I think – think – I have completed the first step with Network Solutions to direct my domain, katemahar.com, to this blog. It will take 24 to 36 hours for it to take effect, and then I can try to get WordPress to recognize the domain at this end. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

In the meantime, I’m conflicted. Do I use this as a diary or journal of sorts? It doesn’t seem like a great idea to reveal personal information if my primary use of this site is to make samples of my writing easily available to potential editors.

And yet, this is writing, too. At this point I sit here and can no more imagine anyone taking the time to read these words than (insert clever comparison here – I don’t have one today).

I don’t have a clever comparison, nor do I have the inclination to create one because I’m just not in the mood. My dad is dying. There it is. I’m in my office right now catching up on emails and screwing around with this blog and Network Solutions while the sheets and towels dry in the drier. Then I’ll pack up my laptop and some papers for my current client, NCAN, and head back over to my folks’ condo.

Dad’s Hospice nurse, Lisa, is coming over sometime today. Yesterday she said she thinks he doesn’t have much more than a week or so left. I sleep over there at night, since it seems that the crises usually occur in the wee hours of the morning and my mother was coping alone. But I’ll start spending most of the day with them, too.

This morning Mom tried to get Dad out of bed, which has become increasingly challenging, since he’s so very weak. Today she was unable to get him up, and he didn’t have the strength to move himself. Lisa told us he would be bedridden very soon, and maybe this is it, but maybe not. He surprises us constantly.

The thing with dying is that it’s a process, and it’s not a straightforward progression. He takes two steps closer to the end, then one step back. Sunday he was incoherent more than 95% of the time, hallucinating and talking about God-knows-what. The Hospice people say he’s communicating with those who have gone to the other side. Since I’m an atheist at worst and a skeptic at best, I’m not so sure about that evaluation.

Anyway, yesterday he was quite lucid most of the day. Surprise. Today, who knows? But he did look at me earlier and asked, “Isn’t there a plan of something I’m supposed to do today?” When I told him there was no plan and he could do what he liked, he said, “Does that mean I just have to lie in this bed all day?” It breaks my heart.

So that’s really my life right now. And that’s okay. Spend a little time with emails and blogs and even a little WORK — and spend most of my time either with my folks, or thinking about them, or wondering about all of this. Sometimes Dad says he just doesn’t understand where all of this is going and what’s supposed to happen next.

For that, there’s no answer.