I'm sitting downstairs in the den of the house, surrounded by a bunch of square, brown boxes, each about the size of two large shoeboxes glued together. They are all quite hefty, weighing in at exactly 5 kilos or 11.5 pounds. They arrived on a gigantic pallette being carried inside a vibrantly orange world courier truck. If, perchance, someone on home dialysis is reading this right now, you already know what I'm talking about. These boxes are all filled with double layered, perfectly sterile, plastic bags, that in turn are filled with dialysate (sp?) solution. Basically they're boxes with water in them. All the space that was cleared out down here on Saturday is going to be filled with these boxes. There are about...well, I want to say about thirty. I can't see quite all of them from where I'm sitting. I'll guess there are about 35. Two weeks worth, at any rate. These little brown boxes hold the key to dad's home dialysis, which will be beginning on the 4th of July...our own little independence day. He'll finally be free of the wretched clinic with it's sappy nurses and whacked out schedule. And maybe, just maybe, he can find a little peace of mind and start to heal. He can certainly get back onto a normal schedule, instead of getting up at 5:30am and shuffling off to a bright, stark clinic full of people who want to suck away his blood. (What is it about medical people and ungodly hours of the night and day?) Soon more stuff will be arriving, as well as two nurses from the clinic to oversee our first day at home with the NxStage machine. Apparently we're the only folks in East Tennessee to ever try it. I suppose that makes us special, though I must admit it doesn't seem very important. It's a darned nifty machine, though. Bloody efficient. And there are enough color coded tubes involved in this process to make your head spin!

As for me...well. I've mostly spent my week off doing a lot of cooking and gaming. Once again, I'm pretty bored replaying the same old video games over and over again. They're all excellent games, but still. One gets tired of doing the same thing over and over again no matter how high quality the experience is. Tomorrow will officially be seven days since the completion of my novel, so that means it's time to start editing again. I need to read Holly Lisle's articles on the matter before I get started, though. After her interview with Mur at ISBW, I want to do my drafts exactly like she does, because I'm the kind of person who gets bored quickly, and if I have to edit my novel more then once or twice, it's going to be hell. I'd rather have a long and bloody first editing process then a slow, comfortable one that gets dragged out over several months. This novel has been dragged out long enough already. I promise that by the end of this year, it will be finished, and I mean totally finished. Admittedly, I still have no idea what I'm going to do with it when I'm done, or if I've even got the guts to try and get it published somehow, but I'll deal with that when the time comes. I plan on asking a lot of questions of the good folks at the ISBW forums and bugging all the podcasters I know for help. I have absolutely no doubt I'll find someone who knows something. :)

( Whining about time off, and the recollection of dreams... )

Anyway. I've rambled on for far too long as it is. :) Time for bed. As Alton said once: Strange times a comin'...but tasty.