tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

I have never been a Michael Crichton fan. I think I read one of his books in high school and wasn’t impressed, and never went back for more. I have heard that he can be hit or miss, so I just never bothered gambling on that, I guess.

Aaron, however, loved this book and has read it a few times, he says (and it came out in 2006 so that says something!). Now, Aaron loves anything having to do with time travel, whereas I am not quite as enthralled. It’s just so stressful – will they get back? Will they change the past? Will they see themselves in the past and therefore destroy life as we know it?!?

I do love all things medieval (as does Aaron), so I decided to give this book a try. And I’m glad I did! I loved it!

It’s about these students (and a professor) who go back in time to 14th century France, and get embroiled in a battle. It had a lot of gibberish about quantum mechanics (and this makes no less than 4 books I have read in the past 3 months having to do with quantum mechanics, and I don’t know how that keeps happening) which I actually enjoyed, since I like learning, but then you don’t know how accurate Crichton is being, and I’m too lazy to research quantum physics on my own, so I just assume it’s true and think it’s neat. And apparently all the authors used the same researchers, since they all pretty much agreed with each other, so who knows? Maybe I just learned a little something about quantum physics!! Or should I say I know something and I don’t know something at the same time! Err wait, does that only hold true if I’m inside a box? And a cat?

Well, it’s confusing stuff.

Moving on, I loved all the medieval stuff – that is the one period in time I have always wanted to live in. Although after reading the book, I’m not actually sure I would want to do that anymore….

Anyway, it’s a fantastic book and I’ll definitely be reading it again!

It has come to my attention that not everyone thinks the way I think. Some people tend toward the optimistic side of things, and others to the pessimistic. I think I veer way off the deep end of the pessimistic side of things.

I think part of it is due to my OCD tendencies as well, since I can’t seem to stop thinking about terrible things happening.

For example.

After Aaron’s surgery, I went in to the recovery room to see him, and I had my computer bag with me. I put the bag down, gingerly gave him a kiss and sat down to wait for the doctor.

Now, whenever I think back on this moment, this is how it happens in my head. I walk into the recovery room and see him sitting there, a little drugged out. Then instead of putting my bag down, I trip over the chair and land on his recently cut open arm, yanking the sling away from his body. You can hear the rip of the sutures and him screaming out in pain.

I have to literally shake my head (not unlike an etch-a-sketch) to make this visual go away. I have to tell myself, firmly “That’s not how it happened! You were fine, he is fine, it’s all good.”

And I’m like this with pretty much any memory. Or thinking about future events, like if I’m going to visit someone with a baby and I think about holding the baby. And then dropping the baby. Or I think about my commute to work and I imagine myself being pushed in front of the train. Or whatever.

This is another reason I can’t watch horror movies. Or other scary movies. It gives me too many visuals to choose from. After I watched Saw it took me a few months before I stopped seeing all the crime scenes in my head and thinking about what it would be like if I (or a loved one) were trapped in that situation.

So apparently I’m alone in this, yes?

The only way I have found to fight this so far is to try to replace the terrible thoughts with soothing ones. I try to create the scene in my head where I’m snuggling with Aaron, his arms wrapped around me (pre-sling, of course), my head is on his chest and his warmth is seeping into me. I focus on that vigorously, until the other thoughts go away.

It’s a constant, tiring struggle, though.

Aaron had bought Bronze by Kit Reed, and told me I might like it. I’m always looking for something to read on the metro, so I grabbed it.

I didn’t hate it – I even finished it, but there were a few things it was hard for me to get past. The biggest problem was the editing.

To me, there is NO excuse for a spelling or grammatical error in a book. The author should have caught it, and if not, one of the editors, and if not, oh, I don’t know, the spell checker in Word?

But the biggest transgression of this book is that the summary on the back of the book named a character who had not an insignificant role in the book. About halfway through reading the book, this character had not appeared. Then I realized that she indeed had appeared, but with a different name. I can understand changing a character’s name after you’ve written the book, but come on!! Double check that shit! Change it everywhere!

There were numerous instances of words missing from sentences, words repeated (like, I was to running to the house), so much so that I stopped counting them.

Another character in the book is named Edgar. Well the author starts a paragraph with this name, making it doubly worthy of capitalization, being a proper name and the beginning of a sentence. So how did the paragraph begin? “edger ran away…”

Not only was it NOT capitalized, it was spelled wrong!!

I don’t know how this book managed to get published in this shape.

As far as the story goes, it was a somewhat interesting premise about this famous family of sculptors and the secret about why their sculptures are so marvelous. I think it was meant to be a very scary, Stephen King-ish type of horror story. But I had guessed the ’secret’ almost immediately, so it wasn’t very scary at all.

The dialog was atrocious. It seemed that every character’s reaction to stress was “Oh my God! Oh dear! Oh no!” with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I just wanted to smack them all and say For Christ’s sake get a grip!!

So, I can’t really recommend the book unless you’re absolutely dying of boredom. Like I said, I did manage to finish it so it had some redeemable qualities.

But I won’t read any more of her books because I cannot stand the sloppy editing!

A few moments from Aaron’s adventures in surgery bear remembering.

When I first went back with him, pre-op, after the nurse left, he told me that the nurse had already pegged him. She asked him how he hurt himself, and he said playing tennis with me. Then he told her that I used to play competitively. The nurse sized him up and said, ‘So you thought you would try to beat her, eh?’ Yeah, that’s about right.

All of the nurses loved the shirt I was wearing and kept bringing other nurses over to admire it. It was my ‘Mrs. Rancher* est 02-10-07′ shirt. It’s nice being congratulated on your wedding almost 6 months after the fact, and by strangers no less! They definitely put a smile on my face.

Later, as Aaron and I were joking around and he made some comment about the nurses ‘taking care’ of him, I can’t remember exactly what (I guess I blacked that part out), he looked at me suspiciously and said, ‘Is that why you wore your Mrs. Rancher* shirt? For the nurses to see?’

And I can see why he jumped to that conclusion, but really the only reason I wore it was because my other options for comfortable t-shirts said STFU, Swallows, I taught your boyfriend that thing you like, Possibly the best fcuk ever, and Fondle Froepaly Fcuk Goodbye.

To me, the choice was obvious!

*last name edited since this is the interweb, after all.

Boys recovering from surgery get special request cookies. Double chocolate mint cookies – mmmm!

When he’s on painkillers, he lets me do things to him he normally wouldn’t allow…

The doctor just came to tell me that Aaron is out of surgery! It all went well, they put in 3 anchors and sutures. He tore right below what would be a slap tear in the labrum…..or something like that. Can’t wait to see the pics! I can go see him in half an hour. Phew!!!