16 February 2006

The astute among you may notice that I have not written a Novel Gazing in some time. This is true; my apologies. The antibiotics for my sinus infection have not treated my system very kindly, I'm afraid, so I've been doing what I can and ignoring the rest. Also my computer went nuts for a bit. It seems to be docile now, but it may just be sneaky. Hard to tell with computers.

The other thing that's happened here recently is that Timprov spent a few days last week in the hospital. (Many of you know this from e-mail, lj, or phone conversations.) They knew of some problems, but none of them seemed sufficient to cause the symptoms he was having. They were about to give up and send him home with pain meds and a recommendation for outpatient physical therapy when they decided to do one last diagnostic: a spinal tap to see if he had any spinal infections. He did not, but the spinal tap, uncharacteristically, felt great, and it made him feel great. Apparently he had an excess of spinal fluid, which is not anything anybody ever thought of. If it recurs, it's very treatable, and we're told that the medications have low side effects.

He's not "all better" now, but some of the things that have changed are really startling. His vision, for example, is sharper. So he'll be trying to assess a new normal and figure out what else needs handling from here. He still has, for example, sleep apnea. But compared to sleep apnea plus mysterious nastiness of unknown origins, sleep apnea is great (and quite treatable).

Aside from that, we have a freshly groomed puppy and two small get-togethers and a houseguest coming up this weekend. I've taken care of a few long-term things that needed taking care of -- wiping off the card table and putting it in the basement until it's needed, for example, was never absolutely vital for any particular moment but is much the better for being off my mental list.

I'm now reading Stephanie Barron's Jane and the Wandering Eye. It's the third in a series of detective novels with Jane Austen as the detective protagonist, and I was given them as a group. And I will likely pass them on as a group, because they're mildly entertaining but not really the sort of thing I'm going to want to keep around to reread. I am not nearly as enamored of Jane Austen as the author is, and the framing device makes me want to scream every time I encounter it.

I'm also continuing to pick at The Mark of the Sea Serpent, because that seems to be the book my brain is willing to do right now. And it's fun, and it's nice to be writing something fun for awhile. It's not that Sampo has been a hideous slog (well...except that it has, in spots), it's that it's a very different kind of book, with very different point-of-view characters. And long. That sounds shallow -- "This book is sooooo long, and it doesn't even have any pictures in it!" -- but it's a very different writing experience for me, doing stuff at adult vs. YA length. I get homesick for one while doing the other.