Habet duos testiculos et bene pendentes

I realise that most of my entries of late have been of a more political bent than usual, and that I have been writing very little about my own life.

Well – there is a reason for that. And while I have known about it for about three months, I have been working on how to write about it and working up the guts to write about it.

But since today is apparently a pretty historic day (the phrase "well that’s something you don’t see every day" kind of applies to Popes resigning, but you can substitute the word "century" and it would work equally well) I thought it might be a good time to come clean about what has been going on for the past few months.

(Of course, it is not actually that historic. It’s not like The Cardinals are going to elect a Pope who is actually cares about civil rights. In one months time, we will have the same bigoted, homophobic, misogynistic, woman-hating relic we have now, but he will be slightly younger and live for longer and screw over everyone who doesn’t fit his narrow-minded definition of "decent" for the next fifty years or so. But still – a resignation is a resignation, even if it is one that will not change a single thing). 

Sometime in the next four weeks, I am going in for open heart surgery – a valve replacement to be exact. I have known this has been a possibility for about the last 18 months, but it wasn’t actually confirmed until about three weeks before Christmas.

My most beloved and wonderful girlfriend is coming down to go with me to the hospital, and to look after me once I am discharged and released back in to the wild. 

The Hive has been unbelievably good about this – giving me time to teach a few other people how the stuff I am working on works (so that they can look after the project for the next three months or so) and letting me spend time sorting out my life for the next three months. They’ve also shown no desire to sack me because I won’t be at work, which – in this day and age – is also kind of nice. 

I’ve also had a lot of offers of support from the staff I work with – especially Jane and Evan, and Jessie and Trent. 

Most of the preparations are sorted out – the financial side, the house arrangements and so forth. But all we need now is a gorram date, which the hospital hasn’t yet managed to provide (which is fair enough – they don’t plan things years in advance and react to the events as they happen. And what with the government’s novel new way of running the NHS, who can blame them?). 

Tomorrow I have a pre-admission appointment, so hopefully they might be able to give me a date then. 

Otherwise there will a few more weeks of waiting and wondering and other words beginning with w (although not rude words). 

The other major side effect of this is that I have pretty much suspended all my story writing for the next four months. I have continued plotting a few stories (a political one, and one all about time travel and bending the time lines that encompasses around eight different fandoms at once) but not because I am going to write about them any time soon, but because wrapping my mind around the plots and the arcs takes my mind off other things.

(Mostly how much pain is coming my way in the next four months. The last time I had this was 14 years ago and bugger me it really was quite a painful recovery. Hopefully this will be made better, if not less painful, by having my most beloved looking after me, but still – probably there will be more than a little pain. Isn’t that fun?)

So – that’s all the news that is fit to post at the moment. And the reason why most of my posts have been about the political world rather than my world for the past few months. 

But hopefully – now that I have got over this step – I will be able to convince myself to write more over the next few months. 

(And possibly even pay for a subscription to this site – I’m not quite willing to go there yet, because I don’t know how much I’ll be writing!)