Snowed in here in Boston. The place is quiet. Mudd and Mandy busy themselves with reception planning and responses to the flowers and cards. It’s lovely watching them play with Xander. I do dishes. I can do dishes.

We got a foot of snow day before yesterday. It lovingly blanketed and paralyzed the town like the embrace of a spider. I spend most days writing code and Skyping friends. Finally, the audio engine is turning into something really game-changing. Damn the economy; my businesses are finally starting to pay off.

Apparently, I’m in Theatre Bay Area magazine for March. There is apparently a favorable article about The Hermit Bird there, and they gave me an Editor’s Pick and a sidebar. If you happen to have a copy of the magazine, I’d love to see it.

I’m speaking at GDC in San Francisco, on March 24, in the Tools and Middleware Panel. I’ll be in town all that week, hobnobbing with fellow wizards on Monday evening, if you’d like to hang out and have a something with me.

I went home and worked for the past week and a half. I talked to Amanda every day. He was sleepy and odd but chatty and personable — still very much himself. I was scheduled to fly back to Boston tomorrow.

Last night, though, around 4 a.m., something in Nurn’s status changed. He was more confused than usual. He was scared. An hour later, in the company of his wife and mine, he was dead. I missed saying goodbye by one day.

I’m at Las Vegas International now, flying back to Boston a day early. The funeral will be the same day as the opening of The Hermit Bird, outside of San Francisco. (I’ll provide further details here when I know them.)

I am sure that all this has a deeper significance. For the time being, I’m not going to think too much; I just need to get back to her as soon as possible. There’ll be plenty of time for thinking later.

At this moment, at this precise moment, I’m all right. I’m worried about Amanda.

The IV tube developed a slow trickly leak. We think the nurse broke it when she attached the new drip. It slowly spooged saline onto his stomach. So we figured out how to disable the machine. It beeped forlornly for a while until I figured out how to silence the beep.

I babysat the baby for a couple hours. It was my first time ever babysitting. I put the morphine out of his reach. We colored with some permanent magic marker on some newspaper. A little got on his face.

I replaced the light switch and demonstrated how to use the fuse box. She had never seen a fuse box before. Standard fifteen-amp breakers. I set up remote access controls on all their computers, to provide remote tech support. Tomorrow I’ll set up a backup device.

The drainage bag has a little blue valve on it, connecting to the G tube. Empty the contents into a plastic urinal and dump it out. Be careful to snap the valve completely back to “closed” when you’re done. You’ll hear it click. The snap is very important. Listen for it.

Visitors; well-wishers; nurses; neighbors; a social worker. A woman came by yesterday. Fiftyish, graying hair, about fifty pounds overweight. She cradled a gallon jug of water like a warm loaf of bread. “I’m not coming here to sell you anything,” she said. “I am just delivering this ionized water. This water here is produced by a machine and there are only eighteen thousand of those machines in the world. I tell you, I tried this water eight months ago and I’m in the best health of my life. Again, I’m not here to sell you anything. But this is Kangen water. I’ve got it covered here, with this rag, because the ions are affected by light, so you just want to cover this jug with a dishcloth or anything, as soon as possible, to keep the light out. This process was invented thirty years ago in Russia, and this machine is imported specially from Japan, and it modifies the water’s ability to fight free radicals, through the use of the natural antioxidants. Again, I’m not selling this water to you. It’s a gift, from a friend, who heard about your illness, and wishes you to recover as soon as possible. So you’re not saying anything, I’m having a hard time knowing what you might be thinking right now?”

The medical supply company came by an hour later. The delivery girl was maybe twenty, with a strong aroma of pear-shaped butch lesbian; close-cropped hair, no makeup, efficient. She provided three bags of zero point nine percent saline solution. It Must Be Refrigerated. “Yeah you can recycle that freezer bag, but the injections there don’t need to be refrigerated. You’ve got copies of everything in that bag over there, and if you need more batteries there are ten in here.”

The blankets must be folded. One across the chest, one across the feet.

So much talking. So, so many words. I listen to everything.

He wants me to take the longer bar out of the bedroom and install it in the backyard. It’s a longer bar, and it’s intended to replace the bar that’s already there. There was a bird feeder out back, but the squirrel was able to get into it. I have not seen the squirrel, but I am informed that he exists, and he takes the food from the bird feeder. So if a longer bar is installed, the squirrel will be unable to crawl along it. I suggested using safflower seeds. Squirrels don’t like them. But he wants the longer bar.

