Bridget Zinn's Blog

Writers and aspiring writers, if you need a fresh look or even a first look at your work, consider the critique services offered on the auction. I know it’s difficult. So many fabulous writers, how to choose???

Don’t overlook less published writers. I don’t know all of their work, but the ones that I am familiar with are really fantastic writers and critiquers. When you’re looking at query critiques especially, less published writers are often going to be closer to their query-writing days than writers who’ve had agents for years doing most of the heavy-lifting.

Like the lovely Emily Kokie. We were in a writers group together in Madison and she is a great no-nonsense critiquer. She also did what is almost impossible–she landed an agent within the first year of having finished writing her first novel. Not only did she land an agent, she landed superstar agent Chris Richman of Upstart Crow Literary, and subsequently scooped up a book contract with Candlewick.

She’s a stellar writer who knows how to query.

And I know she isn’t the only one in the auction. If you look through the list, I’m sure you will find the perfect fit!

I hope you had a great holiday!

Love to you all,

Bridget

Barrett is downstairs making the last of the feast we have planned. Indian food, mashed potatoes and pie are on the menu for Piesgiving this year. Last year we tried eating everything in pie form, but since Barrett and Matt took Indian cooking classes we decided to mix it up. As much as I love pie, an all pie meal was, well, a LOT of pie.

This week Barrett has been making little bits of our half of the meal every day–one night he made chutneys from scratch, even hacking open a coconut and scraping it out for his coconut chutney. Another night I entertained him while he made paneer which I could never do as it requires someone to stand at the stove and stir it for like an hour or something crazy. It seemed like forever. SO good though! This morning he’s working on some curries.

Our house smells delicious.

The auction is humming along–a huge, ginormous thank you to all of the planners, donars, and bidders!

I hope everyone is having an awesome holiday.

Love to you all,

Bridget

There are SO many completely awesome things in the auction. You must check it out!

I’m once again overwhelmed by how generous and wonderful people are. It makes me want to be a good person someday.

It sounds like there are a few links out there with issues so I’m putting the shortcut link here: http://bit.ly/bridgetauction

If you do reach a page that says you need a secret code, password or whosimawhatsit, here it is:

ID: bridgetkicks

Password: cancer

Good luck and happy bidding!

Love,

Bridget

He was not.

Kidding me in the least, that is.

When I was last at CTCA my surgeon told me with a perfectly straight face (after having just spent the last half-hour applying tourniquet-like pressure to my wound after having removed the rod shoved up my hepatic artery half-way through Start-Pre-Treatment-At-4:30am-Then-Insert-Painful-Device-And-Chemotherapies-And-Make-Bridget-Lie-Flat-On-Her-Back-For-Fourteen-Hours Torture Day) that I would not be allowed to laugh for at least the next seven hours.

I can take a lot (obviously), but NOT LAUGHING?

And he knew, in his evil little surgeon brain, how hard this was going to be because, as I mentioned above, HE HAD JUST SPENT THE LAST HALF HOUR WITH ME. He knew just how hard not laughing for the next seven hours would be. Someone who giggles through thirty minutes of tourniquet-like pressure on a wound (ouch!) just isn’t going to make it.

Then he explained why I wasn’t supposed to laugh.

He began to seem less evil and more like maybe he was Doing the Right Thing with his inconceivable suggestion.

Surgeon Reasoning:

1) laughing tightens your tummy muscles.

2) tightening your tummy muscles while trying to heal your hepatic artery is bad.

3) bad because it an cause bruising (surgeons have no appreciation for living art).

4) worse because, and this is exactly how he put it, the pressure from the tightening tummy muscles can push blood through the artery and make the seal he’d just made with the tourniquet-like pressure POP OPEN like the cork of a champagne bottle.

5) no one wants arteries to pop open.

I still couldn’t do it.

We had to resort to some laugh-free sleepy drugs. Plus, I banned myself from watching All Kittens All the Time tv, and instead watched a movie I saw with Laini earlier this year and, from what I remembered, had no laughs whatsoever.

And I made it. Huzzah! No hepatic artery explosions, no ginormous bruise, and all was well.

Until next time (which due to unavoidable scheduling conflicts is on Barrett’s Birthday. Poor guy).

Love to you all,

Bridget

P.S. I am posting this before my web designer has a chance to see it to save you all from the rather interesting blood exploding graphic he wanted to insert. You can thank me later.

