Barb Caffrey's Blog

Folks, I am livid.

I watched the Summer Olympics, as many did, keeping a close eye on the gymnastics competition. (They now want to call it “artistic gymnastics” as opposed to the rhythmic gymnasts who use ribbons and balls and such. I think we can tell which is which, but whatever.) The American gymnasts were excellent. Simone Biles was her usual self, competing with Rebeca Andrade (pronounced “An-dra-jee”) of Brazil, and Suni Lee, Jade Carey, and Jordan Chiles all had excellent Olympic performances as well. (I don’t mean to slight the other gymnast, Hezly Rivera. She won an Olympic gold team medal and did her best.)

So, what made me livid? How about this: In the final competition, which was the floor exercise, the judges from the International Olympic Committee screwed up. They messed up the scores to the point that Jordan Chiles’s coach had to appeal to get a point put back. (A tenth of a point, actually.) Ms. Chiles won the bronze medal, got her medal, Simone Biles got the silver, and Rebeca Andrade got the gold.

So far, so good.

The Romanian gymnasts (they were in fourth and fifth) were very unhappy. The judges didn’t score them right either. One of them was said to have a foot out of bounds when she hadn’t gone out of bounds. The other had just had her medal taken away, by her view, and also felt some of how she’d been scored was wrong.

My solution would’ve been to give all three medals, as the judges obviously screwed up.

Instead, the IOC’s decision is to try to strip Jordan Chiles of her medal. I don’t approve of that at all.

Pat McEnroe, former tennis pro and brother of John, has said the judges are the real problem here. I agree. They did not do the right thing. They messed up. Yet Jordan Chiles and the two Romanian gymnasts have to pay the price for the judges’ inaccuracy and stupidity.

That’s what makes me livid.

There are a lot of things that upset me. One of my good friends’ homes burned down recently; I need to write a blog about that, one longer than this one if possible. (I will mention her GiveSendGo info: https://www.givesendgo.com/GD2AK) If you can help my friend Betsy and her family, please do…ultimately that matters a ton more than any sport.

But the reason I said this today, about Ms. Chiles, the IOC, and everything else, is because it angers me when bad things happen to good people. We expect sports to be as unbiased as possible. We don’t expect the IOC to have their thumb on the scale and do wrong things to athletes who went to the Olympics, did their best, and now are told to return medals (or whatever else).

So, that’s why I wrote this blog about Jordan Chiles. She is an inspiration to many, did her level best, was awarded the medal, and deserves to keep her medal.

The IOC is wrong, wrong, wrong, a thousand times wrong, and should be going after the judges who mis-scored the event rather than trying to get back a medal Ms. Chiles rightfully earned.

I thought this blog was well-written, timely, and might be of interest to at least some of my readers and friends. (Often one and the same, but I digress.)

His path is not the same as my path, but I honor what he’s done and what he continues to do. He has found love again, bless him…but that does not at all mean he’s forgotten his late wife, and it does not at all mean that he’s happy-happy joy-joy all the time.

This is a lengthy blog, but a worthy one. I really hope at least some of you will consider reading it all the way to the end.

Folks, this past week around Chez Caffrey has been a struggle. (I’m not going to lie.) Dad’s death has really thrown me for a loop (or maybe into curlicues; a simple loop doesn’t seem to be enough, somehow, to describe this.) While I am not the executor for my father’s estate, I am trying to look after some of his interests while my sibs are doing other needed and necessary things.

Mostly, I feel like I’m failing.

At any rate, my brother, sister and I discussed what we wanted in Dad’s obituary and my brother mostly adhered to what we’d said (plus what he’d thought, too). (Jim, my brother, is the main person to make decisions. Dad was old-fashioned that way.) Dad loved music, played music, loved sports and was a huge fan of the Brewers, Bucks, Packers, etc. He loved old movies, as I said in my last blog, and he enjoyed listening to show tunes, some light jazz from the early 1940s and late 1930s (think Benny Goodman and his Orchestra and you’re not far wrong) and was a huge fan of Doris Day. (She, BTW, was one of the first actresses to portray an independent woman on TV. She also was a nightclub singer before she got her big break and became somewhat of a wholesome icon.) He knew a lot about DD’s life and career, and honestly mourned her death in 2019.

The thing is, as I’ve discussed at my Facebook page already, the cause of death has come back and it kind of threw me for a loop. It’s going to be “uncontrolled hypertension” that was the underlying cause of Dad’s death.

