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Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri

Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary

Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net

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Recent Posts

• Try
• Becoming Brenda Starr
• Off Beat
• Scattered
• That’s It
• So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
• The Spoon
• Sciatica
• Sweetheart
• A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
• However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
• After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
• As with everything in life, balance is key.
• Slow down, you move too fast…
• Yeah, I know. I have issues.

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E me at katy @ ngenius.com

Small Mercy (#425)

Saturday morning's headache started like they all do--I hopped out of bed.

All the literature about the dumb condition I have, Pseudotumor Cerebri, warns against sudden movements, but every morning, without fail, I forget.

By two in the afternoon, I was back in my jammies and had crawled under the covers. I'd taken four migraine pills to no avail, and a couple of Tums for my upsetedness. By five, I whispered (no noise above a whisper could be tolerated) to Doug that he'd have to take me to the ER.

You know those advertisements showing a neo-natal nurse, surrounded by screaming babies, holding her temple, wondering how she will survive her shift? And how her doctor prescribes Imitrix, and now she can go on?

This one made me pray for that kind of headache.

"I'll help you get dressed," Doug said, knowing my propensity for modesty.

"Just get me to the car," I moaned. He did.

I've always wondered what degree of migraine it would take to have to get pumped full of Demerol. Now I know. They kept me for four hours, drugging me into a much-needed delerium, although Doug says I was pretty much delerious before we left the house.

He got me back home by nightfall. and eased me into my bed. No sudden movements.

As I lowered my head onto the pillow, I saw it. There, beside my large, half-full and therefore extremely loud-to-operate plastic bottle of antacids, sat one purple Tum on the table.

Hours earlier, when I was horribly ill, he had done that for me, sheltered me from the sound.

"You love me," I said, fingering the Tum. He smiled.

It was the smallest thing he could have done. It was the one I won't forget.

---

Pulled (#426)

There's a major article in the New York Times today about how Scotland's culinary prowess is finally extending beyond haggis and chips. It's about time, I thought. My father is from Scotland, and we were raised to think rutabaga and turnips were the food of the gods.

Strange that reading the Dining Out section made a tear roll down my face.

Next, I came to the story about the life and writing of Leon Uris, who's died at the age of seventy-eight. Just last night, Doug started reading Trinity for the second time. It's a great historical novel about the struggles in Northern Ireland. It helps me understand the life and times of my grandfather, who was raised in the border county of Monaghan, caught unwittingly in the struggle for freedom.

I was weeping now, and didn't care who saw me.

I read the main section last. It contained a disturbing picture of a casket borne through the streets of Belfast on the shoulders of six young men. The deceased was a troublemaker on one side or the other--I'm sure he thought it had been the right side, at least at the time. Behind the men with the casket was a mural painted onto the end of a Belfast building. I have seen the mural with my own eyes, on our first trip to Ireland. The painting portrayed the dead man's father, who was killed for the same cause as the son, exactly twenty years ago.

A second article about Northern Ireland mentioned some new revelations that are just now surfacing about the bombing in Omagh, in 1998. My beautiful Irish friend, Sheryl Heaney, walked by that car-about-to-explode just ten minutes before it killed scores of people.

I thought of Sheryl and her sister Tara dying in a car accident this time last year, and the tears wouldn't stop.

What can I say? These are my people.

---

Bee-Jeebers (#427)

I love, love, love listening to the road reports on the radio during rush hour. In Kansas City and the surrounding area, trucks routinely roll, spilling their frequently-agricultural contents all over our fair highways.

Recently, it was a truck full of chickens that, literally, crossed the road, disrupting traffic for hours. I'm thinking not too many drivers joked about it.

Not long ago, vats of fresh, creamery butter made for a slippery commute. Passengers kept hopping out of cars to run into Denny's for a few croissants and a knife.

