On Rowling, Oprah, Oxycontin and Odontophobia

Today’s writing is apparently brought to you by the letter O. As in Oh brother, I can’t believe I’m writing the whole thing on an iPad.

My husband, who loves me in spite of all reasons not to, also loved his ipad so much that he bought me one for christmas, which he actually gave me at the end of October. It’s come in handy as I’m road-testing various accessibility tools. (that is apparently what we the handicap able call the extra farfignewtons we need to use the stuff other people use quite well unaided.). So, anyway, I’ve got this sucker, partially so I can write on the go, but I tend to use it only for playing We Rule and Godfinger. Because I’m five. But then I had to have the pus filled tooth yorked outta my head on Wednesday morning (there was a cancellation at the oral surgeon, moving the day of reckoning up by one) and I found that I could stay in bed, per doctor’s orders and still watch Netflix and Youtube and Hulu and all those other things people substitute for books. There are no experiences quite like that of being loaded up with oxycontin (again per doctor’s orders) and watching Johnny Cash videos on Youtube.

Having tired of all the bleakness of Cash and relentless naive optimism of 70s tv (Emergency and Adam-12, y’all!) I broke down and watched JK Rowling’s chat with Oprah from six weeks ago. I knew it was out there, but didn’t reLy feel like dealing with the conflicting emotions of watching someone I admire have a friendly chat with someone Ive chosen to disregard. But as I do with all things Rowling, I watched in the end. Sure enough, it took less than a minute for Oprah to turn the topic back onto herself. In between the bits if good conversation from Rowling we got a lot of Billionaire Girls’ Club nonsense, some guff about the sad life of the late alleged child molester Michael Jackson and much musing from Oprah about how scary it is to leave her popular talk show and start up a television network. All in all I got about 15 minutes of Rowling out of a 40 minute interview. Which was slightly better than I expected.

Do I think she will write another Harry Potter book? In the interview she basically said ‘i doubt it, but I also know to never say never.’ Personally I think we’ll get the Encyclopaedia and other world-building material, but she is probably done with straight up narrative. That’s fine by me, as I reckon the story speaks for itself.

I thought it was interesting to compare and contrast our two lives, as I often do. She is Joanne Kathleen from Britain. I am Katherine Joan from the US. Our lives are often inversely parallel. She has finished writing a popular book and is published. I haven’t and am not. She lost both her parents…one to death, the other to estrangement. I have loving relationships with all my family, including both living parents. She has pots of money. For a long time I struggled financially. (doing alright now, though). As I watched her interview it struck me that I am happy with who I am and would not trade places. As much as I would like to author a successful fiction book, I know that I’m blessed beyond measure to have the love of family and friends and wouldn’t trade one for the other. I’d definitely not trade anything for the pots of money.

One last thing before I sign off…another note about my personal happiness. I know I whinge alot about the chronic pain of arthritis, but I want to make one thing perfectly clear. While I appreciate the pain management from the dilaudid and oxycontin for serious surf like surgery, I DO NOT ENJOY taking these drugs. I don’t like feeling like there is a pillow pressed against my personality, suffocating who I am. It occurs to me once again that I am a poor candidate for Rx addiction.

But iPad addiction…that may be another thing altogether.