Why did this throw me? Mostly because my father was still taking blood pressure meds. They apparently had become ineffective — this is something I didn’t know until the medical examiner told me — but Dad was unwilling to either take a higher dose or try a new med. He’d stay with what he knew instead, for whatever reasons of his own, and could not be moved on this issue according to what was written into my father’s chart.

In other words, Dad was what you might call “noncompliant” with doctors. Or at least he’d become that way in the last few years, if that makes any sense.

See, to my mind, had Dad taken no blood pressure meds at all, or refused to take any more, that would’ve made more sense than taking something he knew was ineffective. (I can’t ask him why he made this perplexing choice, either, for obvious reasons.)

Hypertension, when it’s not controlled, can eat into your quality of life. I’ve known this since my early twenties, for pity’s sake. (Partly because my late grandmother had some issues this way, and partly because I was diagnosed with borderline high blood pressure at age twenty-two, I had to get cognizant of this in a big hurry.) When you have high blood pressure that’s not controlled, it makes you feel weaker than you would otherwise feel. It also can make it more difficult to get your rest or to get enough exercise to do your heart any good, because if you feel frail or at least feel off-kilter, most people get more anxious. (I know I do, and I definitely know my father did.) If you’re anxious often, this eats into your available bodily energy supply, and it makes you worry more about things you otherwise wouldn’t worry about.

All I know is, we have eight days to go until Dad’s memorial service. They feel sometimes like they’re both too short and too long. How they can be both at the same time is beyond me, but life is strange…and it’s even stranger after you lose someone close to you.

How have you handled this sort of thing? Have you had any deaths in your family? Any advice for me or my sibs? I’d appreciate it if you want to pass any along, as right now it seems like I’m going down a broken road without a map, without a flashlight (as the skies continue to darken), and as if I’m both deaf and dumb.

Folks, I’m alive and doing the best I can.

It’s been a tough year so far around Chez Caffrey. Some years are like this; I am aware. But lately, I’ve had many thoughts of my friend, the late writer Ric Locke. His last blog post was called “This Ain’t Workin'” and sometimes I wonder what was going through his mind as he wrote that.

See, he knew his body wasn’t responding to the medications he and his doctor had tried to improve his health. He was tired of fighting, and who can blame him? He’d been through a lot, and deserved his rest…yet he was writing a sequel to his excellent novel, TEMPORARY DUTY. I’m sure he didn’t want to leave that unfinished. But there’s a time when you know there’s not much left, and it gets harder and harder to push that knowledge away.

That’s my best guess as to what Ric thought, as he wrote his final blog.

Mind, if it’s up to me, this is NOT my final blog. I have many, many things that remain to be done, and many stories to finish up, too. I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon, but as the doctors seemingly have no idea at all what’s going on with me, I just don’t know anymore. What they do know is this: exhaustion.

Yep. That’s all they know.

As the US doesn’t have a policy like most of Europe, where everyone gets a certain amount of paid time off — mind, even if we did, as an independent writer/editor I wouldn’t, but still — the best I can do to fortify myself is to read books that make me laugh while doing whatever I am able to do of a work-related and family-related nature. Observe nature in its fullness, which includes (as I live in Racine, WI) great views of Lake Michigan. Talk to people and be kind — because rudeness just doesn’t cut it with me — and hope that the exhaustion will recede, bit by bit.

So, while I’d love a vacation (fruity drinks by the seashore optional), as that doesn’t seem in the cards, I will instead continue to do the best I can.

If you’d like to drop a line below, telling me what’s going on in your life, I’d love to hear it. (I get tired, sometimes, of shouting into the void and hoping somehow that the void shouts back. Yes, a small joke, there…)

Folks, I have been editing up a storm for the past week or so. Almost no writing has taken place, so I had no news to discuss…then my Uncle Ralph died yesterday, and everything seemed to hit the fan at once.

Mind, my uncle had lived a good, long life, been married for decades, had children and grandchildren and even a few great-grandchildren. But he was a kind-hearted gentleman of the old school, and I’ll miss him.

It’s good when someone passes away in the fullness of age, especially compared to when someone dies too soon, too young, or too suddenly. But it’s also hard, because no one wants to see their loved ones pass on.

