Awesome news and sad news:

Awesome news first: Just spent a week "back east" in Ohio and West Virginia, complete with beautiful fall foliage, and got to visit relatives I really like, as well as my grandmother, for whom I feel so sorry due to her neurotic anxiety. During that time, Brianade went missing for one day, so that was also a bit exciting.
` The day after I got home, I also survived a most colorful adventure on a most gloomy day -- as the three-month drought seems to be over -- transporting a project motorcycle in the rain.

Now the sad news: Lou Ryan's mother's brain just died. She only has a breathing reflex, because during a medical procedure, about a pint of blood got loose in her head and drowned her brilliant neural network.

 

She was a great mother, math professor, and beginning shooter.

This is especially bad, since she was also helping us to buy the house, for which we just had to tear down the chicken coop for no reason in order to placate those blasted landlords and their lies.
` Just as we thought that ordeal was over (and it just happened to be an ordeal), we're wondering if we'll be able to keep the house after all.

As for me, I've been looking for writing jobs and have been straightening up my office, as I had rearranged the furniture before leaving on my trip. My office looks better than it ever has, despite still being a small bit messy.
` I was also just getting back into one of my Great Courses, which I had bought last Christmas -- and no sooner did I get 15 minutes in, then Lou came into my quasi-mess and parked himself for a half hour, until I was too sleepy to continue with the video lecture (as I'm still on Eastern Standard Time).

While this kind of interruption happens often, he was mostly talking about the consequences of his mother dying and all, so I didn't think it was right to ask him to give me my space this time. This paid off, too, as he came up with a good idea:
` Since she is technically still "alive", Lou's now telling his lawyer brother (who's at the hospital in California) to sign up as her guardian so that he can disperse her money tax-free before her heart stops.

Her name was Charlene, but I called her "MathMom", because she was always there over the phone to help get me through my college math classes. On her most recent visit this past June, she bought us our gray fluffball, Dilly, as well as the sandals that I wore to The Amazing Meeting.
` You can hear and sort-of see her in this video where Dilly indulges in falling backwards off of a piece of furniture (that's not me giggling, BTW):

 

I didn't know Charlene extremely well, but I can say she was very nice and patient and cool, much like my own mom, whom I was just visiting and feel all the more fortunate to have. She also did much to protect her sons from their crazy and abusive dad, who is still alive and spiteful for no real reason.

` Two of the things Crazy Dad did was pretend to pay Lou's college loan and instead let it lapse so that Lou's credit would suffer, and also didn't forward the letter to Lou about the six-figure job waiting for him after college.

` Thanks to him and a bunch of other cheating bastards, Lou is still struggling to make ends meet, and wouldn't even have this house if it weren't for his mom. And so, if it were Lou's dad that had died, we wouldn't be in this mess, nor would we even be sad.

Why is it that the best people seem to die before the asshats? Here's to Charlene, one of the best people I've ever met!