I dunno. I was more worried about spelling it correctly than looking at definitions.

I spent last week thinking about what I want to do for the birthday season, seeing that my thirty-sixth year is already more than half over! HALF! And don’t think I didn’t notice the alarming lack of happy half birthday gifts. O_O Last year I pretty much went to Buffalo and Toronto — oh, and I guess Maryland for a day and a half. I made zero strides in my 50 states project NOR did I manage to go fishing like I’ve been meaning to for the last SIX years! I had been doing SO well with my travel bucket list for the past few years from going to playing poker in Australia, not at the Online Casino Australia but a casino somewhere in Melbourne I think. And I saw the big President heads, which sadly, I still call the big President heads. What? Google big President heads and you will find EXACTLY what I’m talking about, so you can stuff your saris in a sack.

Anyway, since it is February, I am *naturally* thinking about my July birthday. July 8th to be specific. *whistles* I decided that I enjoy sporting events, so I’ve invited myself out to Los Angeles and Toronto to see the Mets play the Dodgers and the Yankees play the Toronto Blue Jays. Perchance, I will also go to a Canada casino while I’m in Canada. OOh and do they have roller coasters in Toronto? I think one I more and @astinto and I will officially have a roller coaster tradition!

I also didn’t see my Utah parents AT ALL last year, and I do believe I was promised fly fishing, so hopefully, that can happen this year.

However, despite my shyness about inviting myself places and demanding cake and casinos, the awkward recluse in me does always fear doing something awful and terrible when I’m visiting other places out of a strong sense of just not knowing any better. Making beds being my most hilarious example. I will happily wash all the linens *by hand* so long as I don’t have to attempt fit sheets on a mattress of any kind. Or bounce quarters. Or figure out what all those pillows are for. What are all those pillows for?

I’m also a notoriously picky eater — though as long as I can pronounce everything, all ingredients are from animals parts that are visible to the naked eye AND nuts aren’t involved, I’ve gotten somewhat more adventurous in my old age.

Anyway, I came across this old meme which circulated last year and pretty much getting an e-mail like this IS my personal nightmare:

from: Carolyn Bourne
to: heidi withers
subject: your lack of manners

When a guest in another’s house, you do not lie in bed until late morning in households that rise early – you fall in line with house norms.

Seriously, people. I. WOULD. DIE!

*googles how to make a bed*

Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone
Susanne the plans they made put an end to you
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song
I just can’t remember who to send it to

I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

I still feel SO awful about his death and everything that happened between us in the end. Like the worst person in the world! And with Kim Jong Il’s death, there IS a vacancy.

There’s a novel I read once, called The Society or The Secret or the Gift, maybe… doesn’t really matter.

It was about six kids at a prestigious school and they were in a latin club or something. Anyway, one of them dies somehow and the rest cover it up. The author, in telling the story, describes the most chillingly ruthless of the kids as someone who thinks generosity is giving away the chocolates she didn’t like from a box.

I bristled.

That’s *not* generosity?!

I mean, it’s not Oprah opening a school in Zimbabwe, generous, but she could just suck the chocolate coating off the gross coconut ones and throw the rest away instead of offering the whole gross coconut ones to someone who might like gross coconut chocolates! Um… hypothetically, I mean, one could imagine a person making the transition from a chocolate coating-suck-offer to proudly being a more outgoing “you can have any of the non caramel or milk chocolate ones cause I’m allergic to nuts and hate coconut” offerer. And how could such a person not be thought of as generous?! Er…such a *hypothetical* person?!

I was incensed on behalf of the maligned character! I don’t remember now whether she was the murderer or not, but if she was, she likely had good reason! This was a very popular book in the early aughts and I remember complaining to anyone who would listen that this characterization was SO unfair it tarnished the believability of the book. The only person who would listen, a friend from Yale, shrugged and said “okay, I won’t read it.”

I wonder if she’s dead now too.

Sigh.

I spend a lot of time now making sure people aren’t dead. When I’m not doing that, I’m reading articles about people who I know are dead but still can’t really believe are dead. I found out Don’s older brother also died and I was sad that he didn’t tell me. And I was sad for his mother having to bury both her sons. I thought about writing her a letter, but that seemed weird. So I emailed his sister to find out where Don was buried. He’s interred in the cemetery right by my house. And he spent the last three months of his life in and out of a hospital in Brooklyn. That hurt my feelings and made me mad.

I decided to go visit his grave last Sunday. I somehow thought I would just find it by… I dunno, feeling or something, that was…er… I believe the word I’m looking for is “unsuccessful.”

I went back this Saturday armed with a “map,” that the cemetery’s computer prints out after the search engine says “Congratulations! We have found your deceased.”

Awesome.

Except the map was a useless abstract, stenciling of a 200-acre cemetery with an “X” marking the spot where “my deceased” kinda sorta is.

It was the two year anniversary of his burial, so I figured there would be flowers on his grave and started my search at those headstones so adorned. Nothing.

Next, I looked for fancy graves with ornate sculptures cause, well, his family is rich. More nothing.

I looked at grave after grave, old people, young people, couples, babies, but no sign of my deceased. I asked a worker who was laying tarp for an incoming funeral if he could help. He looked at my stenciled map and said I was in the right area, but he couldn’t walk with me to find it cause the hearse with the new body was pulling in.

I walked around some more, idled by the funeral in progress a bit – seemed to be for an elderly woman, and I gave up.

He didn’t let me know where he was when he was alive so I could visit, guess he doesn’t want me visiting his grave either. It’ll have to be enough that I’m in the “right area.”
And then, in true worst person in the world form, I thought, he probably wouldn’t have put in this much effort to find MY grave.

I walked back to my car, opened the trunk and shoved the useless map and flowers inside. As I slammed it shut, a patrol car pulled up and a security guard stepped out.

“Do you need help finding someone, miss?”

I hesitated and then said yes.

I needed help finding my deceased.

I opened the trunk and handed him the mess of crumpled paper. He smoothed it out and said “You’re very close. Come on, follow me.”

Sure enough, I was parked only a few feet away, but the grave is a very simple flatstone. I’d stepped over it at least twice as I read names on the fancier headstones.

He’s buried with his paternal grandparents who died before he was born. There was a rotted wreath with a ribbon saying Merry Christmas. That somehow seemed super depressing.
The stone didn’t say much more than his birth and death dates. Again, also, super depressing.

