If anyone has been paying attention, they’ll have noticed outside of a few Rainbow Snippets I’ve been silent all summer. I wish I could say it was because I was hard at work but that would be a lie.

All I’ve done writing wise was some Christmas shorts (all of which have been picked up so that’s a good thing. No, my creativity was stolen and my silence born out of a truly hellish year.

I think I blogged a bit about the fact that my university is one step from closing. We lost over a third of the faculty to firing and more have quit in disgust and/or running from a sinking ship. I’m planning to do the same but my age, and my lack of research papers hampers me (this is a teaching school that didn’t allow for much research). Needless to say that dented my psyche badly.

I went home to Pittsburgh with my family for the summer. I was hoping for some rest and recovery but Mom had injured her foot. From the moment I saw it I knew it would go badly. In my former career, before my injury, I was a podiatrist. I wasn’t wrong. On my birthday she was admitted to the hospital and a few days later had to have her big toe amputated, a surgery I’ve performed many times.

At least I was there to help with the recovery, I mean who better right than a podiatrist? But my entire summer was then spent helping Mom which wasn’t easy because no one wants to watch their parents losing body parts but better that toe than her whole leg which it would have come to had this amputation not happened.

The only bright spot was going to Ireland and Wales on the research fellowship I had been awarded. And I got to go with a very good friend which made it better (even though she didn’t get much say in what we did since while for her it was vacation for me, it was work. Okay Ireland was vacation). It was an excellent trip (traveling there and back aside as that was stressful and full of mischief). Not only do I have good ideas for my research papers, I’m bursting with settings and story ideas. I’ve been to Wales before but never Ireland. I want to go back there so badly. And our guide was a friend I made last time in Wales, she runs Archaeotours and is an archaeologist. I recommend that tour group.

I came back to a hellish semester. I’m teaching more in one semester than I would in a year normally because of all the lost faculty and the fact they had so many interested in my brand new online pathophysiology class that I now have three sections and no home internet because the landlords cut through the lines. For three weeks no internet.

My only hope for salvaging anything for writing will be nano which I’ll be struggling through. So that’s why it’s been so quiet this summer.