Sanitary wipes, gauze, latex gloves; Heparin, a highly-sulfated glycosaminoglycan; postage prepaid sharps disposal unit.

The baby got out of his crib at naptime. He got into the staples and paperclips. They went everywhere. I searched for “Elmo” on Youtube. I don’t know how to babysit, really.

Two rooms; only two, for everyone, all the time.

[Undone.]

An expensive flight, day before yesterday, to Manchester, New Hampshire. Mandy’s sister Jodie was there at the airport to pick us up. She’s ever so slightly round with the bump of a girl on the way. The sides of the roads are covered in ice here. Amanda wears her fur coat. It’s an actual fur from actual previously living animals with fur; she discovered it at an estate sale, and paid twenty dollars for this fur coat, which was made from beasts killed from before we both were born.

We arrived at Mandy’s parents’ place. Mudd is there, smiling and looking happy to see us. Sister, Mom and Mandy cuddle on the couch a little, smiling, recounting stories, crying a little. I make scrambled eggs for Mandy and me.

Next morning, Jodie brings Xander to visit. Xander is pushing two years old and may well be the most amiable human being I have ever met. He has a handful of one-syllable words at his disposal, and he works them mighty hard. “nooo” is actually snow, which is intended to be carried to the tub in a large pot, and dispensed into cups there. Mandy is consistently referred to as “mehmeh” and she is wildly popular.

Nurn, Mandy’s father, is looking a bit gaunt, but he is very much himself… funny, personable. He hugs Mandy and hugs me, cautioning me from touching his stomach. Nurn has been disconnected from most of the beepy machines by his bedside. His breathing sounds normal. Nurn has had a port installed in his stomach. By turning a valve this way or that, we can vent liquids from his stomach. So he can drink liquids again. Five hours of talking and holding his hands.

The hospital bed will probably be set up in the kitchen, a place where we can deal with spills and such. The hospice nurse is supposed to come every other day with morphine and other supplies. Nurn is going to be able to take some nourishment by mouth but he’s currently planning not to take it intravenously. “Weeks to months” says the oncologist, but oncologists are all just educated guessers anyway.

I have assignments. I must fix the bird feeder and possibly rewire the home Internet network to be more maintainable by Mudd, and also simplify the voice mail system. Man about the house. I can do those things.

Sorry for not writing much about myself these past few months. Introspection and observation has been hard enough; to do so publicly has been a little beyond my reach. It’s 6:17 a.m. and the sun hasn’t seen fit to appear yet.

I took Amanda to the airport this morning. Her father has gotten worse; the situation is not precisely clear but we hear that he’s in a great deal of pain, and her mother is extremely worried that he’s not willing to return to the hospital. Cancer is a whore.

I still am healing from when I hit the center divide in 2008. Chemicals help significantly, but the great love from friends and family has helped me more. I’m still resolving a lot of anger and sadness from that time — I wake up and process it with my morning coffee and Lexapro, and then head to work.

Work is finally picking up again. I had a key contract cancelled around the same time I went crazy, and times were lean. Fortunately, I was able to get it resigned, and I picked up where I had left off. My company’s first product, Silent Hill V, shipped, and the reviews for the sound were extremely positive.

Virago has entered production for The Hermit Bird and they’re trying like hell to wrestle a final draft out of me It’s fun to watch my story being made real by passionate artists.

New Years Eve was at my place this year. Amanda cooked a monster devil of a feast: black-eyed peas with ham and creme fraiche, jumbo shrimp with red pepper, garlic and lime; homemade mozzarella with insalata caprese; chocolate chip brioche with fresh fruit; and a dangerous champagne punch with cognac, Grand Marnier and Triple Sec. All my life, the majority of my close friends have been women, and this New Year’s Eve was no exception. Our house was filled with fairly stunning sweet people.

Friday eve: knitting party at Angela’s. Angela, Karen, Amanda and I squashed onto a big cozy bed, and we all watched Jane Austen and knitted. Well they knitted. I dozed in and out of consciousness, warm as an onion in a stew.

I rather lost faith in humanity for a while. Over the past few months I have made some awesome new friends who have given me a great deal of love and support as I’ve come back to life in progress. The majority of people in the world is good.