The memorial pages on the website for the college he taught is filled with notes from his students painting such a bright picture of him as a great professor that I thought that would be on there. HE graduated top of his PhD class at Yale and the history department established an academic prize named after him. Also, not on there. But I guess none of that really matters.

I wondered if he still looked like himself in there. I wondered what his grandparents thought about him moving in since they didn’t even know about him. Then I thought these were really weird things to think, so I stopped thinking them and thought about normal things.

That I was sorry he was dead.

That I wished I had gotten to know the man he became.

That I was very very cold and should have worn a coat.

I don’t know how long I stood at the gravesite, but when I went to thank the security guard he was gone and there was no sign of his car.

Someone, who is a stupidface but shall remain nameless, because in two days when I can’t look at my blog anymore because it’s too sad, I’m going to have to ask him to publish a million guest posts, does not give much credence to my ghost security guard theory and I suppose a coatless black woman wandering around a cemetery for 30 minutes possibly calling out “where are you? ” might have attracted the kind of attention that results in security guards being sent to investigate.

Who can say?

If the worst person in the world can learn to share her gross chocolate covered coconut clumps, anything is possible. Even ghost guards.

These days, I haven’t been sleeping
Staying up, playing back myself leaving
When your birthday passed, and I didn’t call

Then I think about summer, all the beautiful times
I watched you laughing from the passenger side

Now, I have always been impressed with how brilliant Princess Leia is — when she was a wee baby, I was playing a game with her where I would roll a ball to her and she would roll it back to me. In the midst of one of these fascinating bouts, her mother called me away, when I returned, the baby had figured out how to pull the ball to herself using her feet!

At 18 months, she visited my house and figured out how to switch the song on my ipod – which was docked and on a shelf. To which her father replied, “see, even Leia knows Nsync sucks.”

Grrrr.

Anyway, so now she’s six and is totally verbal and rational and real person like, so we were playing a board game on Sunday morning — something about a ladybug. I dunno, it was “invented” by a 12-year-old, which I found offensive in itself. The game basically operates like Candyland, you pick cards and move pieces along a twisty line. There are squares that send you back and some that let you skip ahead and whoever gets to the end first wins. Simple.

Princess Leia explained the “rules” to me but none seemed to allow me to move my piece at all. After she was halfway through the line, I asked if she was *SURE* that I couldn’t pick a card yet. She looked at the board, decided she had a sufficient enough lead, squinted and said “okay, you can go now.” To her chagrin, I drew a six paces card, which made up a lot of ground right away. So on her turn, she starts rifling through the deck to find a six paces card of her own. She’d pick a card, look at it, go “no that one is ripped.” Then draw again. “Oh, no, I wasn’t supposed to take that one.” She’d pick again.

I laughed and contemplated my options.

See, I don’t mind the cheating, necessarily. But it was the TERRIBLE cheating that was driving me nuts. But is it really proper for me to teach a six year old how to cheat *better*?

I shall leave the story there… cause I’m curious about your thoughts and don’t want them influenced with what actually happened. Or judginess.

I had a job in my high school’s alumni office — which paid nothing, but since I was there on scholarship… yeah, I know, assholes.

I worried about bills and getting into college. I never took crazy risks like jumping off high places or trying drugs or drinking alcohol. I took extra care with my books and my clothes because I knew they were expensive to replace. I raised my eyebrow at the kids who were all excited because their parents were going out and they would be left home alone.

Uh huh.

I call that “a weekday.”

The vast majority of my friends in high school were similarly “serious minded.” I wouldn’t say “mature” exactly — we would hang chess pieces in effigy after we took them from our opponent and have epic water fights on behalf of Oliver Cromwell against the tyranically king — but yeah, that was our teenage fun: Chess and world domination.

I can still remember the 11th grade dean shaking his head when he caught a bunch of us in an empty classroom after school and was like “what are you guys doing in here?”

“Um… trying to teach ourselves German. We’re sorry about being in here, but they wouldn’t let us talk in the library.”

He didn’t exactly say “looo–zzerrrrsss,” as he backed out of the room…

Of course, what he didn’t know was we were teaching ourselves German so we would be poised to take over the world! MUAHAHAHAAHAHA (In retrospect, we should have been teaching ourselves Chinese. Stupid kids!)

Ah…good times. Good times. I’ve been a bit google obsessed lately — for obvious reasons — and it’s weird how few of those guys have any internet presence at all. None have an abundant one. I doubt we’ll ever see each other again, but we’ll always have Paris, as they say.

Mostly because the French are weak and surrender quickly.

I don’t know why all the trees change in the fall
I know you’re not scared of anything at all
Don’t know if Snow White’s house is near or far away
But I know I had the best day
With you today

I don’t know who I’m gonna talk to
Now at school
I know I’m laughing on the car ride home with you
Don’t know how long it’s gonna take to feel okay
But I know I had the best day
With you today

I love that I thought I would cry for a few days, write something thoughtful and reasonable and that would be the end of it. I threw myself on the floor and threw a tantrum for a week and a half when I blew out the tires on my car. Granted, my car was only seven months old, I had, at the last minute, declined tire coverage, AND I BLEW TWO IN ONE DAY ON THE SAME STUPID POTHOLE!!! ARRRGGHHHH!!! Wait, where was I? Oh, right. So… eight days later, I’m still not anywhere near over it.

I sit around thinking that I’m such a terrible person, followed by thinking no I’m not, he is! Was.

Though, I’m having increasingly strange — probably inappropriate thoughts about it now — like… so… does the salutatorian become the valedictorian in the event the valedictorian dies at 34? Um…asking for a friend.

I’ve also convinced myself that I have psychic powers. That whole doomswitch winter of 2010, I knew something terrible was wrong. I thought it was endless stream of bad beats I was suffering in my nascent poker pro career or the whole cancer scare, but I had clearly tapped into something greater. So, now I’m trying to figure out how to get a job as psychic to some low level CW star… Like leighton meester.

Oh, yeah and my football team is going to be playing in a little thing called the Superbowl. I can’t really say anymore right now (spit spit fingers crossed throws salt over both shoulders) but the journey so far as been so unlikely… I’m just closing my eyes real tight and believing as hard as my can. . (I may or may not have booed Father Robert on Sunday, when he said “Mass has ended, go in peace and Go Giants.”

