Mirz123

Cross-posted on @mirz333 No, not how long I have been “away” from Deviantart. It is how old my youngest – Hugo – is today. My surprise baby, he was an inspiration for many of my deviations, many deviations created by others, and a character in Relativity. 12 years and a lifetime ago. I wrote a blog entry celebrating the event over at “The Long Way Through China.” If you want to see my little man today and get nostalgic about the good ol’ days on Deviantart, check it out. In the meantime, I will re-share a picture that was posted here back in the day. What a cutie. On another note, as I re-launch my online “career,” I take inspiration from the words of a friend. @nightshade-keyblade made a comment that he wished he had access to my old emoticons. Well, I had lamented in the past about rebuilding my fan-base and my large gallery. It just seemed too daunting of a task at that time. However, now I am less focused on that and just want to re-post them for the sake of having them

*** Cross-posted with @mirz333 *** On July 10, 2024, I had a triple bypass. I should note that my family has a history of heart disease, so while this was seemingly out-of-the-blue, it wasn’t a total surprise. Someone mentioned I was too young to have this happen. However, a week before my surgery, a woman told me her son, who was also 54, dropped dead from a massive heart-attack. So, while it was not planned or expected, I am actually happy that it happened the way it did. Particularly now, while I am on the “young” side and have a better chance to fully recover (say than being in my 60s or 70s). Of course, with me, nothing can go smoothly and I ended up having complications a couple of weeks after the surgery when my incision split open and I ended up in the ER. Thankfully, my guts weren’t spilling out, but it was ugly and painful and just a mess...like most of my life. Flash forward a few weeks, things are healing now and I am back on-track in my recovery. Jim is doing okay.

(Cross-posted on @mirz333) Figuratively and Literally. I had hoped to get back on DA a while ago with my flag project. Of course, life had other ideas. I had to pull-back to deal with what I thought were some minor life issues, but turned out to be serious...and life-changing. There have been more than a few, but the 2 main ones are doozies. In early January (actually the day after our 30th wedding anniversary), @Ravenswd began struggling with some odd health issues which were perplexing. We were told many things, but the most believable one was that he was "getting old" and had arthritis. As he waited the 6 weeks to get into a doctor to confirm that, he ended up in the hospital with kidney failure (his kidneys were at 5%). Turns out he has an aggressive form of Wegener's Disease. I won't get into more detail; if you want to know more you can look it up. It is better-ish, but it destroyed his kidneys. He is on dialysis now and classified as End Stage Renal. Oh, and in the middle of