So in the last month, the following things have happened:

- After a lot of waffling around on the part of various doctors and social workers, my grandfather finally had to go from assisted living into a nursing home for good. He's lost all the strength in his legs and can't walk any more, and thanks to his Alzheimer's he can't remember that he can't walk any more, so left unsupervised, he kept getting up from bed/his chair/wherever and immediately hitting the deck.

- My great-aunt, last of her generation on my grandmother's side, died.

- I had a urinary tract infection, with accompanying fever that peaked at 104° and delerium.

- No sooner had I recovered from that (thank you, cephalexin) than I lost an argument with a kitchen cabinet door, and the floor, and smashed up my left leg about as badly as you can without breaking any bones. I tell you what, the next time you see a news report about someone being in an accident and suffering "only bruises", utter a hollow, mocking laugh for me.

- And then developed a staph infection in that knee, courtesy of the scraped-up skin and the massive amount of unallocated blood in the area. Despite having just finished a 10-day course of an antibiotic literally the day before. I am now on a different antibiotic. And some pretty heavy pain meds. And near-continual bed rest.

- The fall semester started this week. I am enrolled and my advisor and I are talking about research plans, but I cannot be said to be in any real way participating in the academic process at this time. Nor do I have a firm date when I'll be able to. This stretch at the keyboard is the longest one I've managed to put together for the last 10 days; most of the time I'm not up for anything heavier than tweeting from my phone.

And yet, amazingly, this was not the worst August I've ever had. It was arguably not even the second worst August I've ever had.

Fuck.

Anyway, I just thought you might like to know the reasons for this particular stretch of radio silence. These are not the hoofprints of your normal gods-fearing writer's block.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.