Another wrinkle that has developed over the last couple of weeks is that my mother, who was already suffering from Anemia of Unknown Origin and possibly impaired kidney function, somehow came down with Enterococcus faecalis blood sepsis. This is a bad, bad infection, with something like a 30% mortality rate. She's been hospitalized for two weeks while doctors first figured out what it was and what antibiotic to throw at it, then pumped her full of IV vancomycin for days on end.

The good news there is that she's feeling better every day, apart from the boredom and all the IVs and blood draws, and they're supposedly going to release her tomorrow. What happens then... remains to be seen. Given that this whole mess started with her going to bed one night feeling (her anemic version of) fine and woke up three days later in the hospital, after Vincent finally called an ambulance, she probably shouldn't sleep upstairs any more.

A one-legged man isn't going to be able to go up there and check on her, and she has a weird habit of leaving her phone downstairs. The only communication they had over those days was shouted remarks up and down the stairs, and Vincent says she sounded perfectly coherent to him--as she did when I stopped by an hour before he finally called an ambulance--but she remembers nothing of having any conversations with either of us during that time. The whole thing's been pretty scary. And they still haven't figured out where the iron that should be in her blood is going.

Oh, and while the first phase of that was going on, I had another UTI and felt like absolute shit for a week, because of course I did.

While all that was happening: On the plus side, Dad and I have been taking some time to reorganize my kitchen and hopefully convert it from its current slobular chaos into an environment in which I can actually explore my new culinary horizons. On the minus side, that's using up time we would otherwise be spending in the shop. We did get in there for a while this week, and it was nice to be back in the cool quiet and think about what the hell we were doing before we were so rudely interrupted by life.

Anyway, that's the State of the Gryphon address for now. I'm doing fine, Mom's... improving... and things may be returning to normal shop-wise later this month or in December.

Weather permitting. It is the beginning of winter in Maine, after all.

--G.
-><-
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.