Not quite as painfree or instant as the first, but I think they used a larger dose—they waited 20 minutes instead of 5 on the lidocaine taking effect, and I think there was a reason. The raised swelling on the knee was pronounced and remained so for the next half week. BUT—it is doing well now, and I do hope it continues. I’m moving well enough now that I notice OTHER muscle pains from finally using them as I should.

Weather is continuing on the cooler side of mild. Jane and I are starting to clean up for fall shut-down of the garden, and we have been making considerable progress in redoing the living room for fall—ie, we have moved out the therapy table which was becoming a catchall, gotten rid of things we don’t need, and just in short are recovering after nearly half a decade of house remodeling.

It began with a leak in the bathroom that let shower water rot a bit of floor and that also used a gap in the grout to reach the wallboard behind the tile…they used ordinary wallboard, not concrete board as is modern code. So all the tile in the bath had to be ripped out, and we went at it over the counter top as well. We (ourselves) used new plywood and leveling compound to repair the hole in the floor, ripped out all the pipe, including the tub drain, and installed a new sink, while also calling in actual tile guys to tile the countertop and shower/tub surround. And started refinishing the bathroom cabinet. But then a rip happened in bedroom carpet, and I hated that carpet—so we ended up taking up ALL the carpet and installing laminate flooring in the whole house — ourselves — until we ran up against the picture window, and realized it was sagging into a wall crack, and mold was involved. So we called in window guys, started to replace the picture window, and then decided to replace ALL the windows (all of which had problems dating from the 1950’s) and they did that AND repaired the wall. Then we met Scott, our friend and carpenter, and well, the kitchen cabinets…which instead of a repair ended up in a total redo, to the walls and stripping the floor, which took a year (we did the vinyl laminate flooring ourselves); and then we refloored the finished side of the basement and redid walls and ceiling and installed closets, and then…we went for the unfinished side of the basement, installing a second (and badly needed) bathroom and a storeroom for kitchen stuff and tools, besides the free space….Jane’s sister passed away, and, keeping a promise, we made a winter trip by car to Illinois to take in her two elderly kitties and take care of the estate, then, returning home, found they hated our two cats, so they had to live in the basement; and then we lost one of the elderly kitties and the other went into mourning; so we acquired Finity, the Terror Kitten, who flits between basement cat and our two (I suppose we could call them ceiling cats) and keeps the peace. So we had the cleanup, which we were doing when Scott had to move to the east coast for family reasons. Then Jane’s hip joints gave out entirely, she was in terrible pain, and I had cancer and chemo and then Jane’s gallbladder nearly ‘sploded [and occasioned a run to the ER in a snowstorm at 3am), and it was 2020. So we couldn’t get food for the marine tank, we couldn’t hire anybody to help us, and generally boxes accumulated from Amazon orders and we coped as best we could with me weak as a kitten and Jane unable to lift anything weighing as much as a kitten during part of it. BUT, we are now doing cleanup from all of that, we are both recovering nicely, and we are starting to clean up (first) the areas we live in.

For those of you who came in late, that is what has gone on. Now I’m hauling my marine tank back from the brink, and we are cleaning up the garden—we planted another lotus, and the waterlilies all bloomed, and the outdoor fishes are doing splendidly. As are we. Jane is now recovering from hip surgery, neither of us had Covid, I am getting back up to speed with typing (chemo did a number on my hands) and we are cleaning up the living room and bedrooms and the end of the kitchen where things have piled up is next.

We are nearly done with Alliance Unbound, and we will be writing the next Foreigner book together and catching up.

And that’s what’s been going on.