This morning takes the prize, though. A truck full of 25 million bees burst open on contact with concrete, causing one whole strip of road to fade to black. All but one brave news reporter finally left the buzz behind, claiming they'd forgotten to take their Benedryl.

Just thinking about it gives me hives.

---

Paper Trained (#428)

The Arts section of the New York Times is a particular joy of mine, one which I indulge in for the cost of an Americano, if a reader leaves the paper behind at Starbucks.

The way a person holds a newspaper is fascinating, don't you think?

One reader opens the whole thing up like an unwieldly double-wide trailer, and doesn't have to move again for many minutes. His best friend--long-lost these past thirty years--might walk in, order a latte, and walk out again, without this newspaper-holder ever sensing his presence.

Another reader folds the paper back upon itself vertically, and then perhaps once more horizontally, until only that which is above or below the fold is viewable, leaving her free to take in her surroundings, and even carry on conversations, while she partakes of the written word.

The type of paper-holder who has always baffled me, though, is the one who holds the section intact in all its vertical glory, and precisely peels back only the outside edges of the selected page, so that the entire vast interior remains a mystery.

It has always seemed stingy to me, like the reader is guarding against someone who might be trying to peek over his shoulder, who might be trying to get to the good stuff first.

Today, with the Arts section, I caught myself holding the paper this way, and I had to laugh.

It didn't feel stingy or selfish at all, like I'd supposed it to be. Instead, it felt like unwrapping a Christmas present slowly and methodically, from someone who always gives me gifts I love.

Edges first, carefully, don't let the Scotch tape rip the wrapping, take your time.

There's something worth waiting for at every step along the way.

---

Perks (#429)

When you guys click on to my blog, do you get the pop-up ad for the Jewish dating service?

How's that working for you?

---

Ouch! (#430)

What's really, really frightening is when an editor misses a simple typo in a blog she writes about, well, editing.

Editors are people, too.

---

Delete (#431)

I'm editing a third novel is as many months, and I've adopted a new motto for not only editing, but my own writing, as well.

The author Elmore Leonard said it first.

"I try to leave out the parts that people skip."

---

Bluebirds (#432)

Of all my years in school, fourth grade was the most tragic.

It all started, like many tragedies do, with a standardized test. What Mrs. Shook was thinking when she decided, on the basis of one crummy reading comprehension test, to put me in the dumb reading group, I still cannot imagine.

Even then, I conducted informal surveys to boost my own morale, and I've never met a kid who scored high on reading comprehension. When the test administrator gives the instructions and says, "You must read the entire story before answering the questions," are the good readers the only ones who obey? Are our obvious language abilities undermined by not finishing on time?

Is it a not-so-subtle plot to equalize the masses and dumb down the populace?

Mrs. Shook called me to her massive oak desk one fateful morning in October to deliver the news. She was eight months pregnant, and beautiful, and kind, and she loved me more than the other kids in the class, maybe even more than the baby in her womb. I would have done anything for her--except this.

"I'm afraid you're going to be reading with the Bluebirds now," she said. The whole class must have heard her: Biff Carlew and David Schwartz and Mary Louise Hill and Patty Turgeon. Kathy Ramm and Shannon Casey didn't hear, at least. The lids of their desks were all the way open, hiding their upper bodies as they giggled and passed notes.

I was mortified.

"Maybe," Mrs. Shook continued, "if you work really hard, you'll be able to join the Redbirds again someday."

Thus began the lengthy season of my intellectual humiliation. Every day that fall, I was self-conscious when the Bluebirds circled up to stumble over simple words and miss meanings altogether. I still loved Mrs. Shook with everything in me, but it broke my heart to think she didn't recognize that Katy McKenna was a natural born reader.

I forgave her one day in late November, when the Bluebirds were told to go back to their desks, and a black-and-white TV on a rolling cart was wheeled into the room.

I didn't think it was time for the lady who taught us Spanish on educational television, and the Kansas City A's weren't playing the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series anymore, I was pretty sure. When I saw Mrs. Shook's huge brown eyes fill with tears, I knew I was right.

