A Nice Surprise

Happy Monday friends  and Happy Fourth of July for those in the US.  I was surprised to see my son going to work in maong pants and t-shirt early this morning then he reminded me that it’s a holiday.  They are allowed to wear casual attire during holidays in the US because it is where their main office is located.  We used to celebrate July 4 as Filipino-American Friendship Day, a legal holiday too here in our country until our celebration of Independence Day was changed to the correct date which is  June 12.

I planned to start July blogging every day like I did during the 2011 Post A Day challenge. No go as usual. There are some priorities that has to be met especially on weekends when my son is around. I am grateful though for those new followers of this blog.  There was this message from WordPress yesterday afternoon that there was a spike on my stats. True enough when I checked, it has significantly gone up. Search engines are busy and I noticed that my most read posts are from several years ago. Come to think of it, I have nearly forgotten sharing those posts. Imagine having 1,813 posts since I started blogging here way back May 2009. The blog which was supposedly for sharing my journey as a cancer patient/survivor  has turned out into a hodgepodge of “what have you’s” from gardening to photography to sharing my world as a grandmother.  It’s a life full of challenges, a life full of lovely and precious moments, a life of simple things that gives joy to the heart, a life of small miracles  and wonderful blessings that makes every moment precious.  The journey is not that smooth at times but I get by with the help of my family and loving friends who love me the way I am, warts and all.  I thank the Lord for giving me the strength and courage to carry on.

I  am on my 7th year in remission, still standing tall amidst everything. I can vividly remember those days when almost every day we would be at the hospital, doctor’s clinics, laboratories for my pre-op clearance  and finally having that much dreaded sigmoid surgery mid-July in 2009.  And I thought staying at the hospital for almost two weeks of recovery was hard but it was nothing compared to the six cycles of chemotherapy that I had to undergo to get well. Never mind the amount of research I’ve done to booster my immunity  eating anti-oxidant food, avoiding meat for a long time, learning to adjust to a life with so many restrictions on one’s diet.  Those days were more learning curves for me to get through.

Allow me to say a big THANK YOU to all my friends here at WordPress, to those who always drop a line or two, to those who regularly click “likes” to my posts and to those who pass by this blog and read a post. You all make blogging a lovely journey too.