Can't give it up...

My first book was, I believe, my best because it concerned my alter ego, the girl I would like to have been. My school life from Kindergarten to high school was fraught with doubts about my worth. I wanted to be 'popular' but I didn't know how. I wanted boys to like me but I wasn't pretty enough. I wanted girls to like me but who would want to be my friend? Besides I didn't dress like a popular girl would and my hair was always at the mercy of my mother's 'artistic' whims.
Karin had always been popular. She had almond eyes, luscious lips, a small waist, a full chest, had long, silky brown hair and, to put a cherry on top, was well dressed. None of those attributes could have ever been used in describing me.
And if that wasn't enough, in high school I began to show signs of something strange. At first I couldn't put on makeup in the morning; as I applied my eyeliner my right hand would jerk across my face. Then once or twice a day my right knee would give out. My high school friends would laugh at me. Then my tongue got into the mix. I stopped contributing in class; I was afraid my words would become garbled. Then my whole body got into it. I flinched so many times other students decided I had bedbugs (wasn't that wonderful for my self-esteem?). Then at the beginning of my senior year I had a grand mal seizure in the mud during field hockey practice. Neither other students, nor my physical education teacher, nor me or my parents knew what I had. It took a brain wave test to tell the doctor what I had.
Oh gosh, I had epilepsy!
So as I wrote Home Where I Belong I determined that Karin wouldn't have any of those problems. She was a healthy 19-year-old whose only problem was trying to find the one man who would take her away on a white horse and make her life worth living.

Guilt

Guilt...

Guilt should be my middle name. Two to three times a week I blame myself for being too selfish (I haven't been so).  I feel guilt when I lose my temper at my blameless husband (sometimes he isn't so blameless). I feel guilty for treating a rude stranger politely (I feel sappy for responding thus). I blame myself for honking at a driver who nearly hit me.  I feel selfish for wanting to order lobster instead of chicken (chicken it always is). And I feel guilty when I feel I deserve and want too much.
Case in point: Our daughter just separated from her husband. She has four gorgeous children from 9-years-old down to twin girls who are 17 months. She is a single mother of four young children, is getting her masters in psychology and working full-time. Obviously, my husband and I would do anything for her to lessen her burden. I watch her two eldest children three days a week and both of us watch all four both days of the weekend, 10 hours a day. I have two days off a week where one or both days are spent running errands or going to appointments. But I feel guilty because my daughter needs our help, because she's a wonderful daughter, because she's a wonderful mother, because her children are my grandchildren, because my husband doesn't complain, because my husband says, "I was taught that we do for our family." And I don't? I understand, and I would do anything for them...but I secretly complain that I feel kind of trapped: I feel the necessity to help but I want to be free but... So I feel guilty.
Just had to vent. (Inhale/exhale) But I still feel my middle name is guilt.

Glad...

I am so glad to live in this country. The plight of Charlie Gard and his parents is proof of how England's Universal Health Care is a failure. I don't believe it will ever be voted down for it has become so entrenched in the English way of life that everyone, possibly with the exception of Charlie's parents, accept it. But it's pathetic and heartless! And private health care can only be afforded by the terribly wealthy. They wouldn't have to rely on some uncaring judges to make a decision that the less wealthy parents of an intubated child should be allowed to make - life or death.
So far in America our health care system, flawed as it might be, is not like Europe's where to live or die is decided by strangers. Was Charlie Gard not worth living? In this country parents of a deathly ill child can still search for another doctor to treat their child if they are not satisfied with their present health-giver - flying to Jamaica in search of a better doctor is the parents' choice. A judge is usually not involved, though the case of Terry Schiavo does come to mind (perhaps that is where America is going, also - God forbid!). So far, though, we are a free, caring society that is still astonished by such an un-Christian decision, especially when a child is involved and just might be saved.

Inspired by...

My book And Then There Is Love was inspired by a conversation between myself and my girlfriend, Beth. We had been sitting in our local coffee shop, exchanging stories about our oh-so-important 20's. Both of us had fairly colorful lives when it concerned men and I'm sorry to say that we went to 'third base' before getting to know them. That was especially true of me.
I went to college at the University of California at Berkeley during the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights and the all-important Women's Liberation movements. There was a laid-back, devil may care, attitude that permeated life on and around the campus. Fellow students, hippies and street people were constantly spouting 'make love not war' and 'rights and equality for all,' blah, blah, blah. I adopted it all. I had become, in the 1970's, free, a Berkeleyite!
Well, since then both Beth and I have become quite a bit more moralistic (She's been married 32 years and I've been married 38). I suppose for people like my friend and I, we had to make mistake after mistake to become the women we are today.