The TV was turned on in time to hear it when they first announced our president was dead--not just hurt very badly, but finally and completely dead. Mrs. Shook's enormous belly convulsed with her uncontrollable sobs, and I hoped the baby would be OK, and I loved her more than ever.

"I don't understand," she kept saying, over and over, in a kind of stupor. "But I don't understand..."

We got sent home early that day. I walked the three blocks alone, leaving a grieving teacher behind, knowing a weeping mother was waiting.

On the path from one woman to the next, I grew up enough to realize that everyone stuggles to comprehend life, to understand tragedy.

Standardized tests or not, graded or ungraded, we stumble, we fumble to find the words, to read and write our stories.

When I opened my book to read aloud with those sad little Bluebirds a few days later, the circle of desks felt more like a nest than I remembered.

---

Motivation (#433)

Ten days ago, at the age of forty-nine-and-one-half-years old, I got carded.

(Okay, I may be deaf, but I can hear you laughing from here!)

I can count the times I've purchased alcohol on one hand, but the low-carb kahlua cheesecake my brother-in-law wanted for his birthday left me with no choice but to purchase a big honking bottle of vodka. When duty calls, I answer.

"Are you old enough to buy this?" the check-out lady at Wal-Mart asked. It was the first item I put on the counter, so I thought she might be speaking to the young woman in line in front of me.

"She's probably too young," I laughed, "but I think I'm okay." I kept right on putting items on the counter, not aware the woman was still staring at me until she spoke again.

"I'm going to have to see some ID," she said, unsmiling.

She made me feel so young that since then I've cut way back on my excessive caffeine consumption, started drinking more water, stopped eating my beloved Triscuits (which are filled with trans-fatty acids), lost 3 pounds, joined Curves for Women, and bought an ankle bracelet.

An apt word, spoken in season, brings life to the one who hears it.

---

Old Folks (#434)

Doug and I were almost to the end of the cereal aisle when a mother rounded the corner with her full cart, her young daughter following her.

The mother faced forward and we could see the look of determined grocery shopping in her eyes. She was a get-in-and-get-out kind of woman.

The six-year-old girl, though, hung back, straggled, looking over her shoulder anxiously, watching and waiting.

"Grandma!" the little girl finally said, in a concerned tone. "Come on! Here we are, Grandma!"

How sweet of the child, I thought, to care for the aging woman. The elderly woman's own daughter obviously didn't give a rip. She'd barrelled ahead through the maze of Lucky Charms and Golden Grahams and Count Chocula without so much as a backward glance.

Grandma slowly made the turn then, not in a wheelchair like I expected, and not on crutches, either. She didn't carry a portable oxygen supply, and her arm wasn't in a sling. She didn't even wear wrist braces from playing too many computer games.

The old gal was all of 45 and, if looks tell the story, in the best shape of her life. She was smiling and vibrant in her exercise outfit, and had probably just lagged behind to check out the new Shape magazine.

Did the child really think her with-it Grandma had never navigated a Wal-Mart? Or had the young one become cautious by experiencing too much of life's fragility at too young an age?

"You were just like her when you were a little girl," Doug whispered, and it hit me how much I shared the child's feelings.

"I was," I said. And I would have added And I guess I still am, but I didn't need to. He understood.

---

Woof (#435)

"You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, 'You're right! I never would have thought of that!'" Dave Barry

I need a different dog.

---

Plastered (#436)

The Asian woman, not long in this country, sat me down in her chair and asked what I wanted.

I'm never too sure about these things. My vision for my hair changes weekly, sometimes hourly, and often I ask for the impossible--to look like Katie Couric or, if my hair's too short, Halle Barry.

I spared her my sense of humor, gave her loose guidelines, told her I trusted her, and removed my glasses. I warned her that, glassesless, I could neither see nor hear, so it would be useless for her to attempt further communication until the deed was done.