There are only two more days to donate to the Bridget Kicks Cancer Auction!

You can find details about the auction in one of my earlier posts, by clicking a link in the sidebar of my blog, or by going to my friend Amy Baskin’s blog. Thanks to all of the super cool, fabulous people who posted auction info on their blogs, facebook or twitter. And for just posting nice things about me like the fabulous Inara Scott did on Romance Bandits.

Plus, thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has already donated! I’m a little bit superstitious about peeking at the auction, but I did take just a teeny, tiny peek and discovered that the auction is a marvelous place in cyberspace to be.

Love to you all,

Bridget

I know I’m lucky that my “neutral” is happy. It makes everything in life a whole lot easier and I realize that a lot of people have to work to get there. I don’t know if I was born that way or if it was a product of reading too many Zen Buddhism books at a young age—I remember being so blown away by the Eternal Now, but then thinking, hey, if it’s always now, I don’t have to wait until later to be happy.
Because there is no later. It’s always Now, so, unless circumstances overwhelm me otherwise, I’m just going to always choose to be happy Now.
It made sense to my little twelve year old brain and possibly programmed in happiness which I’m taking advantage of now.
It doesn’t hurt that I am insanely lucky in every area of my life outside of the whole Has a Terrible Case of Cancer thing (the birthday week has not ended—April and Emily brought me lunch yesterday, Cristina sent me cupcakes and Aunt Mary and Brigid sent me my favorite cookies of all time from Pacific Cookie Company).
My lack of the controversial kakapo parrot didn’t even put much of a dent in the Happy. I probably am better off just dreaming about my kakapo and his butler.
Since I tend to be in Happy Bridget Land most of the time, that is mostly what I blog about.
But, I think it’s only fair to tell you, there are always some circumstances to overwhelm the Happy (besides the occasional good old-fashioned ennui which everyone needs to indulge in now and then to get their brooding, French cursing, and coffee drinking out of their system) and sometimes I am downright moody.
I don’t want other cancer patients thinking, damn, what are they putting in her corn flakes, doesn’t she realize having cancer sucks?
Yep, I’m aware of that.
And regular healthy people are probably thinking, isn’t Bridget just ridiculously cheerful, doesn’t she realize that life sometimes sucks?
Yes, that happens too.
Which brings me to…
BRIDGET’S ADVENTURES ON THE DARK SIDE
STORY 1, IN WHICH THERE ARE LASER BEAMS
Just yesterday, after having a lovely lunch with Emily and April, I discovered that my doctor had been frantically calling me and telling me to go to the emergency room (too many white blood cells this time, last time to few, I can never win). Since I couldn’t honestly say I didn’t feel like crap (but, hello, just got off a whole week of chemo), we rushed out the door to the ER.
Huge mistake. The ER was crammed with people, some of them violent and crazy. I was behind on all of my side effect meds, hungry, thirsty, and miserable. But I’m used to waiting and used to feeling miserable.
The dim, dirty-bland waiting room didn’t have any windows to let in even a teeny-tiny-little bit of the gorgeous fall Friday afternoon going on outside.
At home, my newly delivered birthday/Christmas present firewood was waiting to get cracked into.
I was fine.
Fine, fine, fine.
An hour and a half later, we were still sitting in the sad, sagging waiting room.
I was no longer fine. The miserable-ness, I could handle. The being-somewhere-dingy-and-ugly, I could sort of handle. The nonsensical intake questions that they should have answers to given how I was just an inpatient last month, I breathed my way through.
But I could not handle one and a half hours of the REALITY COP SHOW blaring in the waiting room.
Angry laser beams of the Evil Eye were shooting out of my eyes and I was ready to stomp around shouting at everyone.
At this point, Barrett quietly went and shut the television off.
Whew.
I apologized to the front desk guy for being so grumpy and he gave me a funny look and was all, “That was grumpy?”
Apparently, HE didn’t feel the Evil Eye laser beams.
Must work on that.
Then, six hours later, when they decided that I could treat this infection with at-home antibiotics and I was free to go, I would have hugged everyone working in the ER, even the front desk guy.
If they hadn’t been all hospitaly and germy.
Which brings me to..

