Sunday Post (January 27, 2013)

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer.

It’s a chance to share news, recap events from the past week, showcase books and things we’ve received and share news about what’s coming up in the week ahead on our blog.

This week, I’m going to give a super-abbreviated version and end with a good ol’ PSA.

Coming up this week, I have all sorts of stuff planned: Monday, I have a special post and giveaway for the Fiery Hot Reads on Icy Cold Nights Hop. I’ll be reviewing One Good Earl Deserves a Lover by Sarah MacLean, whose books I adore. Tuesday I have a gorgeous New Adult cover reveal and I’m following it up Wednesday with double New Adult reviews, one for Forever My Girl by Heidi McLaughlin and the other for Saving You, Saving Me by Kailin Gow. Thursday is the last day of January, which means it’s time to link up the first month’s New Adult Challenge reviews! I’ll also have some news about my first giveaway for everyone who’s linked up. Friday will bring my RAK wrap-up and a review of a cute YA from Entangled called The Reece Malcolm List by Reece Spalding and I have two novellas I was too late to post yesterday all ready to go for my Saturday Bonbon reviews.

Now your promised PSA.

I missed half of my week’s reviews because I was back and forth to the hospital visiting my ex father-in-law with my kiddo. He hasn’t exactly lived a healthy lifestyle – I’m not going to cast a huge amount of shade at personal choices of others except his – but he smoked, drank, ate things he shouldn’t and didn’t take care of his Type II diabetes the way he should have. He had to have a double bypass on Monday, Wednesday had to go back into surgery to remove a blood clot and on Friday, had a stroke. He’s doing better than expected right now – he doesn’t have any paralysis, only some speech and confusion issues – but he’s not even close to being out of the woods.

Peeps – take care of yourselves. He’s only in his 60s and he wasn’t particularly overweight. If you looked at him and didn’t know him, he wouldn’t look like the kind of guy who you’d think this would happen to. I know many of you have probably lost parents and siblings much younger than this from cancer and other things that just came out of nowhere – so since I’ve heard I’m the bossy type, here’s your PSA this week. Take care of yourself – check for lumps in your glands and breasts. Do a mole check. Get that mammogram and pap smear you’ve been putting off. Re-familiarize yourself with what the symptoms of a heart attack are and the next time you’re at the grocery store, toss a bottle of aspirin in your cart, just in case.

There are probably a hundred things I’m forgetting, but for me, the takeaway this week was I had to watch my kiddo see for the first time that someone he loved could die. It’s a reminder that there are some things we can control about our health.

Bossy rant over.