In my uncle’s case, he was dealing with several health problems that had significantly limited his life. But when he felt well enough, he and my aunt (who has survived him) still were able to laugh and talk and love one another. There was a wealth of memories there to discuss, and I’m sure more will surface over time, as the whole phrase about “may his memory be a blessing” definitely seems to apply.

Anyway, it’s time for rest, then more editing awaits.

Oh, and as it’s May now, the only song that comes to mind is “It Might As Well Be Spring.” So here’s a YouTube video that may amuse you from Doris Day, someone I usually don’t reference even though she was a fine singer with an excellent range. She gets a lot of the feelings across that I have right now, including hope, frustration and wistfulness, which seems the perfect way to end this bloglet.

It’s April. The temperatures are rising, slowly but surely. The ground is starting to thaw. There are more birds chirping; there are more critters coming out of hibernation; there are more people getting out and about, perhaps for the first time in three years, to remind themselves that spring has sprung and the world has been made anew.

(At least, the world turns on its axis, and we only have one April per year. But I digress.)

So, welcome to you, April readers! What are you reading, and why? What are you planning to read, and why? What are you looking forward to the most, in a book or out of it?

Plus, I have the usual questions of, “What’s going on with you? What are you concerned about, this fine day?”

As for me, I continue to recover from the nasty facial bacterial infection (say that three times fast; I dare you). It’s a slow but steady climb. I’m able to do a bit more, week by week, though I would prefer to be able to do a great deal more as that would be much easier than this incremental progress.

Still, life does not work that way. We do things slowly, sometimes, or we don’t do them at all.

Same thing for my writing. I’ve been able to get a bit done, here and there, which beats nothing by a mile. But it’s not what I had hoped for at the start of this year; no, it’s not.

Still. I move, but slowly, and yet I move. (Didn’t Galileo say that? Maybe he should’ve, if not. Going on…)

As for other news, I still haven’t settled on a cover concept for the novella I told you all about several months ago (that I hoped to get out by the end of last year). I am working on it, mind you; I at least know what type of book it is, and I’m paying attention to other books that seem somewhat close in category to post-apocalyptic romantic suspense. (It actually is closer to post-apocalyptic military/romantic suspense as one of the two major characters is an Army Sergeant First Class. I hope to do justice to the military men and women I’ve met along the way, too. But I suppose that would’ve gone without saying…never mind.) I also need to finish two more Elfyverse stories so I can have five or six of them and put them in a collection; that’s on the backburner, but it’s one I return to now and again, parsing out various things, making prose notes, and then going back to my editing (already in progress) or writing the other things that are demanding to be written right now, thank you.

At any rate, I continue on. It’s slow. Sometimes I feel stuck in reverse. But I make whatever progress I can, as I can, and will continue doing so as long as I am able.

May it be true for yourself as well.

There are some days (weeks, months, years) that are better than others. And then, there are the days, etc., that I’ve been putting up with the past few months.

This is why the bloglet for today is entitled “Striving for More.” Because that’s literally what I’ve been doing for the past six weeks, along with “working to tolerance” and “resting whenever needed.”

The trouble with all of these things is, I can clearly see what I want and need to be doing. The energy’s not there yet, but my vision of what should be has returned. I know from past experiences, health-wise, that this particular facility shows up when I’ve almost completely recovered. It does so because there’s now enough energy to realize how sick I was, and how much I need to do now to make up for the time I couldn’t help but lose to illness.

In other words, I can parse things out far better. I can compare and contrast far better, too.

So, when I get a half-formed idea for a musical composition, and then can’t seem to get it set down in a manner that makes sense, I have been reminding myself that it’s all a process. Perhaps the reason I can’t quite get the music down has to do with something about the structure of the music I’m grasping for, if that makes any sense.

The important thing is to keep after it as best I can. I know I’ll figure out how to structure this musical composition I have in mind, if I am patient and let it crawl all the way out of my backbrain.

I also know, from past experience, that writing music tends to be easier for me after an illness than writing words can be. If I can handle one, I can handle the other, as music in some ways is my first and best language. (Words are a poor second place in some ways, because music can transport you far easier than words, sometimes.)

For the moment, what I have to do is guard my health, first. Then, keep thinking about the structure of this musical composition that’s been rattling around in my head for a few weeks. Finally, get down some prose notes for the various stories in progress, in the hopes that my recovery from this point will be swift, sure, and to the point.

(Or at least not protracted anymore than it already has been…but I digress, as is always my wont.)