STORY 2, IN WHICH I ALMOST POP SOMEONE
So I’m on the plane to Phoenix and the seemingly nice people next to me ask why I’m wearing a surgical mask. I explain that I’m a chemotherapy patient and susceptible to catching illnesses. I know that I might be overzealous about germs, but getting sick is no joke when your body is all wrecked from chemo.
Fake nice response from fake nice people (but I didn’t know that yet).
THEN, some jerk waiting in the aisle of the plane to take his seat is all, “What’s up with her?” gesturing to me.
The fake nice people started gossiping about me with him. “Oh, well, she’s worried about getting sick. Blah, blah, blah.”
At which point Jerk in the Aisle starts a rant about how stupid it is to wear a surgeon’s mask and how you might as well wear a full body condom.
TItters from seemingly nice people.
Then goes on about what a freak I am, etc. And if you’re going to catch something, you’re going to catch it, there’s nothing you can do about it.
More titters from the fakes.
If I had not been sitting at an inside seat I would have popped him one.
This was way beyond Evil Eye laser beams.
Last time he “caught something” did he end up in the hospital for a week in contact isolation getting iv antibiotics and blood transfusions?
Unlikely.
Who just goes on talking about someone as though they aren’t there, insulting them, and making judgmental comments?
Really, who?

End of Today’s BRIDGET’S ADVENTURES ON THE DARK SIDE
Stay tuned next time for No Laughing, Are you KIDDING me?

Love to you all,
Bridget
p.s. Thank you, Sarah Bradley, for sending us a link to Cake Wrecks! It made much of our time in the ER much more bearable.

It was pointed out, quite rightly, that a parrot, even a sweetie-pie kakapo parrot would be a lot of work and need to be cleaned up after and taught not to be naughty etc. I concede this point and spent some time thinking up an answer to this dilemma, maybe the answer was obvious to everyone else, but I just this morning realized what I need: a kakapo butler. If my kakapo came with a butler, things would work out just fine.

Or I’ve taken too many pain killers and have no idea what I’m talking about.

One of the two.

It is SO good to be home, although Arizona was hitting an apex of beauty when we left. It’s a more reasonable temperature out now and there were flowers blooming.

Portland is just stunning though. I love this time of fall when the leaves are floating down and everything smells like earth and woodsmoke. The rainy days make huddling at home seem like a cozy, nice thing to do (which I’m forced to do anyway what with the whole “recovering from chemo” nonsense). And when the sun comes out it’s so golden and lovely.

If I can make it to getting dressed and getting in the car (I wouldn’t place any bets), Barrett promised to take me lotion shopping. As lovely as Arizona was, it takes its toll on the skin, plus dry skin is a chemo side effect so I’m getting it from all sides. Intervention is seriously needed.

Will give you an important lotion update as soon as possible.

Hope you’re enjoying fall!

Love to you all,
Bridget

We’re back home. Huzzah! And there were presents waiting here for us. So awesome. There was even a package from Cailin with some cute items from The Great Clothes Swap, including some soft, shiny pants that will be perfect for traveling.

I don’t know when I turned into a practical Likes Underwear and Socks for My Birthday kind of girl, but, I have to admit, I like practical presents.

Give me a cord of firewood and I’m happy.

But there is something about getting a gift for your birthday that is just totally decadent and unnecessary. Like makeup or a sparkly handbag or a tiny hat that doesn’t even cover your ears.

Usually, when I have a hankering for something like this, I send out psychic messages and usually someone picks up on it. Barrett is especially good at this.

Last year was the Russian Czarina coat with the fur trim (which is not exactly Portland-drizzle-friendly) that Barrett got me.

Sadly, this year, no one got my pyschic message.

I know that it would be a lot of work to fly to New Zealand, buy ninja gear, decontaminate yourself, sneak onto a tiny island preserve, steal a rare endangered parrot, and smuggle it to Portland, but I would be such a good kakapo mom!

I tried hinting around, mentioning how awesome kakapo parrots are—they’re sweet and friendly, have super soft fur and whiskers, do mating dances for the ladies, make all sorts of interesting booming noises and things, PLUS THEY SMELL LIKE HONEY!!!

I even left this book lying around.

Since kakapos aren’t into flying, we could go for walks together and I’m sure the cats would keep him warm and incredibly clean.

It would be the happiest kakapo parrot in existence.

I swear.

Maybe for Christmas?

Love to you all,

Bridget