Four things while I was away....

Bonjour again after another long interval of not posting anything at all. I may try to stay more current with this as I can sort of post what I like. Things have changed personally and in the larger world since I posted last. The first was the passing of my mother on May 17, 2015. I rushed to be at her side with three days to spare, and that included spending the night in her hospital room while her death throes were going. It was one of the more horrific and sad experiences of my life. There is much to unwind about the whole thing. My sister and mother could not reconcile in any way before my mother passed, and both were to blame. And for all of my mother's harping about how my grandfather had done sane estate planning, she of course did none of it, and my sister and I were left to clean up after her. I should share a morbid bon mot that came out of it (sung to the to the tune of 'Momma don't let you babies grow up to be cowboys'), "Kids, don't let your parents become hoarders." There is still pending business left with her estate, the sale of her apartment (which had been her parents and where my sister & I spent summer vacations when we were kids), and trying to unload the mountain of stuff, some of which might actually be valuable but requires the sort of expert appraisers found only on the East coast (and my sister is convinced they can be made to fly out on their own dime...YEAH RIGHT!). I did get one thing out maintaining a decent relationship with my mother my sister did not: my mother's help in obtaining a Belgian passport (and with the soon-to-be ascension of Herr Drumpf, I have the means of escape to a country with a sane health care system) in the form of a letter that helped fill the vague 'Ties to Belgium' requirement for Belgian Naturalization (the obtuse reasons as to why a guy like me born in Belgium had to apply for naturalization as an adult many years after the fact is a whole other blog entry). For that I am quite grateful to my mother: THANKS MOM, REST IN PEACE. The second thing is that my comics thing is still going and might actually turn into something bigger. I've hired a writer, Hannibal Tabu, to flesh out two projects I've long wanted to do but did not have the time to do. Not coincidentally, Tabu writes a fairly influential column on CBR.com, the buy pile. To say that he knows how to manipulate an ecosystem I and my web mistress have had a hard time being heard in is understating the obvious. Now if I can just secure the services of my preferred artist for one of the projects, things will be peachy keen. It also appears as if my trainer's long in-production movie is actually coming together. I have a supporting role in the production and one on camera. Thirdly, and sort of unexpectedly, I have a girlfriend. She is smoking hot and young. Of course, she is not cheap in the slightest, but she does stuff in bed that porn stars do. Fourth: this has been a year of change for my family as well as my sister is getting divorced from her husband of 25 years, my younger brother is getting married, and I have the aforementioned girlfriend (and I thought I would go through life without one as that part of the human existence is quite challenging for me). Add in the election of Dump and 2016 has been a freaky year par excellence. I now understand what the curse attributed to the Chinese, 'May you live in interesting times,' is about.