back all my Sookie Stackhouse books and is wondering if these other vampires might be a bit juvenile for her. Which made me laugh. Stupid, juvenile vampires! We only love hunky, scary vampires like Eric. Oh, actually, that's a pretty fine point, Mom.

Not that I dislike the books. I like them, myself. I genuinely loved how they wrapped up. But... my grandma is reading books currently devoured by every middle-school girl in America. It just makes me giggle, that's all. And points out pretty clearly that good books know no age limits.

Another good book I just finished is A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick, which turned out to be a fascinating and haunting story about relationships. A man who lives in the middle of snow-covered mid-west has advertised for a wife. He gets more than he's expecting is all I'm saying here about the plot. The images the author conjured were chilling and realistic. And while I usually prefer my characters more fleshed out, his style of revealing those facets along the way, with the regular twists and turns of story, kept me turning those pages faster and faster until the end. It was very, very good.

Movie rights went to Columbia so you'd better read this book before it's out on the big screen, the subtle nuances mangled to death by Hollywood's insatiable need to MAKE SURE YOU NOTICE THIS! This is the same attitude I have toward The Time Traveler's Wife, which I read three times and still am afraid to watch. Another book beloved by both myself and Grandma, though Mom wasn't into it for some reason.

I'm actually in need of some new reading recommendations. It's the season when winter starts to drive me toward my gardening books, but as I'm not allowing myself to buy any new plants this year until I see what comes of the ones I planted last year, I need something distracting.

So, what books are distracting you from winter?

I've been staying with Mom and Dad while I'm back in town for Kim's memorial service. The service was Friday night and the church was pretty well packed with people. After the service, I talked to many old friends I hadn't seen in years. People scatter further apart nowadays, it seems. But when you get everybody back in one place, it feels good, easy, comforting. And I hope that it was comforting for her family, as well.

Last night was a different kind of gathering: Girls' Night Out. I was always wondering what the GNO abbreviation meant when I saw it on Facebook, and just assumed it was a cocktail I didn't know. Girls' Night Out is better than alcohol (though plenty fueled by it) and should be prescribed, I'd say at least once every few weeks, to any woman with a husband, a family, or a job. Actually, prescribe it to any woman. Are you a woman? You need a Girls' Night Out.

Last night was a group of friends and a long dinner at a casual restaurant. Pitchers of margaritas. Cameras for documentation. Lots and lots of yammering. Our group was old friends from high school. Several of us had gone to the beach together for our graduation trip. All of us now are older, much more tired, and a lot more fun than we were at eighteen.

Yep, I said it. Eighteen year-old girls have got nothing on their older counterparts. We have the experience to know honesty is the best policy (and tends to make stories a lot more interesting). We know it doesn't hurt to flirt with your waiters, nor does it obligate you to anything more than leaving a healthy tip. We know when to stop drinking the margaritas (before you fall down, but not before you stand up and dance on your chair), when to leave the party (before your mascara runs all down your face, but not before you cry laughing), and most important when to call a cab. Period.

Girls' Night Out is not only fun but useful. It restores joy, sharing vigor all around, making stories for weeks to come. It creates a safe environment for sharing problems, lightening the load for the one who is suffering. Last night was simple. A fun night of talking, reliving old times, recharging me with the realization that even after another loss, life continues and is worth every struggle along the way.

Don't forget that good times always come again. And make sure you get a prescription for your own Girls' Night Out. I needed this one more than I had realized. Thanks for the fun, girls!

I'm so scatter-brained lately. Today I neglected to feed my fifteen year-old some lunch before I sent him away for the day with his aunt. He's eaten a hole through her wallet by now, I feel sure.

My laundry, my pays-me job, my housework: all are in varying stages of hey-I-started-it-but-it's-nowhere-near-finished. I need clean clothes to pack for my trip. I feel bad about my job. The house can wait. Whatever. Nobody died of excessive dog hair. Not yet, anyway.

I'm so scatter-brained, I started this blog earlier, wandered away to mess with my broken disposal, took a look at my hair in the mirror and decided to do something about it, went to get a haircut, came back to check my email and here it still is! The forgotten blog.

