Where have all the blog posts gone?

My last blog post was published about 25 days ago, and the last update to my book probably happened around the same time. I have had several people ask me if I am going to continue publishing blog posts, or when the next chapter of my book will be out, so today I wanted to take a few minutes to explain what happened in my life that caused such a long gap between any updates. This is going to be a relatively short post, so many details will be omitted, but it should give you a rough understanding of why I haven’t been around. After that I’ll get back to writing, I promise!

My brother in law flew into town around Dec 17, so I took a few days off to visit him that week. That meant no writing for a few days.

During that time my wife got sick, so I spent the next few days taking care of her. Doc visits, picking up meds, cooking, taking care of pets, etc. There is a lot to do when your significant other is ill.

After that I got sick. The joys of sharing a bed with someone snotting everywhere :) I spent about 3.5 days in bed with a fever. I even missed Christmas dinner with all of my family because I didnt want to get anyone else sick. That sucked. I missed visiting family and I love Christmas dinner with all my family, so it wasn’t just the blog that was seeing less of me. Even my family didn’t see me over the holidays.

After my fever subsided I had a few days with a stuffy nose and an achey body. My family had a New Years eve cruise scheduled this year for our family vacation, so I spent the next few days resting so that I was well before our vacation.

Something like Dec 29 - Jan 8 was supposed to be my vacation/travel time. I travelled to FL, spent a day there, and then we boarded the boat on new years eve. Given that this was my vacation, I didn’t write much, but I did write about 50% of a chapter while on the boat one afternoon. That will get finished up this week sometime (Ch12).

On Jan 5 I got really shitty news - my dog that was staying at my Grandparents house had run away. He got scarred when something fell and bolted. If he had been at home I wouldn’t have been as concerned because he knows his way home, but they live about 20 minutes away from my house, so I wasn’t so sure he was going to find his way back. To make matters worse, it was also getting colder and snowing in PA (where I live).

My dog is like my child. My wife and I haven’t had kids yet, but we adopted Morty together a little over a year ago and we love him dearly. I couldn’t imagine me enjoying my vacation as long as he was missing, so when I heard the news I got off my cruise ship in Puerto Rico (where we were at the time) and grabbed a flight back home. It took me about 12hrs of traveling and being on the verge of losing it to finally get back home, and then I spent the next day searching for my lost dog. I got maybe 2 hours of sleep during that time.

We finally found him the next afternoon, after he had spent about 36 hours outside in the cold. I know it sounds crazy to fly home for a dog, but I’m honestly not sure if we would have found him if I hadn’t. It got much colder the next few nights, so he could have froze to death if he spent anymore time outside, and when we found him he was laying next to a path that only I had walked earlier that day. I suspect he smelled my scent and came back to wait for me, but I will never truly know. All I know is I was thrilled to have my pup back, and I don’t regret flying back at all.

I spent the next few days resting, taking Morty to the vet to make sure he didn’t get worms, getting antibiotics to make sure his split toenails didn’t get infected, and spoiling him in every way I could.

Which brings me to today. Morty is back to normal for the most part, and I plan to start writing both blog posts and working on finishing the book this week, but first I need to go visit and thank family and friends who took hours out of their day to help hand out flyers, spread the word, and search for my dog. I am forever grateful for all of their help and support, so today I want to make sure they know it.