Top Ten [Excuses] for a Sabbatical from Blogging About Cancer

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10.  Life gets in the way...that quirky [mis]fortune of having so many other time-consuming, energy-sucking, mundane LIFE-activities that at times it is a challenge to walk down daily to the mailbox, let alone log into Blogger Dashboard.

9.  Anger to the point of Void...being so overwhelmed by the daily onslaught of "cancer" whether it is the incessant commercials and billboards, the parade of promises, the seemingly daily diagnosis - or death - of someone as a result of cancer (I have to stop reading obits). An emotional void surrounds and drowns me till I feel like I am a middle-schooler caught in perpetual swirly-nightmare.

8.  Endearing Caustic Rachel...her passing chilled and sobered me to the inanity of all that is cancer; driving home the reality that no matter how loudly we YELL into the rabbit hole women are being diagnosed with breast cancer at a rate of over 200,000 per year, and dying at a rate of nearly 40,000 per year -- still.

7.  Lovely Hannah...seeing a vibrant, intelligent and amazing teenager fall into the abyss that is cancer has wrested words from my fingers and the air from my soul. Hannah got an all-clear in her lymphatic system only to be stricken down with meningitis as an after-gift of chemo. The roller coaster of cancer-world. Just when your stomach inches back from your pelvis where it was unceremoniously lodged during a drop with 5.4 g-force, as the ride slows down on the straight-away, the momentum unexpectedly picks up again and thrusts you sideways on an unexpected bank and your breath gets knocked out of you, along with your equilibrium.

 6.  Boredom...I am tired of being a person with MBC; tired of writing about it; tired of thinking about it; and I am sure people must be tired of reading my tone-deaf cancer-operetta. After all, how many ways can you spell C-A-N-C-E-R?

5.  Children ...totally privileged to be included (and not just with the checkbook) in the busy lives of my two eldest daughters as they launch themselves into full-blown adulthood, well almost; and the daily (and nightly - aka sleepless in Phoenix) schedule and needs of my emerging tween.

4. It's always something...same ol' daily grind. For every step I take toward slowing down and gaining the upper hand on the onslaught of stress, I am pulled back two steps with another "need" or "crisis." The adage is that the universe only lays upon us that which we can handle. Ah, the universe's generosity can be quite insufferable at times. Check out:

Right-Wing Judges Seek to Close the Courthouse Doors to Public Interest Claims

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bennet-kelley/rightwing-judges-seek-to-_b_1625309.html
to see how our lives can get turned upside down without the help of a cancer diagnosis.

3.  Fifty Shades of Indulgence...oh yeah, I did. All three of this insipid rehash of the trite Beauty and the Beast story. Although, this time the beast does not swing from the Empire State Building swatting at planes, but rather he perches himself above the skyline of Seattle and swats at psychologically vacuous brunettes with braided leather floggers. (By the end of the second installment I wanted to b*tch slap Ana's inner goddess...oh!)

2.  I am just too tired...whether it is [finally] the onset of peri-menopause; mid-life crisis [again? I had a baby the last time in went into mid-life crisis mode!]; or a combo of ##s 3-10; I find that I am just cranium-tired (as opposed to bone-tired) all the time. Thank the goddess for coffee and a nice pinot noir (grenache is not bad either!)

.......and the #1 reason to take a blogging sabbatical....wait for it!

1.   Making a concerted effort not to have the reality of living within the shadow of cancer define me
                                                 ...the rest is all commentary!