Notes From the Bedside Table

Sunrise was at 5:41, sunset will be at 8:50. 7532 steps yesterday- I had a lot of deskwork and catalogs to get through, lots of computer work, not much walking from place to place.

I did walk around the store once and was completely caught up in Justina Chen Headley's North of Beautiful as I went. I had to squint to see the pages in the sun which did nothing for the truly wicked headache I woke up with.

Worked through the headache, caught the bus and tried to read with the headache. The sun didn't help, and anytime I changed the balance of my head I thought I'd throw up.

Dennis was on my connecting bus and he saved me a seat! Yay! Didn't even know he was on it! What a wonderful surprise!

We were only on this bus for a little while and had to walk from Jackson and Rainier to our house because the bus' trolley lines got caught in the electrical wires. A long, hot, uphill, walk, made easier because of the company.

Took a shower, had a snack, and went to bed with Justina and Terra where I finished North of Beautiful between brain pulses. I watched the sky change color as night came. Cool breezes and belling curtains-the smell of cold seawater filled the room.

Headache's almost gone. I can feel it lurking behind the sinuses on the left side of my head.

PS- North of Beautiful is really good- Terra is a girl with a birthmark on half of her face. Her life, her friends, her art have all been defined by it. What happens when you meet someone new who doesn't seem to notice the one thing that has made you you?

Terra meets Jacob in an accident on her way home from laser surgery to "fix" the mark. No makeup, swollen, he sees her only as she is: smart, funny, controlled, scared, with a birthmark. Her friendship with Jacob is based on honesty because he has seen her as she is, without the careful attendance to her makeup and control over the various pieces of her life. She can't hide who she is, or what she wants to be, from him.

As Terra and Jacob become closer, the rest of her family is beginning to implode. Her father, a man with some serious control issues, and her mother, with different kinds of control issues, and Terra, who has her own set of issues about taking care of her family, are about to say and do things to each other that they may never be able to fix.

North of Beautiful was good. Absolutely worth giving to someone 14 and up. Lots of different ways to investigate the idea of a life's journey and how to navigate the topography of it. (Little Brown.)