Lindsey Pennington: Soft Lips ...

I've just finished reading another book by Lindsey Pennington.  The previous books by this author I had read were exceptionally good; very literary, would have been my verdict.  Since I'm so picky about careful language, and grammar, I guess that those aspects of the writing must have been really good. 

This latest story, though, started out very promisingly, but sort of became a little scattered as it went along; actually the entropy in the writing got very bad indeed.  But I had made a connection with the characters, so I just had to finish the story. 

There are two women, the older one of whose marriage has broken up, but who is a very determined, very giving, very lovely person; and the younger a psychologist and counselor, patient and understanding, but just discovering that she is getting multiple sclerosis—still only minor symptoms, but eventually going to be serious. 

They love each other very much.  But the older woman is diagnosed with cancer, which eventually kills her, and the younger, the caretaker, is left devastated, with the only child of the deceased woman, a boy, to look after.  She is eventually persuaded to seek companionship in a lesbian bar. 

Also at the bar, with her crazy friends and her sister, is a young lawyer.  She's straight, but these girls are her friends, so she tags along with them, always to this same bar.  For a bet, she's asked to kiss a girl, a one-time exercise.  Of course, she ends up kissing our other protagonist.  It's a good kiss; neither of them can stop thinking about it.  The young lawyer runs home from the bar. 

The story revolves around the lawyer's clumsy attempts to deal with her unexpected new attraction to a woman, after a decade or more of being only interested in men.  She finds out the home address of the psychologist, Kerry, and bursts into her home, uninvited. 

There are some interesting circumstances; the lawyer—an attractive girl—is half Scottish, half Korean; and her mother is a typical, interfering Korean mother.  There are four children, all girls, all different, and all real characters. 

The biggest character of them all is the lawyer herself, who was extremely picky about the men she wants to date; she has a checklist, and she scores them all on a 100-point scale.   (She's even got a scale for women, to help her lesbian friends out.)

It's sort of fun, though nothing really unexpected happens.  The comic attitudes of the young women, and their zany conversation kept me hooked, though I thought the long-suffering psychologist was just a little too patient with her rude lawyer client. 

But there are just so many mechanical errors that I strongly suspect that there was a very capable editor for the previous stories, but not for this one. 

Kay

Terpsichore

The last few days I have had a strange experience—actually, a whole series of strange experiences—similar to some that I've had in earlier years.  Having so little to do, I spend a lot of time on Facebook.  And I get sucked into these so-called reels, which are simply videoclips.  And some of them are just girls dancing. 

They have a happy smile on their faces, and they've got pretty dresses on—I guess they know my taste in clothing, by now, so they can select videoclips keeping that in mind, or ... anyway—they're dancing away; and in my mind I'm so depressed, because I never learned this sort of dance!

I can certainly dance ballet; I took many years of it; I can dance the Waltz, but was seldom called upon to waltz with anyone.  But these hip-swinging Latin dances are completely out of my reach, and they're the best for dancing by one's self.  Then, there are these Tik-tok type dances that are so cute; and I'm so consumed with envy.  If I had to do it all over again, from my early teens, I'd dance up a storm!

Dancing is natural for girls in these times. 

Irene Idänvalo

OMFG.

A Facebook 'content creator' from Finland has made herself at home on my Fb page.  Her name is Irene, and she's the heading of today's post. 

Irene

It seems very much as though she's posting from Finland, though she's completely at home with English idioms, her slight accent notwithstanding.  She has a side buddy, her sister, who is often featured in Irene's video posts (they're always video clips; in fact their main content home is Instagram, I believe), and the sister's name is something like Snuikki.  [Added later: it's Snuikku.  If think Snuikki sounds a little more convincing.  But I don't know Finnish, unfortunately.]

Many of Irene's (which is pronounced 'I-re-neh')'s videos start with

"LISsen!!" screeched out at the top of her voice, after which she will go into the main subject, which is often The Finnish Word of the Day, which is quite often something multi-syllabic and intimidating, such as (yelled out) "Kurkku kipu!"

"Say it with me: kurkku kipu!  But what does kurkku kipu MEAN?"  So she would break it down, and say: kurkku means cucumber, and kipu means pain, so naturally kurkku kipu means a sore throat!  (Finnish etymology often takes an unexpected turn.)  She has a sidekick, namely her sister, a redhead, who seems marginally more sane than Irene herself, and an all-round softer person.  But this Snooky girl has her own posts—some of which also involve Irene—in which Snooky comes across as a lot more assertive and confident than she does in her sister's videos, when she's playing second fiddle.  They are fascinating people, and their choice of subjects are exactly calculated to suck me in!!

These videos—probably qualify as podcasts—are generally hilarious.  People all over the world tune into them, apparently, and they have a huge following.  I've only watched them for two days (Fb algorithm is sending me their video clips multiple times the last two days), so I'll have to report in more detail once I see more of them. 

Kay

P.S. She puts on a really convincing Southern / Texas accent!  They're (the two sisters) are very serious about their posts—I guess Instagram posts—but sometimes they're a little casual about the actual content.

