Why I've been absent lately ...

I realized that I haven't been posting for a while now and I thought I would take this opportunity to share the reasons for this with you. I was really sick with a very nasty bug for a few weeks that knocked me off my feet, so much so that for the first time in a very long time I didn't even feel like reading, let alone reviewing! I was just so tired all the time and felt so crappy that I couldn't concentrate on anything for very long, which makes reading kind of difficult. Thankfully, I finally started feeling better, but then something awful happened to my oldest son's girlfriend. My son is 26 years old and is dating a girl who was working in Dubai for about 3 months. She was about 2 weeks from coming back home when she went out with some friends of hers to a bar they had frequented many times in Dubai and where they had never had any problems. Unfortunately, on that night, she was walking to the bathroom alone when a young lady who worked at the bar asked her if she could help her with something in another room, and since Angel had seen her there on a couple of occasions before, she didn't see anything wrong with this. When she went into the other room, she was grabbed from behind by a man and dragged out the back door. This man had 2 friends with him, and they all pushed her in a car and drove her to a nearby beach, where they brutally beat and raped her. When her friends realized she was missing, they drove around for hours looking for her, and finally found her laying on the beach, beaten, bruised and bleeding, with her clothes torn from her. They took her to the hospital, thank God, and she was examined and treated there. They determined that all 3 men had raped her, probably repeatedly, over the 6 hours she was gone. Luckily they were able to obtain semen from all 3, and we are all praying that they will be able to find these monsters and put them away since they have their DNA. Angel was kept in the hospital for about a week and a half, treated with antibiotics, pain meds, and medication to help her sleep since she was having awful dreams and would wake up screaming and fighting anyone who came into her room to help her, and was finally released to come  home yesterday. This has been an awful time for my son because he wasn't able to be with her, and we did a lot of praying for both him and Angel. Needless to say, it has been an awful four weeks and I haven't even thought about reading or reviewing. I'm going to try to catch up over the next week or so, but I'm sure it's going to be slow going since I have so much on my mind right now. I also got served divorce papers, finally, and can look forward to a lovely court case starting next month. Ain't life grand? When it rains, it definitely pours! They say God doesn't give you more than you can handle, but sometimes I wonder! Prayer has gotten us through this far, and I'm sure it will get us through anything else life throws at us, and I would ask that anyone reading this who believes in prayer would say a short one for Angel, to help her get through this as best as she can. Thank you for taking the time to read this :)