I'm a Praun!

Argh. Did you see District 9?
I hope you weren't trying to eat while you watched it, which I, briefly, was.
I stuck with it though, and I'm glad, because now I'm becoming a PRAUN and if I hadn't seen the movie I wouldn't know what was going on.

It would be good to do links and pictures and stuff but I can't, really, because my PRAUN HANDS are very poor at fine motor skills. Good thing I practised working with my feet when I was a kid (just in case I lost my arms in an accident - so you see what kind of girl I was) because soon I'll be typing with my toes.

Okay (which is how OK is spelled, in case you folks in the UK were wondering) here's what's happened. My forearms, from my elbows to my wrists, and on the right, up through two fingers, were going numb. Yikes. I NEED those arms.

It got so bad I saw my doctor, who referred me to a neurosurgeon. OMG. I do not want neurosurgery. I was honestly afraid, because typing is a part of my writing process. I do not believe I could write by speaking into a microphone, although I suppose I should try, some day . . .

See they move the nerve from one side of the elbow to the other and - ahhHHHHhhhhHHHHHHHHHHH! NOOOOOOOOOO!

Okay so the neurosurgeon had good news All I have to do is wear a wrist brace on each arm, as much as possible, for the foreseeable future. Not only will the beginnings of carpal tunnel syndrome be arrested, but I will repair any damage has already been done! Man was I relieved. The test was sort of painful, in an electroshock sorta way. When I yelled, "I give up! I'll tell you everything I know!" he muttered, 'Writers.' hoho. I shoulda muttered, 'Neurosurgeons' but I didn't. I was being a good patient.

So good news. Plus, I ran my 'I put my hand cream in the fridge yesterday, does that mean I have early onset Altzheimer's?' fears by him and he said no.
He told me a few funny personal anecdotes - his sister once dusted his brother's room with Raid instead of Pledge. So double good news.

I bought the two braces, with steel running down the top and bottom, Velcro, straps, you probably know what they look like. IF not, use your imagination.

Well, after I tried them out I called the maker to find out what the materials that make up the braces are, cause I was itchy. I wondered, wool?
The helpful fellow I talked to said No. I kept pestering him about how
itchy the braces were. Finally he suggested I go to the pharmacy (chemist, for the Brits) and get a sleeve. Apparently they make a sleeve to go under these braces. Gee, what a good idea. I told him so. We hung up.

SO now I can rinse out my extra sleeves and have fresh ones for every sweaty,
WTF long night-of-the-brace. Yikes. The darn things are working tho! I have feeling in the two numb fingers, for the first time in - well - awhile.

But not much fine motor ability. Yet.

And I feel like a Praun. I want to feel like Rosario Dawson (I think) in 'Crash' (Cronenberg's movie, not the new one that won the Oscar.) but I don't. I feel like a Praun.

Not to worry tho. Until I start eating the cat food.

xoxo Mad.

There are no pictures or links to this post. This is a do it yourself post.

ps - I really loved 'District Nine.' Talk about yer unusual buddy pic!!

The Women's Club is Ready to Read!

The Women's Club, by Michael Crawley and Laurie Clayton, is now available in the UK.

Be the first to catch the wave! Ride it to the crest, clutching your copy in your clever hands.

Rah! Rah! Rah!

End of Summer Reading

I'm baaaaack. And I'm baaaaaacked up, work-wise, that is.

The trip was a complete success. From the blazing hot beach days
to the fabulous meals to the big laughs with the family to the
OMG I love my Dad and my siblings to the happy birthday Mad
celebrations.

One of my favourite moments was when four of the siblings, including me,
were cavorting in the water and Roger, second youngest and perhaps the most scarred, physically and mentally, from our tortuous childhood, paddled out to join us in a rubber raft. We were going to dump him out until he protested, citing his hydrophobia, and we actually desisted (!) Instead, we 'pushed him out to sea' (in reality, a crystal clear Canadian lake) chanting, "VIKING FUNERAL,VIKING FUNERAL!"

The whole thing was shot by his girlfriend, and my Dad can be heard commenting, "I've never seen the five of them play together before."

Sadly, on my birthday, we couldn't see the meteor showers as the sky was overcast.