(Even funnier, for the last few weeks I’ve been sharing a pew with a teenage boy in a Manning jersey. (I’ve been wearing my Patriots’ sweatshirt every week lately.) The first week, the Riots were on bye, so when we had to shake hands during mass, no biggie. The following week, the Riots had already won, and the Giants still had to play Green Bay, so I smiled at him when I shook his hand. However, LAST WEEK, there was this palpable tension in our handshake, like we KNEW!

I’ve been giggling thinking about mass on the fifth – the super day, for those of you not in the know!

I smiled because, well, I’m shamelessly vain and love being quoted! Coupled with the fact that line was from a post I published in 2004, so I was quoted AND remembered! Double bonus points! Well, of course, that post was written about “Don”. (I’ve decided I don’t want this post gooleable.)

As I thought about what I wanted to say, I kept going further and further back, “oh wait, I forgot…no, actually, what happened was…okay, well, first…” Somehow when I was at the part where I was thirteen walking down the stairs from… I knew I had completely lost my way with this.

I came across the news of his death in the most random way. I was finally clearing out the junk from my guest bedroom and there was a handwritten card with the return address of a teacher from my high school. I knew she had been diagnosed with skin cancer some years back and I feared it was an invitation to a memorial or something for her. I knew the mail was years old, so I was like I should just toss it.

Bah.

I tore it open, and just like in those movies where war widows get a telegram from the army, as I read the words “I just heard the news about Don. I’m so sorry, I know how close you two were,” the note fell from my hands back onto the pile of unopened mail.

I grabbed my laptop and opened a browser to google. I was stunned, but not sad at all. I kept cleaning, but that didn’t seem right. I posted about it, in those starkest terms because I felt I needed to see it written out, in print. He was not only dead, BUT TWO YEARS DEAD.

From what I gathered, the cancer he had as a baby, returned. He briefly went into remission in ’08, but a more aggressive form returned in ’09. They had to remove a lung, but he thought he would beat it again. He didn’t. (Actually, I found a post written by this girl Jenny, who said that he was her best friend from childhood. I SO SIDEEYED the HELL outta of that! DUDE! I ain’t never heard of you “JEN-KNEE”, if that IS YOUR REAL NAME! HMPH!) I poured through all the stuff I could find about his death online and I was still pretty okay.

Frankly, I had done all the sad, weepy mourning for this relationship back in 2003. I read in our high school newsletter that he had been honored at Homecoming and I e-mailed him asking why he didn’t tell me so I could have gone? And he replied something along the lines of “I thought you’d be mad that it wasn’t you.” And I was all “OF COURSE, I’M MAD IT WASN’T ME! But right below that, I’m happy it was you.” To that, he just sent back a smiley face: this one: : ) He thought that one was cuter than : – ) cause the latter looked like a potato. #truestory. Then, I sent him a happy new year’s email and it bounced back to me.

That was that.

We were done and I didn’t care anymore. As I told @Vinnay, the day before I had thrown out a bunch of postcards and letters from him because “he was dead to me… I just didn’t know he was dead to EVERYBODY! Waa!!”

Which is totally ridiculous, isn’t it? Father Robert saw me sorta sobbing through mass and he was all “what’s wrong?” And I ran through my possible “uhh, this guy I used to know died. Um…two years ago” answer and settled on “nothing, allergies.”

Then I spent the day trying to think of awesome Don stories and looking at pictures of us from friendster.

Seconds before this picture was taking at our high school graduation party someone said "pretend it's a wedding cake."

(YES, talk about a way back machine!)

I hadn’t really thought about him in so long, that it was hard to remember him at first, but random things started popping in my head: when I got my first car, when I graduated from law school, I told him I’d come pick him up (he was the first of my friends in high school to get a car and would drive me EVERYWHERE, so I figured it’d be a funny turn about for him to be the passenger.) About ten minutes after we were on the highway, he kind of clears his throat and says “so, you know what I find helpful? Before switching lanes, just kinda glance through the back window here (he taps on the window on the backseat passenger side) to make sure you’re not running a car off the road.” I laughed so hard.

Or in junior year when I decided glasses would make me look smart, so I bought these clear glass ones and I had braided my hair over the summer, so I called him the night before the first day of school and was like “dude, I look totally different now, you might not recognize me, so just giving you the heads up that I wear glasses and braided my hair.” So the next day, I see him and he doesn’t say anything and I’m all “DUDE! HELLO!” And he goes “Dawn? OH MY GOD! IS THAT YOU??” Jackass.

And that lead to one of the funniest things I remembered, I used to call him at like 2 in the morning from Yale because I didn’t want to “disturb his fancy Princeton life.” And we’d talk till like 6 in the morning — on one of these marathon calls where I was probably bitching about my crazy freshman year roommates, he goes “You are SO MELODRAMATIC!” Without hesitation OR a shred of self awareness or irony I respond “WHAT? HOW DARE YOU?!” and hang up. He calls me back, I pick up and hang up. He calls me back again and I answer “you take that back.” He goes “Fine. You’re not melodramatic. At all.” #RRUUUDDDEEE

I remembered going to his Princeton graduation and his mom feeding me the most delicious strawberries I’d ever eaten! Like maybe the first strawberries I’d ever eaten EVER! And I kept dipping them in the powdered sugar, so the lower half of my face was practically white… actually, that memory is mortifying.

Then those memories gave way to the less happy ones of broken promises and unreturned calls. Days of silence between us turning into weeks turning into months turning into years turning into forever.

And so I’ve spent the last few days alternating between an inconsolable teenage me, who can’t believe her other half is gone and the petulant twenty something me who pointedly insists she doesn’t care.

In the end, the thirty-something me is grateful that for those turbulent high school years and the scary first-time-away-from-home college years, though I was often alone, I was never lonely. I had a partner in crime, a literal and figurative wheel man. Every club I started, I was President; he was Vice President. Even in college, if I joined a club at Yale, he had to join the same one at Princeton, so we’d “have stuff to talk about!” I called him by his last name all the time, so everyone in school did too — but I didn’t like that, so I made up a nickname for him one day.
“Why are you calling me that?”
“So that years from now, after we’ve grown up and I see you on the street, I can call you that and you’ll know it’s me!”
“Huh. Well, then you can stop calling me that, I’ll know.”
I never did see him on the street all grown up…but I think he was probably right. He would have known.
Heck, he was probably right about the melodramatic thing too.

