18 September 2003

Two weeks from today, I get a C.J. from the airport. Three weeks from this morning, I will wake up in our own house. Assuming everything goes right, of course.

Today, my grandpa is having surgery.

It's minor surgery -- routine, they have called it. But I am not there. But it's supposed to be an in-and-out sort of job, barely any hospital time at all. But I am not there. But Grandpa is glad to be getting it taken care of. But I am not -- well, you get the point. If I was there, I would sit in uncomfortable chairs with Mom and Grandma and listen to the hum of vending machines and of other people who have much more to worry about than we do. I would probably read Greenwitch, because that's what I read in the hospital when my grandparents get surgery. Not that it's happened all that many times. But I couldn't be useful if I was there, so I'll just putter around here and wait for the phone call telling me everything went beautifully.

Our mortgage lady is being all happy and reassuring and getting stuff done for us, and I'm glad. Especially because I feel a little weird about filling out change-of-address forms and all of that when not everything is signed. When we got our apartments, we signed everything the second day, and then there it was: we knew where we were moving and when. We were allowed to. It was right there in black and white and blue ballpoint.

But Pam our mortgage being says it'll all be wonderful early next week. And I know that all kinds of people change their address before things are absolutely signed and sealed. And as one person so kindly pointed out, if everything fell through at this point, changing the address again on my Analog subscription would be the least of my problems. So. It'll all be okay, and I'll fill out the forms and everything will be fine.

I'm going to start packing a non-book box today. I think it's time. We have enough vases and candlesticks and cookie tins and the like; I can wrap and pack some of them. And it should be a fiddly, puttery job for when I'm distracted. I'm also doing fiddly, puttery jobs in the writing sense sometimes: typing in edits from a paper manuscript. This is a good thing because a) it needs doing; and b) then we can use those defunct manuscript pages to scrunch up and pack around things, or we can recycle them rather than moving them; and also c) I don't have to think too much about it when I'm focused on other things. So when I'm not focused on other things, I can do new edits or write new material, but when the monkey-brain is stuck on worries, I can just distract it with this stuff until it shuts up.

Hmmmm. Neil Gaiman's journal says that his son's school is closed because of the hurricane. And I know someone who goes to his son's school. So maybe after I hear that everything is okay, I can call her and talk because she won't be at school? Maybe? Speaking of distractions. It's a thought. And a more fun thought than cleaning the bathrooms.

(Oh, I can just see her jumping for joy now. "You think I'm more fun than cleaning bathrooms? How sweet of you!" I don't say that to just everybody, you know....)

I finished The Persistence of Vision and started Thomas Costain's The Black Rose. It's an old historical novel, and it's moderately interesting right now, though not gripping me by the lapels and forcing me to read. It smells like a library book, though. So many of the library books I get don't smell like library books; they've been made from newer, more resilient paper, or they haven't been sitting on the shelf, or they haven't been to enough variety of homes to soak up all the different smells and average them out. They just smell like books. The Black Rose smells like a library book. I have to stop myself from leaning over and smelling it repeatedly.

Well, the news on the phone is good: they got Grandpa put back together, and he's doing well. He'll be home tomorrow or Saturday. It's nice when "minor" surgeries actually are minor. Puts me in a better mood for the whole day.