Introducing ... Baby Amanda and some of the rest of the family

In a little over a month, we will be celebrating a big occasion in our family. It'll be the first birthday for Amanda, our first granddaughter.

Our son, Tim, or T.J., as we like to call him, married Amy in April 2006. They gave birth to Amanda on March 19 of last year, the same day that my father turned 80. That was a nice plus, because it was only a month earlier that we lost my mom to lung cancer.

Anyway, Tim and Amy started a family blog a while back, so if you would like to see pictures of them, baby Amanda (talk about all that is gold!) and their two new puppies, Molly and Boo Radley, you can visit them here.

This probably won't be a long entry tonight. I took my second Lortab of the day a few minutes ago, and if it's anything like the first one, I'll be out cold in a short while.

After two days of gritting my teeth and trying to get over my misadventure on the front steps (see my last entry for details), I broke down and called the doctor today. The pain seemed to get sharper yesterday, and I also noticed that as the general lower backache eased off a bit, the pain became more localized around the area of my right kidney. It was probably just paranoia, but I also felt like I was peeing a lot more often than usual yesterday.

The good news is that my kidney is fine, thank you. My fall just resulted in a nice deep contusion in the muscles on the lower, right side of my back. To help ease the pain and let me get an uninterrupted night of sleep, the doctor was kind enough to prescribe a muscle relaxant, plus the aforementioned Lortabs. I don't want to use the latter for any longer than necessary - hopefully just the next day or two. Lortab is essentially an extra-strength Tylenol bolstered with an opiate to help kill the pain. Obviously, this is not the type of medicine you want to fool around with or use without good reason.

My appointment with the doctor was scheduled for 11:00 a.m., but it was well past noon by the time they called my name, and nearly 1:00 p.m. before I got out of there. That's one of the problems with seeing the most popular doctor in the clinic. It seems like his schedule is always overfilled. I like him though. In this day and age of assembly line medicine, with the accountants running the HMOs and cracking down on any M.D. who averages more than 11 minutes with a patient, my doctor takes his time, makes sure any questions you have are answered, and really seems to try to get to know his patients. Kicking it old school, so to speak.

Between the time of the appointment, waiting to get my prescription filled while I grabbed a little lunch, and then breaking in that first dose of Lortab, I didn't get into work today at all. It gave me a chance to finish a book I picked up at the library on the way home from work last night.

A co-worker (Kirsten J.) and I had been chatting about favorite books at work. My all-time favorite novel (and I make an exception here, because I don't usually like to single out the very favorite anything) is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I mentioned that one of the things about the book that I like is the unique first person perspective, in this case that of Scout Finch between the ages of approximately 6 and 8. This led to talk about other books that have unusual first person points of view. One such book is Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, told from the point of view of the large native American that McMurphy befriends in the asylum.

An author who almost seemed to specialize in such first person perspective novels was Jerzy Kosinski. His first novel, The Painted Bird, was the tale of a young boy in the surreal landscape of German-occupied Poland during WWII. At times, Kosinski suggested that the novel was, at least in part, autobiographical. It is true that Kosinski was a young boy in Poland during the war. He was born Josek Lewinkopf in Lodz in 1933. However, the truth of the matter is that his Jewish parents obtained a forged baptismal certificate for him in the name Jerzy Kosinski and placed him safely with a Roman Catholic family for protection during the war. It does not appear that he personally was subject to the acts of cruelty and abuse portrayed in the novel.

Another of Kosinski's first person perspective novels was Steps, with a blind protagonist. The title refers to the fact that he has memorized the exact number of steps between each of the places he visits in his daily routine.

Probably the best known of Kosinski's books is Being There. A great part of its fame is due to the fact that it was made into a quite successful movie in 1979. Peter Sellers starred in the movie as Chance the gardener (or Chauncey Gardiner) and was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor. Melvyn Douglas did win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar portraying Ben Rand, a successful, but aging businessman who becomes Chance's mentor. Kosinski himself won several awards, including a Writer's Guild Award for best screenplay for the adaptation from his novel.

I originally read Being There when it was first released in 1970 or 1971. The first thing that struck me when I picked it up in the library last night was how short the book is. I didn't remember this, but it is almost more of a novella than a full novel. The paperback edition I borrowed is less that 120 pages long, and the story consists of a mere seven chapters, that last of which is an enigmatic three-page epilogue.

For those who have not read it, I don't want to spoil the story here. Let me just say that it is an extremely entertaining story told from a very unique first person perspective. It is a satire of American values and, especially, of Americans' tendency to seize on pop icons. In this respect, the book is probably more relevant today than when it was published nearly 40 years ago.

As I said, the book ends on an enigmatic note. The reader is left to ponder the question, how far could a man like Chance go? As I finished reading the book this afternoon, my first thought was that for the last seven years, he's been occupying the Oval Office.

Enjoy.