News from the Nest

[badsquirrel]

Life has been happening the last couple of months. i haven't been writing much because of it, but things seem to be settling down now and i'm writing again.

my mother got told in october that she was going to die. probably before christmas. and that there was nothing surgeons could do. needless to say, we were all a bit stunned by this news, especially since my mom was feeling pretty good. mom started making lists of what she wanted the other kids to have and how she wanted her remains to be handled. all in all, it was pretty freaking depressing.

after a couple of days of that, we talked to her cardiologist. he suggested talking to a surgeon in san francisco. since we had nothing to lose, we did. lots of driving and coffee later, the surgeon said he didn't see any reason why she couldn't have surgery. huge relief. so, mid november, my mom had open heart surgery. in fact, the repairs they had to make were so extensive that they filmed it for training purposes. my mom was a little peeved that she had to sign away any rights to the film should it win an academy award, but i thought it was pretty cool. i mean, they couldn't very well screw up and let her die if the whole thing was on film.

she did well. of course, she was out of it for several days and was shaking so bad she couldn't feed herself. (it's called pumphead and it passes...scary looking, but harmless). i had to leave her there so i could work and that was really tough. not to mention that i spent almost 200 dollars on phone calls to let everyone know how she was.

when my brother and i went back to san francisco to pick her up, she threw a wrench in the works. she decided the night before she was to check out that she could pee by herself. uh huh. she took a header off the toilet and landed on the concrete shower lip with her face. oh my god. bar none the most impressive shiners i've ever seen. my mother tried to explain it away by saying that she fell out the window trying to save a kitten. the nurses caught us before we saw her and told us what really happened. they were terrified that we were going to sue. the whole thing was kind of funny.

but it meant she had to stay another night. which meant that my brother and i had to spend a night in SF. sigh. i took him to good vibrations and he bought his wife a present. then i accidently took him to a gay man's bar. it was a nice place. very comfortable. we were there for half an hour before we figured it out. so we stayed to play pool. as i said, it was a good bar. then, we were bored and mom told us not to do anything that we would get arrested for, so we got tattoos. it was a fun night.

anyway, she's home now. she got better for a while and then got very anemic. so anemic that they wouldn't give her any meds for it. after they hemmed and hawed about it for a week and a half, they finally gave her a transfusion. i was pretty happy about that because she came home and did her dishes. as far as i was concerned, all was right with the world.

then she had a follow up echo on her heart and they found a mass.

by this time, i was getting pretty sick of the whole damn thing.

another week and a half go by and they got around to doing and echo from inside her esophagus. turns out it was nothing.

so now she's working out three times a week. this cuts about seven hours a week out of my writing time, but i'm managing. we figure she's good for another ten or fifteen years. i've stopped getting up three times a night to make sure she's breathing so i'm marginally more fun to be around. (not a whole lot...just ask the QMBG.)

in the meantime, i seem to have developed a writer's version of multiple personality disorder. i'm writing five different stories at once and i've got another one floating around in my head. the good news is that i am writing. the bad news is that i'm writing five stories at once. it's slowing things down.

by the way...the top 100 thing? it's so damn cool that i can't even begin to tell you how cool it is. thank you so much to every one who reads my stuff. having the story of the year rocks. biiiig rocks.

[Courtney]

sorry to hear about the tough time you have had but glad your mum is ok now. Hang in there - looking forward to your new works

[Dogz]

Wow, you and your mom have had a bit of a time of it. I'm glad to hear that she's feeling so much better and that you're under less stress.

We don't mind if your slowed down with multiple stories, just as long as we can live with the expectation of them being written

Cheers,
Jo

[GatteSpam]

It seems to me, what is it already was discussed, use search in a forum.

[Tonyahom]

Graham

Havent heard anything from the lake as yet. Big Gaz and Rob left Renmark about an hour ago and will probably stop at Berri for the night and will get to the lake about middayish Sunday.

Lynchy

[Wandaargum]

Very good advice. I was wondering why she knows what he does unless shes looking through their windows. Apparently, they arent too concerned about what their neighbors think, which is good as long as the neighbors dont complain to the police. Hasnt the neighbor heard of nudists?

[Maurinesnoth]

There should be no issue but all the tracking of racing has changed. I see the biggest task is hooking in to the new system so that it is just a click of a mouse to push out what is in the race database to the web. Once we have that, which I can do once I know the system, it will happen automagically