She cut in total silence, fitting in sublimely with my deafness and blindness. Eventually, she held a blow dryer in front of my face and when I nodded, she turned it on high. My deafness was immediately magnified.

She took this opportunity to ask questions, many questions, evidently important questions, presumably style-related but who could say for sure? I smiled a lot and nodded some more, attempting with 20/400 vision to read the lips of a woman who spoke poor English.

One word came through--"mousse." Yes, I said, that would be fine! Finally, I felt we had connected, bonded even.

She knew just what I wanted.

I closed my eyes and imagined her flipping the back up cutely and adding an inch to my short stature with her wizardry. I almost fell asleep as she hypnotically worked the mousse through my hair.

"Doug will want to take me out tonight," I thought, and the idea made me grin.

She took a brush to my head then, plastering my hair to my scalp in an unbelievably disturbing show of passive aggression. Pleased with herself and her artistry, she handed me my glasses and a mirror.

"You like?" she asked.

Next time, I'll bring a picture.

---

Swingers (#437)

"Our sister's a piece of work," says my brother, John. "She was walking ahead of Cyndi and me, and you should have seen her swinging her rear end."

John and Cyndi make a great couple, but John hasn't learned when to keep his mouth shut. I knew what was coming next.

"I mention it to Cyndi, and she says, 'John, you do it, too, when you think someone is watching, when you think you have an audience...'"

I hate to say it, John, but I've noticed.

"You know what else Cyndi says? You know when I swing my rear end the worst? On my way up to receive Holy Communion..."

Playing to an audience, apparently, of more than One.

---

Therapy (#438)

We'd heard rumors that Dr. Phil was staying in this very hotel over the weekend, but we were still shocked to walk into the lobby and find him seated there.

He was sitting on a jewel-toned brocade couch, smack-dab in the middle, with fans/patients/admirers flanking him on either side. The other chairs in the arrangement were also occupied with women--all women--hanging on his every word.

Dr. Phil was being more effervescent than I'd ever seen him on TV--he was clearly enjoying the attention.

I couldn't help but notice that his diminutive wife, Robin, was not in the crowd.

"There he is!" I said to Doug. Even my husband--no great believer in the benefits of psychological therapy--was impressed.

And then it happened. Dr. Phil saw me standing there, left the crowd, and walked my way.

"I recognize you from my studio audience," he said. "You looked like such a fascinating woman--a woman with a story. I really wanted to get a chance to talk to you...alone."

Doug nodded his assent, and Dr. Phil led me to a quiet corner of the expansive lobby, where it was easier to hear the background music.

"Shall we dance?" he asked.

We danced a Texas slow dance and spoke like old, well-acquainted friends. We talked about our children, our work, my iffy self-esteem--but not of his wife or of my husband. Doug watched from a distance until he couldn't bear it anymore.

I jumped when he placed his hand firmly on my shoulder, snapping back to reality so quickly that I felt guilty before even being accused.

"I'm sorry," I said, "that I was dancing with Dr. Phil. But it wasn't like when I had dinner a couple weeks ago with Simon Cowell--this time, you said it was OK..."

As betrayed as he must have felt, Doug still managed to deliver the classic Dr. Phil comeback.

"So," he said, sounding a little bit jealous, "how's that working for him?"

And then we kissed, rolled over, and laughed ourselves back to sleep.

---

Losing It (#439)

"Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think..."

It's Sunday at Great Plains Community Church, Pastor Tom is reading one of his favorite Scriptures, and I'm ticking off the syllables.

"I would have cut ten words," I whisper to Doug.

"What are you saying?" he asks.

I'm nearly finished editing a 500-page novel, the second one this spring. I now red-line myself when I speak too floridly, and edit the dialog in my dreams.

"I would have changed it to, 'Now to Him who can do anything."

Don't worry. I'll stick to novels.

---

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