The reason I’ve neglected to post properly here is family-related: My dad’s health troubles continue, with last year’s colon cancer making a reappearance as secondary liver metastases.

I don’t want to go into too much detail, respecting my dad’s wishes, but needless to say this is a rather stressful time for our whole family. I think all of us wish it was us, rather than Papi, who had to go through all of this – it’s doubly hard on him because he’s been healthy all his life and hates having others tell him what to do. And now there’s doctor’s appointments and an uncertain future.

Faith is definitely important in times like this. My dad’s trust in God is absolute – maybe even too much so, as it sometimes borders on fatalistic. The rest of us (well, my mom and myself – my brother is firmly agnostic) are naturally very much in the “take strength from God to fight this as best you can” camp… Acceptance seems rather premature. And hopefully we won’t have to get to that point any time soon!

But yes, obviously this has taken up a lot of my thinking. I am still reading my GReader (see the feed in the sidebar) but don’t have the mental resources to delve deeply into problematic topics. Luckily summer seems to have finally arrived, so I’m taking my mind off things by going for runs or walks, as well as watching mindless television (currently a lot of Masterchef Australia, which has the advantage of being aired 5 days a week).