Hello my fellow Autopuzzlers!
I'm back. I appreciate all your comments of concern and support in this thread. My baby has not been born yet (still two or three weeks to go) but everything is on track now. As I explained to Carnut, my holidays in April were only a couple of weeks but when I returned home I was blindsided by the realisation that there was a huge amount of stuff that needed to be done before the baby came and that I had not paid proper attention to, both at work (projects in which my part needed to be finished before I went away on paternity leave) and, especially, at home. The last three months (three months already?!
) have been a whirlwind of long hours at the office and my spare time being completely taken up by a myriad preparations, shopping trips, painting walls and building Ikea furniture, prenatal and childcare lessons, etc., as well as frequent and tedious rehabilitation sessions for a painful bursitis in my right shoulder which I started to suffer from at the start of the year, just as my wife and I learnt that we had a child on the way (The two events are not related!
) and which has been slow to get better, as these things often are.
Now it is all done! The baby room is ready, chock full of clothes, plush toys, diapers and the like, and the pain in my shoulder is all but gone; my last rehab session was last Friday. I realise that the middle of the summer might not be the best time to make my comeback, as many members will be away on holiday, but that's how it has worked out! Today I will start to review all the replies to my puzzles that were left unsolved, and once that is done I will be ready to post new puzzles. I have no idea if I will be able to keep it up after the baby is born though! On the one hand, you know, a new little person around the house will take up a fair chunk of my time; on the other, I will be on leave and babies are supposed to sleep a lot so I'm guessing that may give me some spare time too..? Anyway, we'll see how it plays as we go. Right now, I'm going to start hitting those threads!