Heading home

I fly home from upstate NY this evening, arriving after midnight in CA. I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in at least a week and a half, so by the gods, I’m sleeping in tomorrow. (Just try and wake me!)

My father is better, although his cancer isn’t curable. He’s getting stronger every day—everyone's amazed at how much he's able to do already. (He had a partial hip replacement the day after I got here, because the day I flew out they finally figured out he had a broken hip. That he'd been walking on for possibly up to a week. Which says a lot about my dad's right there.) He's also never lost his sense of humor. I’ve been writing down all his funny quips. More than once my mom and I laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe.

I can’t thank everyone individually, so I’ll have to do what little I can here:

Thank you. Thank you all for the notes and texts and voice messages, and for the thoughts and candles and prayers and energy. I felt them, and they helped more than you can imagine. I have the most amazing friends in the world!

I’m not going to discuss specifics/details here, but if anyone would like more info about what’s been going on, I’ll send a private e-mail.

(I would also like to credit the ZooBorns and Daily Kitten blogs for giving me warm fuzzy breaks the few times I’ve been able to snag some Internet access.)

Otherwise, it’s moving forward with researching hospitals and possibly clinical trials (if anyone has specific knowledge or info about osteosarcoma, please let me know). One of my sisters is flying here on Wednesday, and my other sister is exploring when it’s best for her to visit.

Meanwhile…

I got the first part of my latest CES assignment done here, and the customer was very happy with it. I’m a bit behind on my personal schedule for finishing the main story, but here’s hoping the person in front of me on tonight’s flight doesn’t put the seat back and I can hammer out a couple thousand words. It’s not due ‘til the end of the month, but we’re flying to Florida on Thursday, and I’d like to have it off my plate by then.

I’m feeling strangely energized about work, even in my exhaustion and stress. Part of it, I suspect, is that it’s an escape. Part, too, is the reminder that life is fleeting and fragile, and we have to grab it with both hands and fling ourselves into it. Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead. We have a limited amount of time in this plane (of existence, not a particular flight, that is), so we might as well make the most of it.

The somewhat languishing Out of the Frying Pan revisions will come next, then some short stories and probably some article pitches that I’ve been meaning to do. I’m pondering some sort of NaNoWriMo challenge of my own in November; it doesn’t make sense to start a new novel right now, and I have a lot of smaller projects to do: stories to write, article pitches to write, novel submissions (more for Waking the Witch, starting the ones for Seasoned With Danger, writing the first few chapters of one or two more novels that I have pitches for and getting those circulating), a novella submission, maybe writing some novellas. Okay, maybe “writing some novellas” will get pushed into December. And probably the new novel chapters. ::gg::

We’ll see. We fly home from Florida on November 2. We have SCA events pretty much every weekend, plus Ken’s giving a presentation on his Iron Butt ride at the local BMW dealership in Newbury Park. Plus Thanksgiving. Plus my niece is coming to visit so she can see a show in Hollywood, and my sister and my other niece might be coming with her. All of which would be totally groovy.

Okay, now I really have to get some work done before my dad wakes up!