Real Life Intrudes Into Betty's Happy Little Pop-Cultural Blog World. Bear With Me.

I got some very bad news last night. And it raises a dilemma that I guess I kind of knew I'd have to face here sooner or later: When you've got a forum like this one where you natter on about all the silly little trivialities in your life, what do you do when something big and important and unpleasant happens? Do you toss it in, an incongrous moment of seriousness amongst all the bitching about your plumbing problems and discussions of the latest Buffy episode? Or do you keep it to yourself and just keep right on posting stupid quiz results without a word? Both solutions rather seem to trivialize things, don't they?

Deep breath. The thing is this: I got a call from my mother last night saying that my stepfather's in the hospital. Cancer. And, yes, it's bad. She says the doctors give him about six months. From looking at him, she figures it'll be more like weeks. As upsetting as that is for his sake, I have to admit, I'm more worried about my mom than anything. She's been through something like this once before, and... Well, her husband is older than her and has never been in the best of health, so I always feared she'd have to go through it again, I just never figured it would be this soon. Fortunately, her own mother is there with her, which makes me feel about 3000% better, because nobody does "supportive" in difficult times like my grandmother, least of all me. For myself, well, there's absolutely nothing I can do. So I'm doing what I always do: dealing with things by putting them into words. Usually those words are just in my head, but, hey, look, now they're here, too.

I'm not fishing for sympathies, and I'm not a believer in prayer, but kind thoughts are always welcome.

And I now return you to your regularly scheduled wibbling on about trivialities, because that's something else I do when there's nothing else I can do.

Thanks.