Eyes, Heat, Steam

My son River’s exam under anesthesia last Friday went beautifully. His glaucoma hasn’t gotten worse at all, even though his last surgery was in 2008. Basically the best possible outcome. Yay! He wasn’t under long, so he woke up quickly, and wasn’t that groggy afterward. Apart from dilated pupils and light sensitivity, he was his old self again by late afternoon. He gets another check-up in 5 or 6 months, and they’re going to see if they can check him without putting him under. He might be old enough to deal with a strange guy poking at his eyes without freaking out.

Yesterday I spent about 11.5 hours at work, finishing up the September Steampunk issue of A Certain Magazine. Well, I wasn’t alone; my co-workers were there too. As was my child, known to twitter readers everywhere as Officebaby. It was a perfect storm of lousy timing: his preschool is closed for teacher prep week, and because his mom’s leaving town today, she had to go into her office yesterday to get some necessary work done, and couldn’t watch the kid.

I was, frankly, pretty worried about getting all the million end-of-issue things done with the kid there — but he was a perfect angel and a trouper. My managing editor’s ten-year-old daughter came in to do kid-watching duty, and played with him all day long. She even stayed in with him while he napped until he fell asleep. (And proceeded to sleep for about 3 hours — that was also very helpful!) When it became clear I was going to be at work past my son’s bedtime doing the final prep on the issue, my editor-in-chief gave the kid a ride home. The issue turned out great. It might be the coolest-looking of any of our special issues.

As a reward for being so good yesterday, River gets to do whatever he wants today. (He votes playground, ice cream, waterfight!) It’s the first truly hot day I’ve had off work all summer, but his doctor says he can’t go swimming because of his recent ear infection. We can play waterguns though! Should be a nice day.

But kind of a lonely week. My wife is soon off to New York for the wedding of a dear friend, and won’t be back for several days. We couldn’t really afford for both of us to go, and since my wife is the one in the wedding party, she wins. So I’ll be solo parenting for a while. Fortunately my mother-in-law will be in town later this week, so she’ll help some.

And, as recompense for my time spent solo parenting, my wife is letting me slip away for a rather long weekend over Labor Day. I’ll be going down to L.A. to stay with a friend for a few days on a sort of mini writing retreat, with the goal of getting ludicrous quantities of work finished on the novel I am (or, should be) writing. I’ve also got a couple of stories to write.

My serialization of Broken Mirrors was a huge success. I wrote a postmorten post with various details and final thoughts if you’re interested. The Kindle version should be available for sale in a day or two. I’ll be sending out fundraiser prizes over the next couple of months. For many of the prizewinners I need to wait until I get my finished copies, and get the chapbook printed (and *cough cough* written), so most prizes will go out in late September and October, probably. But all will ship by year’s end, as promised. It was a great adventure. Thanks to everyone who donated, read, and/or told their friends.