It Seems Like Forever

Wow! I was only away from blogotopia for ten days? It seemed like a month, at least.

It all started when I made a very stupid mistake with one of my medications. I miscalculated my remaining doses, ran out completely, and had to wait more than a week for delivery of more pills. Has this ever happened to you? With hindsight it appears that I am a moron, an idiot, the stupidest person in the world – pick your description – but at the time I was sure that my prescription service would deliver in a day or two, based on past experience. Well, not any more. It took nine business days.

Of all things, I had to pick an anti-anxiety medication to learn this lesson on. Ironically, I wasn’t even taking it for anxiety, but if you ever want anxiety, try undergoing the sudden withdrawal symptoms. This is an experience like nothing else. I was dizzy, twitchy, irritable and weepy. I hallucinated big black shadows moving around and loud crashing noises right next to me. Electric currents buzzed through my head (this is so common it even has a name: “brain zaps”). Five pounds of my body weight mysteriously disappeared. Don’t worry, they came right back. J

Seriously, do not run out of your prescription medication. It is not fun, plus it can be dangerous. I monitored my symptoms and made sure I didn’t experience anything that was actually life-threatening. (Also the Piemaker was hovering constantly, which was mostly aggravating but did result in a delicious sweet-onion quiche and a new twist on Grasshopper pie. Pics later.)  I did finally receive the medication, restarted my daily dosage and am feeling pretty “normal.”

So with all of that, the beginning of my non-blogging week was a bit dull since my vision and my coordination were way off. I stayed far away from sharp objects and heavy equipment, but read some books and watched lots of TV.

I finished a fun series of books by David Rosenfelt about a defense attorney who gets involved in solving murders.   

(first in the series)

The main character is very funny, the writing is clever, and there are several nice dogs who feature prominently in the stories.

I also read an amazing book called Tales of an African Vet by Dr. Roy Aronson.  

Aronson worked in clinics, zoos, and in the field in South Africa and other countries for twenty-five years, and you get the sense that the stories he shares in this book are just a small fraction of his amazing experiences. Great book, worth reading just for the bit on the rhino that knocked its horn off.

A few of my favorite series are back on television, but they’re not making me too happy right now. First, there’s True Blood, which I simply adored in its first season, loved in the second season, and since then have just been waiting for it to return to its former glory.

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I admire Alan Ball’s genius and the way he recreates our world in TB, but either his writers have lost their spark or I’m getting jaded or both. I just haven’t felt very inspired by either the existing characters’ storylines (completely different from the originals in the Sookie Stackhouse books) or the endless parade of new characters in the last couple of seasons. Still, Anna Paquin remains my greatest girl crush of all time so I will keep watching this program for as long as it is on.

Next is The Closer, and I swear my heart rate actually goes up whenever I see one of those “THREE. SHOWS. LEFT.” commercials on TNT. (Only two after tonight!)

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I know it’s silly to get stressed out over a television program, but I am scared for Assistant Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson of the LAPD.

I don’t know whether she is headed for some sort of breakdown, or if she is putting on one of her performances in order to take down a serial murderer, but the whole thing is freaking me out. And obviously we know that in three weeks she will be gone, so something momentous is going to happen.

One of the things that viewers of The Closer will miss forever and ever is the magnificent vintage wardrobe, brought to us courtesy of Greg LaVoi. The man has a historian’s love of clothing, an insider’s knowledge of where to get the best of everything old and new in LA, and on this show, he fully utilizes his opportunity to see magnificent vintage suits and dresses in action on the gorgeous Kyra Sedgwick.


A sample of the vintage delights, source

Mr. LaVoi blogged the wardrobe planning for each episode. There are fascinating insights into how the storyline feeds into his costuming decisions, and how the clothes in turn help the actors develop their characters.

Finally, there is Breaking Bad. 



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This is another program that had me enthralled during the first couple of seasons. The cinematography (does anyone still use that word?) was incredible, with shots so long you had to look away from the discomfort of the actors, cuts so fast you could barely follow the action, scenes composed with the balance and light of a Renaissance painting, and stark, angry shots of sheer ugliness.

The story was like an ongoing ethics argument – what would you do or not do to protect yourself or your family in dire circumstances? The characters and their actions were believable, and you could understand their “bad” behavior even while disagreeing with it.

Then at some point the tone shifted, and now the characters seem to be bad for no good reason, and I can’t identify or sympathize with anyone. I know, that’s the whole plan of creator Vince Gilligan, and I’m sure he’s going somewhere with this. Still, it is a curse of my personality type that I always need to know why, why, WHY people do things. Even if they are only TV characters.

That was quite a lot of entertainment, so when the freakish drug withdrawal symptoms dissipated somewhat, I ventured back into my creative space and decided to catch up on a few things. I did some pattern archiving, had a conniption fit at the vegetable garden and pulled out the mostly dead plants, and worked through a couple of sewing remakes and repairs. I’ll share all that in some of my upcoming posts!

In the meantime, I’m going to start catching up with all of you, and see what’s been happening out there.

Katrina