(Although the honest truth is that everyone was dog tired by meteor shower night and although nobody was wimpy enough to actually say it, I think
we all felt a bit relieved by the uncooperative cloud cover because we could toddle off to bed instead of sitting up all night in awe and then making the drive to and flight out of Winnipeg in a state of exhaustion.)

I had a few hours to kill in the 'Peg the next day so I dropped in on an old
highschool pal, Jordan Van Sewell, who is an amazing artiste.




It's hard to find pictures of his work I can pirate and paste on my site, but the book shown at the top of this post, The Jester's Realm contains a ton of gorgeous images.

We picked up our conversation where we'd left off nine years ago, as old friend are apt to do. Many laughs ensued. When the time came, he drove me to the airport in a typical Winnipeg torrential downpour.

I'm heavily into the Millenium trilogy by Stieg Larsson. I'd read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo before my trip, and kept book number two, The Girl Who Played with Fire, for the trip. I cracked it open on the flight out, read five hundred or so pages during the week, and on the flight home I read until the plane taxied to a stop in Toronto.

I'm now reading the third and final book of the trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's nest.

If you haven't started reading the trilogy yet, you're in for a real treat. Start at the beginning, please, with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.



The late, alas, Stieg Larsson was a true feminist. He delivered the manuscripts for all three novels at once (freaky deaky, Tom Wolfe would say to that) and died shortly thereafter. All three books have been made into movies in Sweden and, now that the trilogy is a worldwide sensation, are about to be remade, Hollywood style. ('Cause you know the Americans have such trouble with sub-titles.)

Since I've been back I've tried to get to work only to have belated birthday celebrations getting 'in the way' day after day. But I think we're done now!

So, back to work tutoring and creating a new program for the writing school, and finishing an Amazon review of editor Sacchi Green's latest antho, the very purty, very dirty Lesbian Lust.



Oh, and any day now Michael Crawley and Laurie Clayton's exciting crime novel, The Women's Club will be flying off the printing press and into the hands of happy readers everywhere! If you can't wait (and I don't blame you) you can pre-order now!

UK

Canada

USA .



Yahoo!

Must fly!

xoxo Mad

Bush Whacking Madeline Moore

I know what you're thinking. But this is not a blog about me becoming a Domme, this is a blog about me heading off into the woods for a gathering of the clan.

Here's where I'm going, although this is a picture of the cottage under siege, whereas hopefully we won't have the lake quite so literally mere steps from our door.


Here's the nearby rapids:


The lake:


Myrtle the Turtle:


It's in Lake of the Woods. Every night the call of the loon rises and falls with the gentle waves of the lake. And on my birthday we get the Perseids, shooting stars by the bucketful, often accompanied by Northern Lights. Picture the Aurora Borealis, and not just in one colour, but three or four, green and pink and yellow rolling across the midnight sky as stars (well, meteors) streak across the sky so quickly you cannot count them as they fall!

So what's the problem, Mad?

Picture the above little cottage stacked with the family Moore. I have four brothers and sisters. Here's my big brother:


Yep, the rest are more or less just as wacky.

The thing is, while we're all funny and smart we're also hypersensitive and prone to lashing out when our feelings are hurt. And we know each other's secrets. All of them.

O. M. G.

Do I sound reticent? I love my family, really I do. As my Grandma once said, "I love every one of you little buggars, so how about that?"

How about it, indeed.

It's just, I'm not really a nature gal, anymore. I like all my comforts. I like to stay home a lot. Read. Write. Sleep. Send emails and birthday cards and occasional gifts to the gang. I'm sort of - solitary.

So why go? Simple. He wants me there.


kiss kiss. See you on the other side!



The lake at sunset.

(All pictures from the private collection of Madeline Moore.)

It's Too Darn Hot!

Oh baby it's too darn hot.

Yes, I know, I'm Canadian, I should adore these hot humid summer days but - but - it's too darn hot.


Too hot to blog.

Too hot to credit the sites these pics come from.

Too hot to write.

Too hot to eat.

Too hot to sleep.




Too hot to be sexy, unless you're this hot tamale weather girl.

Too hot to go dancing.

Too hot to whistle.

Too hot to sing.

Too hot to be funny -






Well, almost too hot to be funny.

It's just too darn hot.