1975-2010

R.I.P

“Hooray for packages,” say I in my perfectly normal not-at-all weird way.

I open the first one and I’m all “YAY!! This is awesome!”

Tom Brady doll

Tom Brady AND Dr. Who candy!

I read the note in the box and it’s from none other than Clareified’s 2011 International person of the year: At Ah-stin-toe!

Wow, I think to myself, what an awesome person @astinto is! So not like those other mean White House burning Canadians who run around burning people’s white houses all willy nilly!

This train of thought is interrupted by another train of thought: ooh, I have two more packages!

I open the next one and it’s my value pack of Nyquil, not as exciting, but still pretty good if you’re sneezing, coughing, stuffy… Why am I running free adverts for Nyquil on my blog? Moving on.

So, I open the third package and immediately I boo and hiss:

Alack! This is not awesome and great and now I have grammatically incorrect hockey team cooties on my hands! It will take hours of staring at the NHL League standings to erase the horrors of this moment! What villain would subject me to such an indignity… Albeit an indignity accompanied by delicious candies?

Well, wouldn’t you know, it was Chinese Pete! No, I’m kidding, it was also @astinto! That bastard!

And so it was, I learned a valuable lesson about being lulled into complacency by Canadians! I must warn President Obama to secure the White House! Alas, my mouth is too full of jellied beans to talk right now… Damn you, Astin, ddaaaaaammmnnnnn yyoooouuuuu!!!

I’m not going to lie, with emergency surgery, during a blizzard, in the second week of January and another Patriots “one and done” in the playoffs, my hopes for the year were low. And yet, I survived the surgery (and the weeks of recovery in the ECB), was given the welcome “it wasn’t cancer,” diagnosis AND my BFF on alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays hooked me up with one of the most permanent jobs I’ve had in three years.

By February, 2011 was sunshine and lollipops — like the good kind: sour apple with gum inside.

My little sister Smokey got married in the Zona, so I got to enjoy 90 degree days in the middle of East Coast winter. Pearatty treated me to the fancy spa treatment and even though Wygant stole my nose and REFUSES to give it back, he was a joy to watch running around trying to mop.

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Kaz and Tito tied the knot a month later and I had a mini law school reunion with some of my favoritest people on the planet. I even got my windows washed by a shirtless F-train wearing frayed acid wash jean shorts! Both weddings were amazing (Smokey totally handled an improbable flood, in Phoenix, of her garden wedding like a BOSS, while Kaz laughed in the face of Eygptian mummy curses at her cool museum wedding). I felt privileged to have been on hand for both.

I was sad that I wouldn’t be able to see my Riots play football live this year, first, because of the NFL lock-out and then because of the poverty, but after I entered AND won a fitness contest this fall, I had a surprise cash windfall! I took the money from that victory and saw Taylor Swift in concert, the Patriots notch their tenth regular season win AND paid for a trip out to Vegas where I came in fourth in a poker tournament! I also got glasses this year and although @petitedov HATES them and says they make me look stupid, I LOVE them and practice dramatically putting them on and taking them off in front of the mirror all day long. OMG, this whole post sounds like an end of the year newsletter now. Okay, back on track, sooooo…

I got to hang out with my DC niece and nephew, and those people they live with

– who very nicely let me take part in their Christmas tradition of hunting and killing a tree! Princess Leia declared “Auntie Dawn picks THE WORST trees!” Well, I NEVER. (Also, I said to her “when I was your age, Pluto was a planet.” She shakes her head slowly and offers to teach the planets to me — when she gets a chance (she was wrapping a present for a classmate’s birthday party.)

And little Emil decided he would rather use the ropes to make me his prisoner and take me to “the dungeon,” than tie the tree to the car.

Shoutout to all the cool people I met this year, but none can yet replace my redheaded New York crew…of two. Yo, how come Mary didn’t take any plane trips with me this year… if she’s flying around with a new black friend… *shakes fist*

And I think I’ve worn my Christmas present from Alceste/Dawn 2 every day since I opened it!

Thanks to Pi for hosting my whole birthday party at her house, Amanda for baking a cake:

Petitedov, @Starfishncoffee, Ugarles, Sidney, Mary, Pretty Numbers and the Cider Fraud for coming. And of course, props to Kaz and Tito for my birthday part Part Deux and hilarious t-shirt!

OH MY GOSH! In the new International Clareified Persons of the year category, @Astinto and M totally win for most awesome chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream caramel cake WITH A MINI DAWN TOPPER EVER MADE!! SO SO SO VERY COOL!

LIKE WOW!! How’d she DO THAT??

I’m totally spending the entire weekend in Toronto next year so I can eat my whole cake all by myself. Um… yeah, I just invited myself over to a party in Toronto that you guys are throwing… you’re welcome?!

Person of the year was a no brainer, but I did want to write about the co runners up.

I know lots of great, generous people — seriously, most days, I’m like why on earth do you people even talk to me, I’m THE WORST! There is no one that inspires that thought more frequently than my BFF on Mondays, Tuesdays and Sundays: This Is Not April.

Who really is… Spoiler Alert: Totally April!

DUDE! SHE IS SOOOOO NICE!! I mean seriously. Like even when discussing the most wretched horrible annoying people in the world (NOT ME, YOU JERKS) she has nothing but nice things to say AND she totally makes with the giving of the benefit of the doubt. JUST GIVES IT AWAY! She almost makes me feel guilty about the terrible things I text her on a near weekly basis. Almost. Maybe if I lived closer, her goodness would rub off. #noporno. Her birthday gift of Patriots’ jewelry has been flashed in the face of poker dealers who trash talk Tom Brady and waved at obnoxious Giants fans after they crapped the bed against Washington the very week New England clinched a playoff spot. I never take the earrings off! Tee hee.

I’m so excited to be part of her wedding to @jnassi, even if I will be all sleeveless. I did get a dress with pockets though, which will be stuffed with snacks as I’m taking my job as Vice President in Charge of Bride Feeding very seriously. Like, it’s on my resume and I’ll be asking for references later, seriously. (Oh, did I mention making her wake up at the crack of Dawn on a Vegas Friday to go dress shopping with me because I wanted to see the Pinball museum?! And instead of telling me to go kick rocks, SHE DID IT!)

