Deep Breaths.

This week, my father has a chance to be released from hospital.  While they found a multitude of problems going on with him, he's doing much better, is far more alert, they still found a 'leak' he's got inside his stomach that's not staunched yet, but the hope is that they can do another 'clamp' to get the little fiend under control.

Just hearing the news that the teams at the University Hospital have all been hopeful of him being stable in the long term was like coming up for air.  It has been a wild 9 days that I know were immensely difficult on him, and exhausting for him, and yet his big worry was how the cats were doing while he wasn't there.

I am feeling a bit more creatively energized.  The veil of stress has started to lift and there isn't a never-ending barrage of 'what-if's' and 'health update news' ricocheting around in my head for the first time in weeks.. Or has it been over a month.. 

Time is a bit of a blur.

Its my hope that I can start catching up here again.  Starting with getting the Patron sketch from June finished, and notifying the person who was on the list for last month's illustration after that.

I have more things I'd like to colour that have been sitting around for ages, and with it hitting August, the 'autumn fever' is starting to bubble in the back of the primordial soup of electrons that poses as my brain, and sketches are starting to form that involve leafy things and pumpkins, and a short-statured mare in a hat.

My fingers are crossed like Celtic knots, and I've knocked on anything and everything wood in hopes that my father recovers enough to come home.  He's tired.  I guess we all are.  But at least things are leaning towards the positive for the first time since last Saturday.

I want to thank all of you for the kind notes and thoughts, and for sticking around through all of this.  I'm lucky to have you all along for the ride, even if my time at the wheel tends to take us into the weeds or over a few lawns.  I'll keep trying to steer, even if my eyes are closed and I can't stop screaming :)

-T.J.