I have been ill with flu and depression, and have got no writing of any value done lately. The most I have been able to do is amuse myself by pottering about with background stuff of at best questionable utility.

In the midst of this, I was woken last night by a phone call: My father, who is 87 and in an advanced state of dementia, is now in hospital with pneumonia. As often happens in such cases, he cannot swallow liquids without aspirating them, so can only be fed or medicated intravenously, and he has water in his lungs. He is not expected to survive.

I would be most grateful if any of my readers were to pray for him, and for my family generally.

It comes to my attention, as a difficult summer draws to an end, that altogether too many people (some of my 3.6 Loyal Readers among them — I will not hide the truth even to protect them) are still writing books, and even releasing them to the public, despite the very best efforts of the publishing industry to put a stop to this pernicious practice. It would appear that some of you out there have not yet mastered the art of not writing, and still leak wordage from time to time. Herewith, a few helpful tips gleaned from my own recent experience. If you are still writing and want to help stem the tide, here are some methods you might try:

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I see that I have let my blog lie fallow for more than a month, which is never a good sign. In case my 3.6 Loyal Readers are still alive and wondering what became of me, here is a brief summary:
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I was going to go out tonight to get a bite at Denny’s and work on the next bit of the Octopus, but a hitch has come up. We’re having freezing fog here, and the back stairs of my building were covered in glare ice. I slipped on the stairs and took a concrete step in the middle of the back. Almost passed out from the pain (and a certain amount of whiplash). I have just been on the phone with Alberta Health Link, which provides 24-hour medical advice, and while they don’t consider it strictly necessary for me to go to hospital, they do warn me that I’ll have bruising and more pain for the next couple of days – and that I should go to the nearest ER if I start having symptoms X, Y, and especially Z.

Halfway up the stairs
There’s a stair
Where I slip.
There isn’t any traction there,
Feet don’t
Grip.
I fell on my bottom,
I hurt at my top,
Because of the stair
Where I had
My
Drop.

(With apologies to A. A. Milne)

No progress tonight on either fiction or essais, as I had to take my mother to hospital and wait with her in the ER for several hours. If no further emergencies occur, I hope to resume work tomorrow.

EDIT, 08:07: The hospital called shortly after 5 a.m. to say that my mother was being discharged. She was, however, sound asleep when I arrived. By the time she was waked, dressed, and discharged, and I delivered her home and got home myself, the round trip had taken two hours at a time when my body had serious expectations of being asleep; and in blizzard conditions, too.

Fortunately, she is essentially all right. She had been extremely constipated for several weeks, and had reached the point of evacuating traces of blood — and nothing else. We feared a structural blockage, a tumour or intussusception, which could be extremely serious at her age (and in her generally frail condition). But there was no such condition, and they have helped her to get things moving again. I am not impressed, however, with the nursing staff at her assisted-living facility, for allowing her to get into such a state to begin with.