Obsession

This has been a crummy week. Wednesday was my appointment with the new rheumatologist. I had a lot of hopes for this doctor, and I have a great deal of respect for him, but I'm frustrated with what he had to say. He doesn't think that I have rheumatoid arthritis; he thinks that I have fibromyalgia. I'm familiar with fibromyalgia, and it's been a diagnosis mentioned before, but Dr. Davis really killed any hope of my having a normal life. He said that most RA patients on the dosage of prednisone I'm on would be painfree. I'm still struggling with pain on a daily basis. He also said that there really is no effective treatment for fibromyalgia, and that the pain is something I would just have to live with for the rest of my life. I felt like he'd given me a death sentence. Granted death is in forty or more years, but living every day of my life with this amount of pain and knowing that it was never going to get any better sounds like life lived on the rack. He's tapering me off of the prednisone, but he warned me that my adrenal system has been damaged from the long term usage, and the last few weeks will be really tough before my body decides to produce its own again. That's swell. The last few weeks I'm on it will be the weeks when Molly's boyfriend Ian is up visiting and when we have booked our campsite up in Michigan. I went out to the van and cried for a little while. Then the Trever in me reminded me to stop sniveling, buck up, and do what needs to be done. (I think that's inscribed on the Trever crest) So my pity party was short lived, now I'm just angry. I didn't sleep at all that night, so I spent all day yesterday curled up in bed reading and trying to recover (and ignore the accusing looks from my children for asking for their help). I read three books in one day! I guess there is a small blessing in that, except today was spent putting the house back to rights.

Have you ever seen the Bill Cosby routine about Brain Damage and children? How true! Scientists are even backing it up with research. How can kids be so dumb as to think that they can get away with stuff without getting caught? Mine keep making the same mistakes over and over again, and they don't bother to try and cover their tracks so I catch them. And why don't they bother to cover their tracks? Because they think that I'm the stupid one. Yep, me. The one who keeps catching them. I'm too stupid to catch on. I won't give details because while I may embarrass my children with compliments for their good deeds, I won't with listing their crimes. But could someone please explain to me how I can be the dumb one?

Obsession by Jonathan Kellerman is the latest of (perhaps too many) books in the Alex Delware series. In this entry, a young woman, Tanya, comes to Alex to ask a favor after the death of her mother. Tanya's mother whispered something about a murder that Tanya wants to get to the bottom of in settling her mother's accounts. Alex and long-time cop friend Milo Sturgis investigate a crime that may not have been, but of course (otherwise there's not much of a book) quickly ends up in slums and mansions and with death at their heels. Kellerman, as always, manages to make LA seem like a small town where every reference and person met converge together in one large conspiracy. This is one of those books that's a bit like Chinese food, great going down, but ultimately not very satisfying. You'll end up craving one of Kellerman's earlier works or perhaps something by Anne Perry. It's kind of sad when the most appealing character in the book is Blanche, Alex and Robin's new dog. I enjoyed reading it, and it kept my interest, but the coincidences are red herrings were just a little too much. Skip this one and go back to the beginning with When the Bough Breaks when Kellerman changed the face of psychological thrillers.

I'm sitting outside listening to the birds sing while Mia plays with bubbles. It looks to be another beautiful weekend. The siding is coming off of the house, and the yard is almost done. New siding and a roof will be going up a week from Monday. The pic today is of my gorgeous nephew Bryce, aka Sparky. He's a little sweetheart (and too little to suffer from brain damage yet).