Also, April is my mom’s favorite person who she’s never met because I’m like “April’s wedding in April” and my mom completely cracks up. Every. Time. Yes, that’s where I get it from.

Second runner up was also Clareified’s 2007 person of the year, Fisch. When not seen wearing a blanket, like a superhero cape, and throwing trash bags of soiled diapers into the street, The artist now known as Fuelsellage, is all running around around being mister guy. When I got back from Arizona, there were randomly all these packages waiting for me. I assumed, obviously, that they were explosives. But no! They were “no reason whatsoever” presents from Fisch! (My doorman, who spent all February telling me that if I *had* gotten a package, he would have *given* me said package, was very happy for me. Jerkface.) Then, this summer, Fuelsellage did one of the nicest things EVER AND he didn’t even tell me about it till months afterward!

I always bug him with mine (and my mother’s) computer problems, and even though he was all suffering from pneumonia, he let me bring my crapbox Dell over to try to see if he could make it work less badly. And when he couldn’t save it, he PAID someone to fix it for me. Just all around totally sweet and makes me feel fortunate to know him. Plus, now I know that when young 18-year-old Maximus has to call home for his dad to pick him up from Tropicana’s security office, after being caught playing high stakes hold ‘em with a fake ID, he will be in good hands. Though, young 15-year-old Maximus should probably call his fake Aunt Dawn to pick him up from Borgata’s security when *he’s* caught. Oh, I should probably also take this opportunity to confess to cheating in a good 80% of our Words with Friends games. As penance, I will let you beat me the next time we play face to face Scrabble. *whistles*

But now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…. Clareified’s 2011 Person of the Year IISSSSS….

My Chinese Nephew Alexander! “Nobody can get mad at you for picking a baby” – Pearatty

How cute is his witty bitty Chinese eyes! Honestly, this kid’s face is so cute I could just keep it in a jar on my coffee table. Except that would be weird… and probably illegal…

Alex was bornded in 2011, so that totally makes it his year AND he’s the youngest person I ever met and I met him in 2011.

Photo Sharing – Video Sharing – Photo Printing

After a rocky start where he would scream bloody murder whenever I got within two inches of him, we have developed quite the bond.

I taught him how to wave when he was four weeks, and I taught him how to walk at two months and now we have highly competitive “peekaboo” matches. I have a 3-1 lead in the series. But he plays me tough. I love how he laughs and laughs and then that makes his mom laugh and within minutes the whole room is just giggling. Good times, indeed.

To all my readers, commenters, lurkers, to everyone who checked up on me after the earthquake and hurricane (THE HELL, NEW YORK? WHY SO SERIOUS?!), my twitter followers and twitter followed, I hope this year treated you well and hope next year treats you better and you catch ten times more touchdown passes in the next two months -okay, that last part is a tad specific.

To those I don’t see or talk to as much as I used to: “Hope it’s nice where you are. And I hope the sun shines and it’s a beautiful day and something reminds you…”

Here’s to 2012 and may it bring more laughter and love for all! (And of course, the epic end to my friendship with F-train. N.B. Anyone who sides with him over me is racist! Though, I suppose anyone who sides with me over him hates the gays? This’ll be tough for the liberals, but I predict I get all the Republicans!)

Peace ‘n’ Chickengrease

Tee hee.

At As-tin-toe  got it for me for my bithday.

UPDATE:

Thanks to Alceste (and Dawn 2) and the Jakes for their AWESOME presents! Another year of one Dawn J. Summers slipping through that “naughty/nice” checklist system!

#DawnFail

My phone, a 4G Verizon Samsung Droid Charge, is fully charged and actually getting 4G reception. I have my new silver video ipod in my pocket. That is also fully charged and stocked with thousands of songs and hours of television that I haven’t seen.

And yet… I. Am. Bored. Out. Of. My. Ever. Loving. Mind.

I’m anxious for the next eight days to pass. Heck, I’m anxious for the next fourteen days to pass. 2012, yo! We are full and well into the future! This is the date I used to blurt out when trying to evoke the notion of the impossible!

“Pshaw, yeah, maybe in 2012!”

I swear I’m about to have like nine marriages, triplets and adopt two dogs.

What care I for the blatherings of social media or local news on a cold Saturday morning on the cusp of THE FUTURE?!

I need bigger distractions! Tebowbowl! Rangers/Devils! Alien invaders!

Sigh.

Taps foot.

Are we there yet?

She went to the bank to get change for the Sunday collection, her medical co-pays and her Access A Ride van fare. She withdrew $300 and got $200 in smaller bills from the teller. This money was put in a bank envelope and she put that in her pocket. She and her friend then went to the pharmacy to fill scripts for her back pain and to buy groceries.

Then, she and her friend walked home.

There were two people talking on the stoop and her friend stopped to talk to them. My mother put her key in the lock and opened the front door, she held the door open for her friend and the woman in the stoop talking couple, put her foot in the door crack and continued her conversation.

My mom and her friend went up the stairs, got the mail from the mailbox, got in the elevator and pressed their floor.

“Hold the door,” a voice cried out and my mom pushed the door open a bit to stop the elevator.

A well dressed black man in his forties stepped in. He didn’t press any buttons and followed my mom and her friend off.

“Where is 3C?” He asked them.

My mom’s friend pointed to the end of the hallway, he said thanks and they walked in the other direction of the hallway.

My mom’s friend went to her own apartment and my mom went to ours. She put the key in the top lock and opened it when she felt hands around her throat and someone started choking her. She pushed him back against the wall, her didn’t let go of her neck, but his cellphone fell and he yelled “Fuck,” when it hit the floor. He then punched her and threw her down to the floor. My mom’s friend started screaming and he pulled out a gun. At this point, my mom said she saw someone looking down at them from the floor above, so she started yelling “he has a gun, call the police.”

The gunman then went directly for the pocket with the envelope she had gotten from the teller, took it and ran.

At this point, her friend ran into her apartment and called 911. Three cars came within five minutes. They said NO ONE ELSE CALLED. So basically, some asshole sees two women being attacked with a gun in their building and not only doesn’t help, which, fine, ok, I get that, BUT NOT EVEN CALL THE POLICE?? MAAAANNNN, LIIISSSTTEEEEEEN!

