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I've been a little glum and a bit stressed lately.

My grandmother's health hasn't been so good for the past week or so (not surprising, given that she's 99). She was doing pretty badly a week ago; then had a sudden strong recovery; now she seems to be failing again. I don't know whether to go up and see her or not. I was just up there last month, and we don't have a lot to say to each other at this point. And she's been through bad spells before; she might well be around for a while yet. On the other hand, she might not. I dunno. I'm no good at goodbyes, especially not permanent ones.

Closer to home, the sun has been out, which usually cheers me up, but the weather's mostly been too hot, especially in my room when I'm trying to sleep. Work's been going okay, and in fact I've recently finished a couple of things that have been hanging over me for a long time, but I've been pretty distracted; both at work and not, I've been having a hard time focusing in general. Partly for a variety of personal reasons I'm not going to go into here, partly because I've been obsessed with iPhone news :), partly 'cause I keep reading discussions on the Internets, partly for reasons I'm not clear on.

And that hard-time-focusing has especially applied to magazine stuff. In a time when submission volume is ridiculously high (last week was the third-highest-volume week ever--the only two higher-volume weeks were the insanely high-volume first weeks of January in 2006 and 2007), I'm reading slower than usual instead of faster. I did finally settle down over the weekend and get a bunch of reading done, but I'm still most of a week behind on reading, and way behind on editing.

I've been enjoying reading various blog discussions. (Well, okay, this paragraph mostly applies to a week or two ago; I haven't read blogs much these past few days.) The latest rounds of the great floating anti-feminist-sf flamefest were depressing (and I mostly avoided reading them), but various people responded with excellent, smart, and often very funny comments; I'm proud to know y'all. Collected a fair number of links to point people to various parts of the conversation(s), but don't have the energy or time to put together a real post about that stuff; I'll settle for linking to Tempest's summary, which links both to various of the depressing bits and to various of the lovely responses. Oh, okay, what the hell: see also tacithydra's post (with links) and especially the very excellent and funny comments on Hannah's post. And everyone's been heaping well-deserved praise on silk_noir for not only being willing to engage with the unpleasantness but doing so extremely well. (I can't link directly to her post at the Asimov's forum, but various of the entries I'm linking to here will tell you how to get to it.)

Over the weekend I spent a lot of time on the phone and a lot of time reading. Sunday was Father's Day, of course, and I meant to post a Father's Day entry but the first half of this entry was sitting there in the queue waiting for me to finish it, and I got distracted and didn't get around to it. Spent most of the afternoon with Kam's family, mostly in the swimming pool; her niephlings have grown tremendously in the 2+ years since last I saw them. Especially her niece, who's about to turn 3, and who was an infant last time I saw her. And who has become thoroughly charming and kind of bossy (in a thoroughly charming sort of way). I was especially pleased that she took to me almost immediately (after a few seconds of token bashfulness).

Anyway, I was too distracted by all that to spend much time that day thinking about Peter.

Yesterday, spent all day tense and even more distracted than usual lately, over an email kerfuffle. Went to a small birthday dinner for Twig, then had some cake. Afterward, watched some Schoolhouse Rock and A Close Shave, which is just as fun and silly as ever. ("We'll call him Shaun!" is still my favorite line--one of those puns that only works in a British accent.) Then I stayed up 'til nearly 4 a.m. writing email and editing, and I woke up around 8, so I was completely wiped out all day today--a day in which I had three meetings and a talk to attend, a lunch, and a phone interview. Planned to come home early but didn't finish writing up interview notes 'til 6:30.

There are all sorts of things I want to post about: Lloyd Alexander's death a couple weeks ago, more WisCon stuff I haven't finished writing up, a friend's good news, yard/patio status update, and the usual assortment of links, oddments, and musings. Oh, and lots of lolcat stuff. But all that'll have to wait for the unlikely event of my having a little more time and energy.

So for now, I'd better go try to get some editing and submission reading done before I completely collapse.

(Wrote most of this entry about five days ago, didn't manage to update and finish it 'til now.)