A post about not posting

Hey there. Before you say anything I know, I know - I've been away a long time. I haven't said much in the last few weeks other than a couple of tweets about my wife's health. Well, here I am, although I don't have anything to say about IndyCars right now. If you're looking for IRL-related news then just click on one of the finer sights on the sidebar and go about your business.

If you're going to keep reading the only thing you're going to get is a painful and lengthy explanation of why it seems like I've totally flaked out. I'm sharing this as sort of a public service because after the last few weeks - well, last few months actually - I owe it to you. And since this post won't be about IndyCars I'm turning off the comments because I'm confident no one comes here to discuss me. If you have something you need to say about this particular post you can always email me, or drop me a line on facebook or twitter.

Anyhow, here's how my year has gone: I was unemployed for six months. My youngest son was hospitalized with a nasty reaction to an H1N1 vaccine. I even had my laptop go on the fritz, which any blogger can tell you is a tragedy equal to having his or her thumbs cut off. Worst of all was dealing with the fallout this summer from that which I often referred to as "extenuating circumstances", which for months robbed me of my confidence, my voice for writing, and my joie de vivre (which is French for "joy of mocking the French"). I won't elaborate on this any further other than to say I may one day find myself sitting in a circle of chairs, sympathetically passing a tissue to Elin Nordegren.

Truth be told, this is why earlier this year I invited guest contributors to post on my site. This is why I had a Blogger Appreciation Day drawing attention to other sites. This is why I didn't appear on the Cavin & Kevin show this fall. I've been uncertain about what to say, how to say it, and I don't want to "mail it in" or "go through the motions" or whatever other cliche you prefer that describes inferior discussion. You deserve more, especially when others have proven more worthy of your attention, and at the very least I wanted to let them introduce themselves to you while your humble host was off in the digital wilderness searching for shoots and leaves.

Alas, the final smack upside the head came last month, where as I noted on twitter my wife suffered a bizarre accident. We had taken the kids up to Williams, Arizona, for a "Polar Express" train trip to the "North Pole", and in the middle of the night the Mrs woke up, went into the bathroom in our motel, and with a blood-curdling thud passed out, head-first onto the tile floor. I awoke to find her semi-conscious and looking like Rocky Balboa right before he said "Cut me, Mickey", and from there it was a blur of blood, paramedics, and police officers, followed by packing up four kids to drive 30 miles through a snow storm to the hospital in Flagstaff because evidently the "North Pole" doesn't have any sort of hospital.

She was treated and released with a handful of prescriptions so we returned home to our lower snow-free elevations, but a day later she noticed an unusually persistent runny nose and went back to a closer hospital. The doctors looked her over and said she was "leaking cranial-spinal fluid (CSF)" and needed to be transferred to yet another hospital that was better equipped for this kind of thing. Tests there confirmed she had two skull fractures in her face that likely had a "breach", which if not sealed presented a risk for infection that would result in spinal meningitis. In the mother of my children. A couple weeks before Christmas. And I'm not ashamed to admit that right then I wasn't terribly concerned with Danica Patrick's stock car schedule.

Thankfully, within a few days the "CSF leak" began to dissipate, which meant she was healing without requiring micro-neuro-scifi surgery. She's been at home convalescing since just before Christmas, up and around and on the road to what appears to be a full recovery, and might I add a sincere word of thanks for all of the prayers and kind words by those who offered them. They mattered significantly to me in a year where I learned repeatedly that anything - from your livelihood to your loved ones to your laptop to your very life - could all be gone in an instant.

So why am I telling you all of this? It's not because I want to air my dirty laundry or to have you think "oh that poor, poor Iannucci". It's because in spite of not knowing about all of this I have been truly humbled by the outpouring of support I've found from my friends, virtual or otherwise, using the various digital media. People, who have no idea who I am sending me encouraging emails and publicly praying for my family. People I've never actually met in person like my friend Jerry have offered me immeasurable support through days where uncertainty kept entering my world with all of the fervor and frequency of Kramer bursting into Jerry Seinfeld's apartment.

All because I'm an IndyCar fan with a website. From the bottom of my heart, I sincerely thank you all and pray the Lord blesses you in your trials as He has blessed me through you.

So is this some kind of "goodbye cruel world" post? Hardly. I'll still be there for you, like the creepy dude near the restrooms at IMS who smells like an ashtray and keeps following you around to tell you that nobody really understands the true story of 1981. Except I'm not creepy (I know, “Keep telling yourself that”) and don’t smell like an ashtray (except when I'm sitting next to that Kanaan Fan in SW Vista), and while we may have conflicting our theories about 1981, we can continue to share our love for IndyCar racing, the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, Jim Nabors, Danica Patrick's tweets, Arni the Indy Insider, Dan Wheldon's teeth, tenderloin sandwiches, and every line from the movie "A Christmas Story".

And that is all I have to say about that, other than I finally got my laptop fixed. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some writing to do.