The cops said the guy must have followed them from the bank. My mom says she thinks she saw the guy in the photo lineup the police showed her, but the man in the picture had a beard and her robber didn’t. The cops wanted to take her coat to see if there was any DNA on it from her struggle with the man. But she said it was too cold to leave without her coat and they let her keep it. A paramedic at the station checked her out, but she has scheduled an MRI and whatnot just in case.

The cops offered to give her money for the collection plate on Sunday, but she declined.

I had won tickets to attend the premiere of 24/7 Rangers/Flyers at HBO headquarters last night and I told my mom I would take her. I think she was glad for the distraction and she always likes “fancy parties” with “little food.” Seriously, she is obsessed with hors d’oeuvres! I think she kinda likes hockey now, although I will never be able to explain anything that’s happening beyond “um, that guy scored,” AND the main bad guys in the movie (The Flyers) have a black guy and the good guys (The Rangers) don’t: WORST. SCENARIO. EVAH!

We were talking about the incident on the way home and she said that she was angry that the guy had “tricked” her with his suit.
“If he was wearing baggy pants down his ass and looked like a kid, I would never have even gone to my door!” She was very angry.
I was mostly angry that this fucker has a cellphone and is stalking old ladies in banks. I’ve slacked off from the gym since I came back from DC, but I return tomorrow with a purpose and a focus! I will be the masked Avenranger. I will fight bad guys with a hockey stick and when I leave them tied up for the police I will duct tape a hockey puck into their mouths.

Alas, until then I’m just going to randomly hate crime well dressed black guys. Starting with that Simmonds dude.

Wait…what?

Anyway, part of my “process” is I clean EVERYTHING — INCLUDING THE INTERNAL MACHINE PIPES — And how do I clean the internal pipage? Well, I make a pot of coffee *before* my pot. I used to end up making two pots of the House Blend, but then I realized I was just wasting House Blend, since I wasn’t drinking one pot. Then, I got a GENIUS idea… make a pot of decaf! So, that’s what I started doing. Then one day this woman comes in and sees a pot of decaf already prepared, while I was measuring out the coffee for my regular pot.

“Oh My Gosh, did you make the decaf for me?”

Um.

“Yes?”

“That is SO NICE! YOU ARE SO NICE! You don’t even drink decaf!”

No. Cause it’s retarded.

Smiles

For the next two weeks whenever I’d see her she’d be like “thanks so much!”

Then yesterday, the office manager came up to me to say that she heard I was making the coffee for the floor and she wanted to thank me for helping out.

O_o

Yes. I am AWESOME!

I called and they gave me a new patient appointment six weeks into the future, so naturally, I wrote it down and promptly forgot all about it. 5 weeks and 6 days hence, I’m all… oh yeah, I gotta go to that doctor tomorrow. Huh… I should probably ask my mom about the doctor. So, at midnight, after I got back from a wild and crazy Monday night out (@_@) I call my mom and ask:

“So, do you know Dr. Katherine Mercedes?”

And she’s all “No, I don’t think so. Who is that?”

“Doctor at your old hospital.”

“OH. KATHY MERCEDES? SHE’S THE WORST! DON’T GO ANYWHERE NEAR HER. SHE’S AN IDIOT AND A BITCH. SHE’S TERRIBLE…. Why are you asking?”

UM. O_o

So, yeah, evidently she’s hates this woman and this woman hates her and I have to go to this appointment in 6 hours. My mother very helpfully said “I wouldn’t go. But if you go, I wouldn’t let her know we’re related.”

Now, it’s way too late to cancel without paying money and I have to go, BUT I LOOK EXACTLY LIKE MY MOTHER! Plus, she’s my emergency contact!

Yeah, I cry.

And the moral of this story is ______________?

Anyhoo, I took out the braids and was all wandering around for a new hairdresser when my mother decided I should go back to the woman who did my hair when I was in high school. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on a valid reason, but I did not want to do this. However, I was leaving for Vegas and I just didn’t have any other choice. I asked her if she would be open after I came home from work and she said she would keep the shop open just for me because she was happy to have me back. Umm…so far, so good, I guess.

Now, with Jenifer, because of the language barrier and because she was trying to impress my cousin by being nice to his family, I would just show up, she would show me pictures of the kids, I would say “oh, they’re cute,” (or my botched Spanglish version of that sentence), she would do my hair and I would offer to pay, she would shake her head and that would be that. I didn’t even know what she was doing to my hair exactly, I just knew whether I liked it or didn’t (though, if I didn’t I just had to suck it up.) So, when I went to Lynn’s shop on Wednesday evening, I took a picture of me with one of the Jenifer styles I liked and said that’s what I wanted. Lynn was all “how do you want me to do it…A or B… blah blah blah.” I stared, thought it over and held up the picture again.

“Whatever gets it to look like this.”

She asks some more questions, I make it quite clear that I have no answers and then she just starts doing my hair. However, 1. nothing she’s doing is familiar. 2. She is talking NONSTOP.

“Oh, do you remember my daughter, Sharice? The one that’s as smart as you?”

No.

“Mmmhmm. How is she?”

“Oh, great, great. She’s going to an Ivy League college in DC now.”

O_o?

“At first, I thought she was going to go to Duke, it was Duke this and Duke that, cause she got into Duke. She also got into Brown, but she didn’t like that, so she was going to go to Duke, but then she visited Georgetown and that was it! I still have my Duke mom sweatshirt too. But she says “Mommy, don’t you wear that down here!” Oh, then she got a roommate from Trinidad and she thought they would get along, but then the girl really hated American blacks, so they didn’t get along. And my daughter told her, if she hates America so much, she should go to college in Trinidad, that didn’t sit so well with the girl, yeah? Hard to believe that you would get that attitude in Ivy league schools. Smart children shouldn’t be like that blah blah blah blah.”

At this point, mostly I’m furiously texting my mother to get down here because I can’t take it anymore and I really didn’t know how long I would be able to resist bursting out laughing if she called Georgetown an Ivy League school even one more time. (Though, I should have known that my mother was not the answer to that particular problem because my mother is even more of a college snob than I am. TO THIS DAY, she tells people I went to “Harvard,” because it’s the “same as Yale.” O_o Sure enough, the first time the Georgetown/Ivy thing comes up, my mother goes “No, it’s not. There are only five Ivy League schools.” Then, the hairdresser looks at me and asks if that’s right and as she was all up in my hair, with hot objects and whatnot, all I would say is “I think there are eight” and shot my mother a look.)

