A Personal Announcement, And How It Affects My Clarion Blog-A-Thon

I don’t mind discussing my personal life in this journal, but I do dislike discussing the lives of others.  I write on a big stage, and not everyone deserves to be dragged onto that stage without consent.  So if there’s upheaval going on around me, even if that’s affecting me, I usually try to leave that out to ensure the privacy of others.
However, if you’ve been in contact with me lately – I’m usually pretty texty – you’ll note that I’ve been responding to almost no one’s texts or emails.  That’s because I’m going through two rather large personal stresses in worry about others right now:
1)  I’ll be flying out to California this week to see if a dear relative may have a fatal form of cancer.  I’ll be there to hold her hand while she gets the diagnosis this Thursday, which I hope will be negative, but the stress of worrying about her has demolished much of my productivity. And if it is a positive diagnosis, I have vowed to be her caretaker, which means that at some point I’d be temporarily moving to California to tend to her needs during the final stages of her illness.  (Gini would remain here, in Cleveland.)
2)  My eldest daughter has moved in with us while she sorts through some aspects of her life, and shepherding her through some tough times has made me distracted about other people.
Between those two peeks into uncertain futures, it’s been a series of emotional overload in looking after those I love, which has made me withdraw socially.  So I apologize for not getting back to you, if I haven’t.  If you think it’s been a rough month for me, imagine how it is for them.
That said, though, this uproar strikes at a reasonably terrible time, since now is when I usually do the Clarion Blog-a-Thon – which, you may note, I haven’t made an announcement about in a week.  And the Clarion Echo, the online writing workshop where I usually blog my heart out in order to support the workshop that helped me reach the next level in writing, is gappy and erratic.  I don’t feel like I’ve done a good job supporting my alma mater.
So.  Here’s what’s going to happen with that.  This week’s going to be destroyed anyway as the Day of Diagnosis approaches, so I’m taking it off.  There will be no posts in the Clarion Echo, no prizes announced (we still have many to go!), no real writing.
However, because I’ve been so lax as of late, the six-week Clarion Blog-a-Thon will be an eight-week Blog-a-thon for me.  I’ll go two weeks beyond the usual time to make up for the lost time here, at which point I’ll return with a vengeance.  Prizes will be dispensed two weeks later than usual except for Cat Valente’s advance reader copy of the sequel to Fairyland, which I think is a prize that should be given away early.
If you’d like to help me out, well wishes are welcome, as are prayers and whatever other incantations you feel like directing towards a negative diagnosis.  Also, donations to the Blog-A-Thon (we have cool prizes!) wouldn’t hurt either, as it’d make me feel like not a total slacker.  And love to all of you, and thanks for your understanding.