Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Yesterday was my birthday, and I had a wonderful time.

I went to brunch with some friends at Nina, and then we went to see the American String Quartet perform. Good friends, good food, good music, and except for the howling wind, good weather. The best birthday I could hope for.

Today I'm keeping busy doing some unexpected writing. I got an email from my editor on Saturday saying they'd just discovered The Shade Of The Moon was going to have five empty pages at the back, and could I do something to fill those pages up?

One would have thought (and one speaks for all humanity) a publisher could have foreseen this particular issue before those five empty pages began looming. But what does one know?

Now, as it happens, I'm feeling kind of fond of my publisher these days because they decided the next time they reissue the moon books in paperback, they're going to put my discussion topics for each one in each one. I think this is an extremely high class thing to do, so smooches for my publisher, even if they didn't realize there'd be five empty pages at the end of The Shade Of The Moon.

So this morning, before I scurried over to my mother's to pick up her not one but two loads of laundry (the first of which is making merry in my merry old washer even as we speak, well, we're not speaking, but if we were load the first is in the washing machine), I came up with five discussion topics for The Shade Of The Moon, to occupy one of those five empty pages. This was actually trickier than I'd anticipated, since I didn't want anyone scurrying to the back of The Shade Of The Moon and finding out various plot twists by reading discussion topics. But I think I came up with some good book-specific but not spoileresque things to discuss.

My editor suggested I write an author's note to take up some of those empty pages, and that seems like a fine idea to me, since I'm the author and I know how to note. So after I finish this entry, I'm going to put my recycling in my car (I couldn't recycle today because it's a national holiday in this nation at least and this is the nation where I do my recycling) and throw out my garbage, and then I'll write a fabulous four page author's note all about The Four Little Moon Books And How They Grew.

The reason I'm trying to get all this stuff done today is because tomorrow morning (after, I hope, I do my recycling and get my mother's clean clothes to her) I'm zipping over to the hospital to get my thyroid yanked.
I'm told the technical name for this surgery isn't getting your thyroid yanked, but as a Yankee fan, I find that name kind of comforting.

I'd never given my thyroid a lot of thought, but apparently, during the long years of neglect, the thing's been growing nodes. Big nodes, little nodes, all kinds of nodes. They never bothered me, let me tell you, but the entire medical community thinks I'll be better off thyroid (and therefore thyroid node) free.

The most exciting part about this is I get to stay in the hospital for 23 hours (after which, presumably the insurance company comes to throw me out). I've never stayed in a hospital overnight before. My mother was in this hospital one night, and I really really liked the painting they had on her wall, so I'm hoping every room has the exact same painting and I can steal it. It was a scene of a park on a rainy autumn day, and I've thought about it wistfully for quite a while now.

After the 23 hours are finished, I go back home (my saintly friend Marci is taking me there and picking me up) and take thyroid pills for the rest of my life. This is not what you call life changing surgery, but it is making me get my recycling done and the suchlike, because I won't be able to lift anything heavy for a while, and I read a lot of newspapers.

Since I don't know how long it's going to take me to recuperate, I don't know when I'll feel like blogging or answering emails or behaving like a normal social human being. So if I don't answer your Happy Birthday Get Well Soon comments or emails, please know I appreciate them and will be glad to let you know how things are going when I feel up to it.

And now, I must move my mother's first load of laundry out of the drier and plop the second load in and prepare the newspapers for recycling and the garbage for throwing and write a four page author's note, while I still have a thyroid to call my own!