back from Oz

Contrary to what this page might suggest, I'm not dead. I haven't sliced my wrists open with animal crackers. Yet. I'm joking.

oh I'm such a bitter one.

Anyway, my life was blown away for awhile a couple of days after my last post. My parents had left for a vacation on the coast a few days before and suddenly we get this call that my dad is in the hospital in a comma and they didn't expect him to live until the morning. We left immediately for Veracruz.

My dad actually woke up the next day, but his brains were really scrambled and he was week too, so it took my mother and I nearly a month to see him back home and we only got back to the city last Thursday.

Things were further complicated because, as it turned out, his other family actually had no idea of our existence. I've mentioned before my brother and I are from my dad's second family, and I've certainly wondered all my life why they hadn't ever tried to make contact, but in all my wild especulations (drug dealing, pimping, bride smuggling) it never crossed my mind that they might have no idea about it.

How do you manage to ignore that your dad has a hidden family for 30 years? Seriously, at four I strongly suspected there was something way off; how could they have missed it? Totally beyond me.

So it came to them as a total suprise and I'm sad to report that they didn't react very well to the news. It became a game of tug-of-war during the first few days, when we had to decide what the best thing to do was and they insisted on us bringing him back, as soon as possible. Asking my dad what he wanted was pointless; he was still half-convinced that he was at my wedding and that someone was sticking nails up his arm.

We saw it through, though. Now I'm back and more or less at the same place I was where I left, except that now it seems I have a real job. My dad won't be able to work anymore, so I have to finish translating this book by myself and hopefully when I'm done, the people at the publisher will go on giving me more books.

I won't believe it until I see it, though. Right now they're stuck with me because they can't expect another translator to pick up a half-finished book, but they very well can ditch me the moment it's finished. My luck isn't what it should be, we all know that.

I hope they do go on giving me work, because then I'd have my money issues fixed for awhile. Which would mean, one issue solved, and seventy-eight to go.

okay, back to work. I'll be around.