Busy day today –

Got up and got pretty to go up north to my in-laws. My husband’s grandmother’s health has been failing for awhile now — we did an photo shoot with her today, with all the rest of the family.

I hadn’t seen her since February — she’s drastically declined. They think she’s been having mini-strokes, which makes sense to me. She’s kinda-sorta in hospice now, but they’re not moving her to a new place yet, she’s at a small group home right now. She’s very thin, sleeps all the time, and aspirates food. She’s one pneumonia — one of many things, actually — away from dying. I don’t give her six months. I feel sad for my husband and his family having to go through this. There’s that catch-22 of awareness vs un…she was pretty vital and healthy, living on her own up till the summer of last year. I think they’ve been shocked by how fast this has happened, despite its inevitability.

After that, I went out to catch a Florence and the Machine show with David Moles. It was fantastic. She said it was the biggest crowd she’d ever performed in front of, and I had a hard time believing it — she owned the stage.

She has a voice like an early 80′s anime goddess — the ones where they thought that music would fix the world. She could be the embodiment of Sharon Apple. When she sings, the world freezes and tilts. (God if she and Yoko Kanno did get together, I would crawl through glass to hear that.) She had this flowing dress on and she raced across the stage like a sylph and laughed like she herself was surprised at how well the night was going. She was young and she sang about death. It was lovely.

If you’ve only heard the radio songs Dog Days and A Kiss with a Fist, I suggest you listen to Cosmic Love and Rabbit Heart. (On Rabbit Heart, hold out till the chorus. It sounds like it might be folk stuff…”This is a gift, it comes with a price, who is the lamb, who is the knife.” — then it gets epic. And ignore the video. The video is from before they had money. Just listen.)

Last, but not least, on my way home late I realized I was driving by my alpha reader’s house (the same fantastic alpha reader who’d called earlier in the day to talk to me about book, only another lady at the nursing home was yelling at me that I stole her house, heh.) So instead of calling him back, I dropped by for an hour, and he says the book’s a book. Not that it can’t be made better, but at least it’s really a book. And then a few fantastic suggestions of where to spend my next 48 hrs of time before it’s due. We even talked about Shapeshifted (book 3) some.

And so now, to bed early-ish, to rise early-ish and edit again.