You may wonder what's causing the scattered brain. So do I. Though I have a couple suspicions. One, I can blame my boy. He sure has caused me enough trouble lately that I can, logically, pawn off some scatter-brain behavior on him. People would buy that.

Or it might be that I stopped taking my Wellbutrin a couple months ago, it's finally totally worn off, and now all those symptoms of ADHD are completely unmasked, running around like hooligans, leaving lists all over the place and losing my purse. And my keys. And my phone. And one of my shoes.

Yeah, the Rx was handy for awhile. I had trouble grieving my sister when she passed several years ago (and that's not a story for now) and when I took the medicine for depression, my brain suddenly lined up in a way I hadn't previously known was possible.

Seriously. I suddenly found myself finishing a task when I started it. I mean, the same day and everything. I would get out my sewing machine to hem my curtains and then I would actually hem my curtains. Both of them. And hang them. AND put the sewing machine away. It was something for me to discover that this was not just behavior idealized on TV, but actually possible to achieve.

Turned out, looking back, the ADHD had made itself really, really clear. The list-making behavior was the only defensive maneuver I knew and quite probably the only way I made it through high school with decent grades. Though nobody in their right mind would ever call me hyper, my brain would never, ever shut down. I even sleepwalk. And talk. And fight bears in my dreams. (Again, another story for another time. I promise.)

And while I'm enjoying the weird side-trips me and my scattered brain have been making today, I know that medication is in my future. Hopefully something I can take only when I need to focus (like on my typing job! Yep, I see you still sitting there, unfinished.) and leave well enough alone for the rest of my day.

Count this as the epilogue to this blog: I started this yesterday, forgot it once, finished it mostly, then wandered away again. I slept, packed, drove for six hours, visited with Mom and Dad, my sister and the baby, dragged my poor computer upstairs, checked my email and my blog and HERE IT STILL IS, unfinished.

Seriously, if anyone has recommendations for ADHD drugs, please discuss. Wildly. In depth. And thanks!

Right now my girlfriend is dying of cancer. Her name is Kim Ancion. She just turned 38 and she's lying in a hospice center after fighting for almost seven years. That she held tight for so long leaves me astonished at the strength of will. I cannot imagine I'd be able to do the same with such grace.

But a woman with a good husband for added support, and a son and two stepdaughters, has a lot to do every day and perhaps the sheer busyness of her schedule kept her going through many of the bad times. The Little League and Girls' Softball, church groups, and her many, many friends both back home in West Virginia and here in North Carolina, kept her busy and going strong for as long as her body could hold out.

At this same time last year, my father-in-law, Kip Adkins, died after battling lung cancer for many months. The struggle and horror of watching him go through that disease, and finally to succumb from it, in no way matches the incredible fabric that was his life.

For forty years he was a husband. For thirty-nine years a father. For twelve years, a father-in-law and a grandfather. For sixty years, a son.

He was a musician who could have been known to the world at large, but he was famous to only us few, only those of us who knew that when he picked that guitar up on Sunday afternoon and began to sing, magic was coming. He passed that magic on to his sons, and on to his grandson, loving nothing better than to watch them play their songs for him.

Kip took his daughters-in-law to his heart and would endeavor to teach us about things we wanted to learn. He and I shared a love of antiquing, of old barns and houses. When he and my mother-in-law, Linda, were house-hunting down here, Kip and I would take off driving for the day, looking for just the right place, usually becoming swept up in a property that was falling down with age, hopeless beyond even his abilities. But we would stand in front of it, arms crossed, seeing what could be until our more practical natures put us back on the road to reality.

He loved old furniture, old glass, old pottery. He would bring home a piece from a flea market or yard sale, tarnished, dusty, and forgotten for years, polish and clean it, sand it and stain it until it glowed again with new life. Watching him do that over and over again made me realize that anything, and anybody, can do the same. When life is tarnished, the shine faded, it's your duty to polish it up until it's glowing once again.

He loved the land he grew up on, the land he rambled over until he settled, and the pieces of land he settled for his family and called his own. The land was important to him and he loved every aspect of nature, reveling when he moved to a place where recycling was not just about crushed beer and pop cans, but was a requirement straight down to the cardboard and the plastic rings on the milk jugs. He nurtured his land: building and tilling and growing a big garden, composting, mulching, and appreciating every plant that would grow.

