Life is fragile

I am really sorry for the blog slowdown. It has been extremely hectic here. Worse than hectic, actually-- my father has had several acute health episodes in the past two weeks that have made it impossible for him to live by himself anymore. I remember these kind of events happening with my great uncle, and it leads me to suspect we don't have a whole lot of time left with my father.

My father is a very flawed individual. It was he who led me to skepticism-- through the roundabout path of my experiencing the Woo end of the pool firsthand and deciding to climb out and dry off. But because of his health, I'm not going to blog about the woofulness of my family until further notice. This is not something I do lightly, because I think you all know how strongly I feel about the dangers of falling for pseudoscience, etc. But I cannot risk writing anything that he might accidentally come across in his condition. For all his flaws, I know he loves me. There doesn't need to be any kind of heartbreaking confrontation over beliefs to darken whatever time we have left together.

I'm not going to shut down the blog or anything, though you can all see that one of my stress responses is to avoid reaching out on the web, lol. I will be writing about other things, though. Autism woo will continue to be attacked, as will anything else that makes The Perky Skeptic's coffee cup steam. Until I get rolling again, though, I hope you'll all take a moment to hug a family member. Life is too damn short.

Special shout-out to PalMD at White Coat Underground, whose post shook me loose from my lost-in-thoughtness enough to verbalize some of this. It's a great read.