One time, Irene badmouthed tortillas.  I was quite disconcerted.  This has to stop. 

Kay

Food

Does anyone else have a passion for feeding people or animals?  I Just loove to feed my friend's critters!!!  I simply go nuts, and she has to stop me.

Well, thank you for your attention to this matter. 

Kay

Added later (May 28, 2026):  Gosh, this little cat has cornered me again.  I'm in my friend's house in downtown Williamsport.  She's on my lap, purring like fury, asking for pets!  She keeps butting my hand (while I'm trying to get this post written), which means Pet me now, please!  Loud purring!  I Just got here; I didn't do anything.  I have no idea what I do to get her into this frame of mind. 

A dog this friendly would try to follow me home.  But this cat sees me getting ready to leave, and miaows once or twice, conveying something like: come back soon!!  So this is her territory.  I'm just her principal Petter, that's all. 

Again, Caitlin Clark

I do not watch basketball.  I do like to see Cailin Clark in action, and also the Fever, generally.  Other teams may be as fun and entertaining, but not as fun to watch as the Fever for me, because I happen to be familiar with them.  Because Facebook (or Meta, or whoever) knows I like to watch clips of them, I get shown a lot of those clips, just because, you know, the algorithm!

But you know, those women seem to me, sweeter and gentler than most of us; they aren't vicious, they are quick to smile, they're articulate (that is, they find the right words to explain what they're thinking effortlessly), and generous spirited and tactful.  How did this happen?

I think it is because they're well-paid, well appreciated, and respected.  There's little or no prejudice or racism (that I can see, anyway) when they're playing; they pass to the best one they can spot, while playing, who can do the job at the moment.  They get angry, they get mad, they're briefly mean to their opponents, but I don't see it getting dragged out too long.  (Of course, we're not courtside, so we don't see everything that's to be seen.)

Has Caitlin Clark (and Stephanie White, and everybody) made basketball great again—MBGA?

Well, I'm leaving it there. 

Let's look at MAGA.  Without giving Trump too much credit, I have to admit that that slogan: Make America Great Again, is really very clever.  There's absolutely no guarantee that everyone in the movement—the GOP, the Tea Party—are thinking of the same aspects of former greatness at all!  Some of them are thinking: when there were fewer Mexicans around.  Some are thinking: when we had more disposable income.  Some are thinking: when people were nicer to each other.  (Some are obviously thinking: when it was easier to find innocent little girls to play with, too.)  And some are definitely thinking: before Obama showed them that a black president was a good idea.  (Obama really broke Trump.  Unfortunately, not enough, and not for good.)

Let's face it: halfway decent people are nice and kind, and tactful, and generous and forgiving, if they're well paid.  Now that big business has taken most of our money away, obviously we're all squabbling for what's left, and not in the mood to be nice.  So Bernie Sanders has got something.  It's not just Communism; it's a more equitable distribution of wealth. 

'Something's Wrong with Maddie'

Oh my dear god.  That title—the title of this post, as it happens—is the title of a book I bought, at a time last week when I wasn't really paying very careful attention.  I Just started actually reading it this morning. 

Piper, the main protagonist, is in a really bad place.  She's dragging herself through a very painful life as a complaints person for an internet provider.  She's lost her girlfriend recently; she's dead.  That's Maddie.

It turns out that she and Maddie were so close that Piper is all at sea in a very scary way.  She can barely hold herself together; doesn't eat, can't sleep, can't focus on anything.  Then she finds a book that tells her how to get Maddie back from the dead, as a zombie.

This is where I stopped reading.  I went back to the blurbs, finding it hard to believe that I actually paid, like, $2.99 for this book.  Then I read a few reviews of people who had bought and read the book.  The reviews were almost all highly favorable.  Apparently, once Maddie comes alive—don't ask, because I didn't read that far—she has to eat human flesh.  I think it's completely out of line for a dead person to demand human flesh, but apparently Maddie is insatiable. 

So why am I writing about this story?  It appears that these two were really super in love.  (That much I got from my reading; the author conveys Piper's devastation at Maddie's death very convincingly.)  And from the blurbs/ reviews I think I picked up that the more Maddie ate, the more human she became. 

What can I say.  I should've waited until I'd read the whole thing before I wrote about it.  Maybe one of you might be brave enough to just pick up the book and read it, and tell us how it goes!

Kay

A Helen episode I had forgotten about!

Here is the link, and I'll explain below:

Chopsticks

This is a 'page' on the Blog.  It is set at the time Helen had had her most recent, and most invasive, brain surgery, and had returned home with Maryssa, to the Primrose house (Maryssa's family home, from where they would move to the new, rented home near where Lalitha's family, and the instrument factory were situated).

I was just reading this page this morning, and I was startled at how well I had been writing at that time.  Many of the characters are illuminated beautifully by this episode, but I'm a little nervous about splicing it into one of the other stories, for fear of having to do some lengthy inspections, to avoid duplication, etc.  The painfully slow steps Helen took to become a functional adult again have been glossed over in Concerto.  This episode also highlights how Erin struggled with Helen's nemory loss.