“Don’t worry about not remembering, Mom.  I’m here to remember for you.”

-Susan, this morning, while taking care of her mom (Connie)

Connie is talking a little, but she’s very confused. She knows who we are, but not how she ended up in a bed, practically unable to move. She thinks either that she was badly beaten up or in an accident, and has no recollection of the whole cancer issue.

I tried to explain things to her, and she was saying ‘what about the doctors’; it was very very ( Read more... )

It’s pretty clear at this point that the bathroom fall, for any number of reasons, pushed Connie along on the path towards death.  She’s glassy eyed all the time, and has spoken only a couple of times - nothing all that clear or profound.  She’s lost in an incoherent jumble of dreams and past memories; needing to call in to a former supervisor in ( Read more... )

MERE’s 12th birthday was today (December 1st), and the present situation was really overshadowing it.  Didn’t help that a new local Creole/Cajun Restaurant (selected by Mere) that we had eaten at during Windycon earlier in November was providing the birthday dinner via carry-out, and that the food was truly horrible.  Mere and I were shocked, and I ( Read more... )

MERE is performing at her Lisle Junior High concert tonight; we’re going, of course.  She has been working on her flute and her new baby, a piccolo (think small, higher-pitched flute and remember what Yankee Doodle sounds like).  (sound example)  She was working on the material on and off all summer and steadily since then…all sorts of patriotic ( Read more... )

The real underlying news is that Connie’s condition has been really going downhill since Doug and his family left; Tuesday night (actually, about 3 am Wednesday) Connie started having pains, a racing heart rate and other troubles; Susan quickly decided that whatever was going on was way serious, and called up an ambulance - which took her to nearby ( Read more... )

WIRED magazine on why Special Forces had to land in person and not nail with a unmanned drone aircraft or just bomb the site from a distance.  The site is surrounded by all sorts of high-level Pakistani government / military sites, including their military academy, and drones or sloppy bombing could end up with worse problems than going in with a ( Read more... )

Stephy Lee (mail link) just called and said that Marta Rose, local fan and huckster, died suddenly earlier today. I didn’t know Marta very well, but others have mentioned her attendance at the local conventions, working huckster rooms, and her service with the Mundelein Library and the Kirk Players.

If you’re looking for more info, click on the ( Read more... )

The 97-year-old heir to the Caliphate and Sultanate of the Ottoman Empire, Osman, died recently in Istanbul…he was the last heir to have been born during the Ottoman Empire (he was a 12 year old student in Vienna when the Empire was abolished) and he spent the rest of his long life in exile, living for sixty years  in a rent controlled apartment in ( Read more... )

FOIA releases of a ton of emails to and from Governor Sanford of South Carolina’s office from various TV news types (most prominently MEET THE PRESS) offering all sorts of ‘we’ll act like we’re questioning you but we’ll make sure that you get all the softballs you want, and protect you from the nasties out there‘ prostitution-masquerading-as- ( Read more... )