He nurtured his family, doing so much for his wife that she's still, a year after his passing, realizing things he did for her that she had no knowledge of. He nurtured his children into big, strong, smart, intuitive men just like him and then happily appreciated the women they chose as well. He took his grandson and made him into a finger-picking maniac in his own image, setting my child up for years of respect for a talent that keeps growing inside him like wildfire.

It's hard to lose a man like this, hard to believe it's been a full year that he's been gone. So often it seems longer than that because we've all done pretty well. But then again, that's another gift he's given us. He set us up for success, teaching us how to work the land, how to gather together and support and appreciate each other, how to feed and nurture each other, how to work hard and save hard and to make for our own as much as we could. He taught us how to live without him.

Watching his ashes flow into the river up near his homestead where he and his wife raised their sons, I remember the rush of them into the water, how they mixed, scattering into the flow, and felt a joy that Kippy had become a part of all that he loved so well about nature, that he would be in it all, a piece of it all, realizing the dignity and ease that came with that.

For my friend, Kim, who has already been an angel here on earth, I wish her the same dignity and ease as her spirit rushes to find its own place when her own body finally lets go.

There's an innate tragedy about a wife leaving her husband, a mother leaving her children, a woman leaving her life against her will. But if any deserved to let go, to set aside her heavy burdens, to pass on the chores and responsibilities to another, it is Kim.

She has been a friend to so many, both before her condition arose and after, when she supported friends in the community of breast cancer survivors, lending them an ear, a shoulder, telling jokes, making funny stories out of what would have been in other hands gruesome details of a surgery gone slightly awry. That's always been Kim. Take the disgusting and twist it just enough to laugh until you can't breathe.

This horrible disease has taken my wonderful father-in-law, is taking my friend, both at much too young an age to exit their lives. I loved them both so much; many did, still do. And all that can be done is to honor their lives in whatever way works best to those of us left behind.

We can take the lessons they taught us, the generosity of their spirits, and we can also turn some charitable dollars toward the people who still work, day and night, to find relief and cures for those still living with cancer.

1/23/10: Kim passed yesterday afternoon. May God bring peace to her family in their time of grief.

It's an emotional time this week. There is a post I'm working on, but it's not finished. I can't seem to finish it.

In the meantime, take a look at what keeps me going with laughter through the harder times.

This site www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com is a true gem, very little text, and always cheers me up. Be sure you scroll down to the final frontier. You'll know it when you get there.

Only one of my dogs is an actual weenie dog. Not that I like that name for dachshunds, but if you're shaped like a sausage, you're pretty much stuck with the nicknames.

In terms of temperament, however, weenie is a word best applied to the beagle-dog, Chadam. He's a big bag of holy howling horror.

When we first got Marlo, she was seventeen pounds of bone and skin. She wouldn't meet our eyes, would run and hide from any sudden noise, and slink away in fear if I so much as touched my broom. After several years with us, she knows she's in charge, ruling only second to Rich, who tries not to let on that she has him wrapped firmly around her tiniest toenail.

So, what's Chadam got to be so fearful about? Not a thing. But that doesn't stop him from cringing over every noise, jumping at any errant footstep, running for cover if someone so much as sneezes.

The only thing that makes Marlo run and hide anymore is yelling. She's not a fan of the raised voices, much to my surprise since she doesn't have any fear of making her own opinion clearly known. Right now, though, she's hiding around the corner of the couch, guarding a pinecone she stole from Chadam, and waiting for the basketball game to end.

Nobody is here but me at the moment and this is what the yelling is about. I'm watching the game and the dogs are keeping their own wary eyes on me. I don't know why they behave that way since I've never, ever beaten those sad-eyed pups.

And, there's not much I can do about this, since the yelling seems to help. My team is up seventeen points at the moment. Suppose I let up on the couch-coaching and they didn't know what to do?

They aren't buying it, I know. But WVU won their game. Maybe I can find some little doggie earplugs before they play Syracuse Saturday?