Twisting Thoughts for Tuesday

I promised I would blog because apparently, there is one person out there who *gasp* likes to read. Nice that she's related and all.

This morning I have a monster headache. Hoping like hell that I am NOT coming down with the flu or something. I dunno, though. Haven't had a headache like this before unless it was the warning bells of an illness. One that makes my eyeballs sensitive to light and I am constantly squinting, making it worse.

So far this morning, I have furnished the boss with an employee history for some deposition or something. I have been liaison between Forest Service and cow boss. Yep, that's about it. All in an hour's work. Oh, made a few phone calls re: fuel inventory. Yuck. I can't imagine trying to figure out fuel inventory with this headache. Usually, fuel inventory gives me a raging tension headache, I can only fear what that might feel on top of this.

Nice fall day today. Soft light, little breeze, hazy skies. The FS is control burning so the smell of woodsmoke pervades the air, furthering the fall "feel" of things. Goodness, Halloween is a week from yesterday and then we're onto November. AACK. The older I get, the quicker time flies. And yes, I remember to slow down and cherish a few moments here and there, but in the day-to-day sameness of everything, time slips away.

I am reading this book called "Losing Julia". I can't remember who the author is. I wish I could so that I may do him/her some justice. I picked it out, thinking it was a romance novel. Yes, I am of the trashy romance nature. Anyway, it turns out that while it does have a romantical spin to it, it's the memoirs of an old man, at the end of his life in an old folk's home. Purely fiction, I believe, but still. It takes me to a place in the future where I question what it was in my life that might be questioned and pondered while I sit in a musty room, surrounded by No Names (what the author calls old folks who come in with nothing in their eyes. They just sit and breathe in and breathe out. They don't talk, nor react. They just sit, staring at nothing, with life already gone from their eyes). I don't want to be a No Name. Note to any family reading this: Should I suffer a huge heart attack or stroke and to be a No Name will be my fate if saved, please pull the plug. I plead with you. I don't want people I love and care about to remember me as a shell, with my soul having already left. So, anyway, this book "Losing Julia" for some reason stays on my mind through out the day. It's a really interesting perspective for me, at age 28, to be reading this old man's perspective. The book takes him back and forth. Back to WWII, warring with the Germans in France. Forward to a War Memorial Ceremony in France where he meets his troop leader's girlfriend, who is there to honor the dead Daniel. And forth even more, to the old folk's home where Patrick (the teller of the story) is in love with one of the nurses and sends her love letters, anonymously, and loses his roommates in a perpetual losing battle with time. I don't know why, but this book just sucks me in. I will usually devour books that pull at me this much, but with this one, I put it off until bed time where I can savor it and really HEAR it in the peace and quiet.

Well, my headache is moving to my eyes. On a sidenote, yesterday I got to see what it is on the computer screen that makes epileptics have seizures. God, no wonder. When I look at the screen, I just see the page displayed. But there are diagonal lines that are constantly running down the screen. Did you know that? We just can't see it, but for some reason, it sets off seizures in epileptics. Hmmm. Learn something new everyday, or try to at any rate.