Anyway, this goes on FOR FIVE AND A HALF HOURS!!! Now, I was flying out in the morning and it was already 1 AM. JENIFER NEVER TOOK THIS LONG AND HERE’S THE KICKER: I was expecting to pay like $30 or something and this woman says “$110″ she then adds “usually I charge ‘$160,’ but since I know you…” THE HELL??? Luckily, I had my Vegas cash on me, BUT STILL!!

Okay, so now I get home at like 2 AM. I have some decisions to make…do I just stay up all night and sleep on the plane or do I go to bed immediately? I split the baby. I packed and then went to sleep at 3. I woke up at 5 to go to the gym and then, because two hours of sleep is just enough sleep to keep you keenly aware that you have not slept, I started to worry that I would fall asleep at the gate and miss my flight cause I wouldn’t hear the boarding call.

Every one of you just laughed and rolled your eyes at that… except Ugarles.

So, I’m chugging coffee, grab my Mets duffel bag and head out the door. Halfway to the busstop (yeah, poor people take busses to the airport…) I realize, I left my suitcase at home. Balls. Leaving for the airport: take two.

I just miss a bus, but luckily another one is right behind. Unluckily, it’s a local. It takes an hour to get me to the second bus which actually goes to the airport. This bus is also a local. And then I miss an Airtran. I’m down to 40 minutes till takeoff before I get on the airtran. I suffer as it stops at Federal Circle, 38 minutes.

Then Terminal 1, 35 minutes.

Then terminals 2 & 3, 34 minutes.

Finally, at Terminal four, I dash off the monorail and run.

I put my creditcard in the check-in machine: DENIED.

I run to the counter and the woman says the flight is already closed. Sorry.

NOooooooooo. NO SORRY! NO SORRY!

“Please, it doesn’t leave for half an hour…”

“Do you have any checked bags?”

“NO! None!”

“Ok, I’ll call the gate and see…”

“Thanks.”

“Okay, I can’t guarantee anything, but you can head over there.”

“Where is security?”

“Downstairs and on the other side of the terminal, I honestly don’t think you’ll make it, ma’am.”

I spare a tenth of a second to glare. And then I RUN!

Seriously, I was in a ZONE. I was hurling my carryon on down hallways, hurdling over baby carriages, flying through the air, basically, until I got to the security port. I skipped to the front of the line and showed the guard my boarding pass “Oh, that’s boarding now.”

Yes…I…know…

He ushers me through and I hit the wall of a line of shoeless passengers waiting to go through the metal detectors.

Oy.

I walk up to the lady at the front of the first row of people, explain my plight and ask if I can take her place as first in line.

She agrees. I hear the PA make the announcement for Final boarding call for my flight. I peer over the metal detectors, my gate is the very first one off of the security line. ALRIGHT! I’m going to…

An alarm starts blaring.

I hear the TSA handlers calling for a supervisor. There is some malfunction on the first lane, so all the x-ray scanners have been shutdown.

KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!

The supervisor comes out, he blah blah blahs with the agents, I hear another announcement saying this was the FINAL final boarding call for my flight.

The supervisor shuts down the lane I am at the front of. FUCK!

My lane now has to consolidate into the next lane, I ask the TSA agent if I can get to the front.

“Front of what? All the lanes are stopped.”

O_O

“Well, when it starts again? My flight is final boarding.”

“It’s not up to me ma’am, there’s a long line here. That’s why we tell you get to the airport 90 minutes before your flight.”

&%$^#%^@#^@

As they restart the x-ray machines, I ask the dude at the front of the line if I can go through before him, he agrees.

Finally, I step through the metal detector and the alarms go off… the fucking scores of bobby pins in my hair trigger the alarm!!!

“Female patdown,” the agent calls out. Nothing.

“Female patdown!” she calls again.

WHAT IN THE HOLY NAME OF TIM TEBOW?!

Meanwhile, I can SEE the gate, I can TASTE the gate. I watch as the sign switches from 8: 45 AM Las Vegas to 10:15 AM San Francisco.

That. Cannot. Be. Good.

I just start to cry.

“Aww, what’s the matter, hon?”

“I think my flight just left.”

“You have any belts, or anything sharp?”

“No.”

“It’s just the pins.”

“okay, go. go.”

I trudge barefootedly over to the desk and the lady is all, “hurry up, you have like two minutes.”

Wheeee!!

I have tons of stuff to write about — did you know that I went to the final Taylor Swift concert on the “Speak Now” tour? It was awesome! And I need to finish a writeup of returning shows(The entire NBC Thursday “comedy” block needs to be canceled. Ditto “The Mentalist.”) But, I’m packing and getting ready for what I think will be my last WPBT in Las Vegas and when I return from that, I’ll be off again to the Dirty Souf. I hope to get some writing done on the plane and maybe at Beni Hana, since I’ll be dining alone and will need something to occupy my hands in between wiping away my loser tears.

So, short post, slightly longer, things should be back to normal, just not right now.

GO RANGERS AND RIOTS!

Needless to say, by the time I got home on Monday night, I was dead tired and face planted into bed. When I checked my phone this morning at 4 AM, there were like five text messages from my mother saying “Urgent. Call me immediately.” There were three missed calls. I decided to call her. She was totally sleeping.
“Hello?”
“It’s Dawn. You said it was an emergency…”
Still groggy she’s all “What?”
“It’s Dawn… you texted me ten times yesterday…”
“And you’re just now calling me?”
“I was sleeping…what’s the emergency?”
“I wanted you to show me how to log on to facebook so I could vote for Dancing with the Stars.”
O_o

My ipod died.

Chupacabra threatened to fire me again.

It’s cold.

AAANNNNDDD I’m hungry again.

The Patriots lost to Pittsburgh.

I lost my bet with T-bone.

The Patriots play the Giants on Sunday, so every sports outlet and their mothers are talking about Superbowl 42 *AND* showing clips of that homophobic douchebag, who is now bagging groceries at Walmart.

I have a cold.

My earphones broke.

My cell phone died.

I can’t buy tickets with miles because US Airways blows.

I’m mercury poisoned. Probably.

AND I’m hungry.

