field report

I came back to my childhood home the other day to stay with my dad while my mom is away at a conference - he's not an invalid, but there are one or two things it's hard for him to do by himself, and generally everybody felt better with his not being alone for days on end, so here I am. And he's doing really well! For a while he was getting all his many medications crushed up and fed in through his feeding tube, but for a long while now he's been taking the pills by mouth, and eating more real food as well!, and so I'm here basically to keep him company, change the bag in the feeding machine once a day (which is hard for him to do just because the angles are difficult), and fetch and carry when he's already got one hand full of toting the machine around and the other full of hanging onto a banister or something for balance. He's really in great spirits and feeling so much better and stronger - he was doing well when we were all here a couple of months ago, but this is even better, and the difference from last Christmas is frankly shocking. He even says he's gained some weight, which would be marvelous.

So I hope everyone's having a great time at Con.txt. Of course I wouldn't be joining you at the con even if I were in town, but I'd be getting together with people here and there in outside areas - but I hope you understand that I'm kind of not at all sorry not to be there right now. :-)