um ... hi!

So, I've been pretty out of the blog loop lately.  I guess I just haven't figured out how to make blogging a regular part of my life, but I'd like to try and do better.

Things have been really crazy since the Washington Pen Show.  The show itself was pretty awful - my poor roommate got horribly sick, and I got horribly sick a day after I got back at the end of the show.  It was the worst illness I'd had in a while, and I deeply pitied my roommate even more than I had at the time, knowing she hadn't been at home when she experienced this illness.  Yeesh.

The show itself was nice, but I hated being shackled to my table to sell stationery.  It wasn't worth it, and next year I'll go without getting a table so I can enjoy the show more.  I barely got to see the main room at all in 2016!

Shortly after I got back from the show, one of my cats fell ill.  Like, BADLY ill.  She was hospitalized in the VEC (vet emergency clinic) in Toronto for a full week.  The bill came to $7k (ouch), and when she returned home, I had to adhere to an insane regime of force feedings through a tube in her stomach at all hours of the night, meds morning and night, the works, and it lasted for months and months.  The vet was optimistic that April would eventually fully recover, so I kept doing everything they suggested and kept hoping, despite continual vet bills that came with bi-weekly check ups and months more of medication that cost $300/month (for just the meds, never-mind the blood-work and tests!).  So far the bill is up at $10k.  Of course, I didn't have that money, and KWS sales were extremely slow given that the printer no longer worked for Tomoe River paper, so I used up all my savings and took out a $5k line of credit at the bank to cover the cost.

I got comfortable, I'll admit.  I thought April was going to bounce back.  At another check up last week, bad news came back from her blood-work - her liver ALT levels ere rising, which indicates a chronic liver inflammation.  She will have to take antibiotics for the rest of her life, and there's no guarantee the antibiotics will even work to keep the infection under control.  All I can do is keep taking her back for check ups and keep hoping.

 Since August 2016, my father has been hospitalized three times, which throws everything into a spiral of chaos at our house.  Mom & I don't like dad to be alone at the hospital given his dementia, so she's there during the day and I come to help support her at night.  Whenever we bring him home, his delirium has left his cognition much further advanced, and it takes weeks to get him even somewhat back to his baseline.  Each time, his new normal is worse than the time before.

In December 2016, mom cracked under the stress and had a "threatened stroke" or TIA.  We stayed in the hospital all day, her speech slurred, her cognition slowed to almost a halt.  It took weeks for her to recover fully, but I'm just grateful there was no paralysis.

And finally, just recently, I got horrible sick with a bad cold.  After a week, I thought I was healed, but two back to back kick boxing classes proved me wrong, and I woke up the next morning bed ridden.  I ended up taking a week off work.  I just started back last week, and I can still feel the virus crouching in my throat, waiting for me to get cocky again and go back to the gym to show me just how NOT healed I am.

Suffice it to say that I'm doing my best to hold it together, but it hasn't been extremely easy lately.  Still, I'd like to try and be better about keeping this blog even slightly in the loop.

I leave you with a photo of Calli, looking as put out as I felt over the last eight months!