Last Saturday, when the three of us were heading down to the City… not the Pacific one, the Atlantic one, in my boring old two-year old Beamer, Mary and I had the same thought: Heeeyy, wwhhheerrreee’sss oooouuuurrrr nnnneeeewww ccccaaaarrrr??? #RUDE

Alceste was  all blah blah blah economy blah blah financial responsibility. And we’re all, dude, you promised us a damn hell ass new car!  New car! New car! New car!

Next time, he should follow Kearns’ lead and get a new car and then never speak to any of us again. I mean next next time, he owes us an Audi! Now now now!

That strikes me as dumb and overbroad.

In New Jersey, a guy who caught his roommate making out with another man with his webcam, is being prosecuted because his roommate then jumped off the GW Bridge because his gayness was now out. This too strikes me as dumb and misplaced prosecution.

Shrug.

I saw a funny tweet in response to all the bullying ones that went something like “the solution to bullying is to grow a pair.”

Which, I know, easy to say harder to practice, especially with all these stupid rules now. At what point during retaliation does the bullied become the bullier? I can remember fights on the playground after some kid called me Shamu the whale or tripped me in the cafeteria, where the other kid’s face was well and good shoved into the asphalt and I’d still kick them in the stomach for extra good measure. That was probably…um… wrong?

And then there’s bullying that I absolutely approve of… this dude on twitter was writing about his “mind grain.” As in headache. DUUUDEEEE!

So many people retweeted his words with mocking preambles that he deleted his tweets and started crying that people were making fun of him. If you are over the age of 10 and still think migraine is 1) two words and/or 2) contains a d, you deserve whatever you get.

Then there was the guy who thought there were 28 letters in the alphabet. Ditto for him. Whatever. He. Gets.

And no, kids shouldn’t be picked on for being gay or black or fat or ugly or fashionless — but schoolyard fights, teasing, they’re part of growing up, aren’t they? Are we raising a generation of sensitive ass whiners who won’t be able to take a joke? Who won’t be able to handle it when our Chinese overlords tease them about the shape of their eyes and their good driving?

I hope not, cause then I’m going to need to write all new material for my blogs!

“I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did.”

His words came at me like a speeding fist, like a sucker punch, yet somehow in that moment I was able to duck. And once I recovered and composed myself, I managed to say, “I don’t buy it.” Because I didn’t.

He drew back in surprise. Apparently he’d expected me to burst into tears, to rage at him, to threaten him with a custody battle. Or beg him to change his mind.

So he turned mean. “I don’t like what you’ve become.”

Gut-wrenching pause. How could he say such a thing? That’s when I really wanted to fight. To rage. To cry. But I didn’t.

Instead, a shroud of calm enveloped me, and I repeated those words: “I don’t buy it.”

You see, I’d recently committed to a non-negotiable understanding with myself. I’d committed to “The End of Suffering.” I’d finally managed to exile the voices in my head that told me my personal happiness was only as good as my outward success, rooted in things that were often outside my control. I’d seen the insanity of that equation and decided to take responsibility for my own happiness. And I mean all of it.

My husband hadn’t yet come to this understanding with himself. He had enjoyed many years of hard work, and its rewards had supported our family of four all along. But his new endeavor hadn’t been going so well, and his ability to be the breadwinner was in rapid decline. He’d been miserable about this, felt useless, was losing himself emotionally and letting himself go physically. And now he wanted out of our marriage; to be done with our family.

But I wasn’t buying it.

I said: “It’s not age-appropriate to expect children to be concerned with their parents’ happiness. Not unless you want to create co-dependents who’ll spend their lives in bad relationships and therapy. There are times in every relationship when the parties involved need a break. What can we do to give you the distance you need, without hurting the family?”

O_o

The guy who posted this on his page, shared the article saying “this woman is so brave.” Now, see, when I read the story I immediately thought of a dozen adjectives to describe this chick (delusional, crazy, dumb, sad…), brave did not come up. Not even briefly.

I can’t imagine where you are in life to have someone that you love and trust, basically spit in your face and you wipe it away with the back of your hand and ask what they want for dinner. Now, I’m not even saying I would rage or scream or throw things, cause I wouldn’t, but you best believe I would buy it. Right away, no questions asked.

I mean, HONESTLY.

A man doesn’t say such things without putting serious thought into it for a long time! Hell, I believe that shit when it’s not even said – when it’s just actions suggesting it — ignored texts, unreturned phone calls, disappearing acts — fuck that shit, I’m out, son!

I suppose marriage and children and the like should be taken more seriously, but DAMN. Dude, said he wanted OUT! What if this were the story about a woman who said the same thing and her husband was all “Nope. I don’t buy it.” I saw that movie, and got damn if I wasn’t clapping when Tina Turner finally got her divorce.

If this is “modern love,” I’ll be over here on my couch watching Revenge, thank you very much.

The water is falling in a steady, heavy stream. There is no wind though, so an umbrella will keep you dry.

I rolled up my pants legs to keep them from dragging along the wet pavement.

They came undone as I ran for the bus.

That bus turned out to be out of service.

There’s a monsoon on in New York City this morning and I’m waiting for a bus with wet pants legs.

I packed my lunch for work during the pre-dawn hours, after my attempted kidnapping, and it didn’t work out so well. Sad to say, my office is on top of a super over priced deli, but the place has good food, so long ago I had to stop carrying cash or cards with me because I just kept spending $20 on nonsense food every day. So long story short, a can of tuna and a cork screw = sasat for Dawn.

I will spare you how far into the can opening process I attempted before realizing it wasn’t going to happen.

However, the snafu recalled a weird incident from my youth. The power in my building was out and it was a Saturday or something, so my mom and I were at home. In those days, we only ate rice, eggs, mac and cheese, franks and tuna. Jelly sandwiches were the rare treat!

Yes, yes poverty is very sad. (Also, I was very picky and these were the only things I’d probably have eaten even if we were rich.)

Anyway, with no power, the only thing we could eat was tuna, but the opener was electric, so my mom stabbed the can with a knife and cut a jagged circle in the top. It took like ten knife of pressing and turning the can before she took her fingers and peeled the metal top back, then used it to squeeze the water out of the can and dumped the fish contents out onto a plate for me.

Then she repeated the process with another can for herself, this one she topped with heaping gobs of mayo.

Dinner was ready.

I’m sure there is some lesson to be learned from the fact that when my mom was pretty much my age, she could cleave open two cans of tuna to feed her family, while I spent nine hours whining on twitter and facebook, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what that lesson is.