So, what do you do when you’re recovering from illness? What tips and tricks do you have that may help someone else along their journey?

And what books are you reading to help distract yourself, or possibly edify yourself, along the way? (Tell me about ’em in the comments, please.)

Folks, I continue to recover from last month’s illness, so I haven’t had much to say lately.

Now, do I have opinions? Yes. Do I want to discuss some things with you all? Again, yes.

But my mind feels a bit off, and I’m using almost all of my energy to help others (there’s no alternative but me, most of the time anyway). I have edits to finish, stories to finish, poems to finish, and music to finish composing.

I don’t know about you, though…sometimes, I look at all that, and I feel completely daunted.

Then again, there is the way I generally go about taking care of these things, which is very simple: One step at a time.

So, I’ll keep taking small steps, and hope it’ll lead me somewhere wonderful.

Back to the blog in a week or so, I hope.

Folks, I’ve been thinking about many things as I continue to convalesce from the serious illness I told you about last week. (Two antibiotics, an antiviral, and prednisone are nothing to be sneezed at, after all, and that’s what I’ve been taking to get well.) One of them is about the prevalence of technology in our society.

Don’t get me wrong. The Internet is a Godsend for a writer, or for anyone who wants to do background research. It can lead you to the right books, right sources, and help you find a handy library where you can check those books and sources out without necessarily having to pay (as sometimes the library in your area only has so much, and interlibrary loan — ILL — can’t always help, either). It also is helpful for communication, for writing blogs (natch), and in disseminating information (which can be good or bad, especially if what comes out first turns out to be wrong and has to be corrected later).

But I remain split with regards to everything else.

We have smartphones. These are quite helpful and useful on the one hand, and on the other, they keep us tied to screens far more often than we should be. It’s harder to appreciate nature, or other people in our lives who live close or are personally visiting, if we stay on our phones all the time.

More problematic than that is the advent of “smart home” technology. “Hey Google,” or “Hey Siri,” or “Hey Alexa,” all have pluses in that you can do things more quickly if you have this set up (such as playing a favorite song or arming your alarm system). But look at all you give up if you have this! These things can be hacked, and when you’re asking Google to do this, that, or the other for you, while someone else is watching/listening, that’s an invasion of privacy at the very least.

Of course, our computers now seem to spy on us as well. They have “smart algorithms,” meaning they figure out what we like to usually read. (In my case, there’s a lot about Star Trek and SFF&F, a great deal about MLB and the Milwaukee Brewers, quite a bit about the NFL and the Green Bay Packers, and of course I also see a ton about the NBA and the Milwaukee Bucks.) These can be interesting, though if you want to research something else, it’s good not to be bogged down by the latest deep dive into Jeri Ryan’s character and life choices (as Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Picard).

Hey, I have to admit that I am a big fan of Jeri Ryan. Have been for years. Not picking on her. Moving on…

In addition to all of the stuff in our personal life that we choose to use that can potentially be spied upon (sorry to use that term, but with all of the various spy balloons and objects that have been shot out of the sky in the US and Canada this past week — at least four — privacy violations are on my mind), we also have seen an advent of cameras added by local municipalities to make it easier for law enforcement to do their jobs. I’m mostly in favor of this, but I do wonder at where the “slippery slope” ends.

Look. We are in unprecedented territory. There’s so much information out there about us. There’s so much that companies collect, with regards to data, that goes to attempt to shape us psychologically, personally, and otherwise that it seems like a flood that can’t be stanched with our hands alone.

That said, somehow we have to figure out how to be our authentic selves and make true human connections with others despite all the electronic noise.

I don’t know how that’s going to happen. I just know that we have to try, possibly harder than ever, to remember what the real world is as well as appreciating whatever gives us value in the virtual world. (The virtual and real worlds sometimes do collide, too, but that’s a separate issue and I’m not touching that with a ten-foot pole right now. One issue at a time.)

So, for the moment, I’m going to continue to be unapologetically low-tech, or something like it anyway, considering I use a computer at least eight hours a day and read books via Kindle often and also have a cellphone. I’m going to do my best to remember what the real world is, see the beauty in it as well as the ugliness, and keep on going.

Folks, I ask you, on the eve of Valentine’s Day, to consider what’s real in your life. Who the people are that matter in your life, too. And what you can do to promote greater and happier bonds between you, so you can not only live an authentic life, but perhaps even a happy one.

Stranger things have happened.