Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Archives for August 2005

Joyeux Anniversaire a Moi

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Yup, it’s that time of year again. Another anniversary of my 29th birthday. That much closer to the warranty expiring.

Last night Sophia woke us up around 3 in the morning because she had a terrific ear pain (since discovered to be an ear infection requiring amoxicillin and pain-numbing drops, plus Advil for the fever). I more or less never went back to sleep (except when I managed to doze between 6 and 7), and I did a lot of thinking. About what I’m doing right now with my life, about what I want to be doing.

I’m actually exceptionally happy with my life. I know, it’s bad karma to actually say that aloud—whenever I’m in the market and see a magazine with a couple on the cover beaming about how happy they are, my first thought generally is, “Divorce within the year.” But I am still happily married to what’s-his-face, our kids are amazing —

(As Darin says, it’s a biological imperative to think your kids are great: you need to think they’re the bees’ knees so you protect them and keep them safe. Even though I know that, I still think they’re the world’s greatest kids.)

— we have a great house (albeit, still in the middle of getting the wood floors installed, which has us living with that “not quite moved in” feeling) in a wonderful town, and there are no problems looming on the horizon. I am extremely blessed to have wonderful friends and family.

My main problem these days appears to be inability to finish the rewrite of my novel. And on the scale of 1 to 10 of problems to have, that would probably finish around, I don’t know, 9.5, where getting the plague is a 1 and winning the lottery and immediately finding a sound financial advisor probably comes in at 10. It’s still a problem I want to solve though, and I’m figuring out how to do it at my own speed.

Of course, at the moment I’m sitting at home with my sickie chickie and not doing any writing at all. And tonight I’m going out with Darin for Date Night to celebrate my birthday. So I’m not going to solve that particular problem today. But you know what? For right now, at any rate, that’s okay.

The rescue of the Russian sub

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On Friday I heard a fairly long news report about the Russian minisub that had gotten tangled in an undersea cable. The newscasters talked about how British and American technicians were rushing to the remote area with Scorpios (remote-controlled subs) in the hopes that the Scorpios could cut the cables and free the sub before the minisub’s air supply (which the radio report said was about 30 hours) ran out.

Good news: The British got there in time:

St. Petersburg, Russia — The seven Russian sailors trapped aboard a small, dark, cold submarine on the Pacific floor were rescued today after a British remote- controlled vehicle cut away the undersea cables that had ensnared their vessel.

British crews, who arrived while U.S. rescue crews were still en route to the remote Kamchatka Peninsula site, maneuvered their Super Scorpio unmanned robotic vehicle from the surface of the sea and managed to untangle the Russian Priz AS-28, Russian news agencies reported.

(The fact that the US crews weren’t there is mentioned more than once in the story, which I find interesting. Does everything have to have an American angle for us?)

I don’t know why this kind of story gets to me, but it does. I’m not sure whether it’s the idea of being trapped on a submarine—definitely one of my personal worst nightmares—or just the idea that in situations like this it’s still possible for everything to turn out all right.

Time to put Simon to work

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Who here thinks I should totally take Simon to these auditions? As my friend Rob said, “He’s a shoo-in for the role.”

(Okay, Rob didn’t really say that. I did. But he was thinking it.)