SotR: 2009-02-22

Feeling a lot more back on balance after last week's general insanity. With DunDraCon over for another year and Awards Week done at work -- not to mention the career of one of my friends, likewise done -- I'm going to need sustained balance and focus.

On the health front, things look pretty good. The best news is that the legs are not exuding as much fluid as they have been, thanks to the diuretics my doc has prescribed. Less exudate means less tissue damage around the wound sites and improved healing. It also means less odor, which is career-preserving and promotes sociability, something I need for that all-elusive balance. The serum glucose levels have been good to fantastic. Except for a 150+ spike at DunDraCon (kind of expected, actually, thanks to all the literature I've read on traveling with diabetes), I've been in the 100-140 zone the doc says I need to be in. 80-140 is my Green zone, 140-150 is Yellow, 150+ is Red. I've even lost ten pounds the last couple of months.

Less than five weeks till I turn fifty. When I was younger I did not expect to live even half as long as this. Not because I was active suicidal, far from it. Simply put: I did not expect to survive my military service three decades ago. Even in "peacetime" actual accidents happen. Given that when diplomats and heads of state make mistakes, the price is often paid by people in uniform, I honestly expected that I would be one of the unlucky ones who came back in a box, or not at all. You see, I grew up in a time when scores of American kids a week were killing and dying in a foreign land. The casualty numbers came into my living room on the nighty news back then.

Well, as things turned out, I was spared that fate. For a time, I was a bit lost as to what to do with myself. My 20s and 30s were spent in search of cluses as to why I was spared. Evn my first major clue, delivered just after my 22nd birthday, was kind of lost on me at that time. By the time I hit 40, the accumulated clues began to make sense. Four years ago, the next clue came into actual being, the cutest little red headed clue-hammer the world has ever seen™. This summer, the Mjolinir of Clue Hammers will, with the Gods' blessings, will enter my life. And this time, I'm ready.

Now I am on the threshold of elderhood. All of my explorations, all of missteps, the vector sum of my life's journey this time 'round the Wheel, have made me ready.

Not to mention blessed.