This is how today was supposed to go:
I was going to get up, clear the remnants of yesterday’s snow and last night’s “wintry mix” from the stairs and the car, eat breakfast with Steve, who would then go off to cardiogym. My time would be spent vacuuming the house, then moving on to editing Degrees of Separation. After Steve returned from gym, and we had supper, I would meditate, then move on to working on Monkey Business.
This is how today went:
Steve experienced an atrial fibrillation, though we didn’t know the name until later. This meant that I drove him in to the cardiologist’s office, where an EKG was performed, his on-board defibrillator queried, and the log downloaded; followed by a meeting with the cardiologist, who needed blood work, and the whole thing took hours, naturally, and obscures the fact that we were actually very lucky that all the pieces were in place to move Steve very quickly from expert to expert with hardly any waiting in-between.
No changes in meds, though he does get a Brand New Toy to carry around with him — AliveCor, a little gizmo he can carry in his pocket, which will take an on-the-fly EKG and email the results to his doctor.
What an age we live in.
We came home for a late supper, proofread “Block Party,” per the request of our editor at Baen, and now I’m going to move on to editing Degrees of Separation, which I want to finish this evening, but probably won’t.
So, anyway.
If you are one of the small donors who would have been made to carry an out-of-proportion percentage of fees paid at Patreon, and withdrew your pledge from (a) favorite creator(s) for that reason — Patreon has announced that they will not be rolling out that fee schedule.
And now? I’m for some editing.
We’re adding an on-board defibrillator to the family 14 Dec 2017, and I want to say thank you. Humans are not quite as important as cats on a universal scale of being, but they are essential on a day-to-day basis and therefore should have as many days as possible. Worry about our local Steve has resulted in Pepe, attuned to human concerns, compulsively tearing fur from his tail. We’re hoping that surgery goes well on Thursday during the installation of the internal gadget, and that we can all get back to plodding placidly through our day-to-day schedules along an arc of well-lived years.
The on-board device is a marvelous thing. I hope the installation goes well, and that Steve will speedily return to Pepe’s supervision.