so i'm walking home from the bus stop last night, down my quiet street in adams morgan, when across the street i see this guy with a ski mask run up behind this woman and try to take her purse and her ipod. she fought back a little, and before i really thought about what i was doing, i ran across the street and just started beating the shit out of this guy with my big as umbrella. it's one of those with the big curved handle, and i was swinging it from the other end and just nailing him with that thing. the women stepped back, grabbed her purse and her ipod from the ground and - obviously a neighborhood resident - starts running towards that 7-11 on the corner of 19th and columbia where one can always find a cabbie and a cop or two and yelling for the police. so now i'm here with this guy, just beating on him with my umbrella. at that point, he reached for his belt, and i thought i was in trouble. thankfully, under the street light, i could see that the gun he pulled out was a toy, something he had bought at target for a kid. and he knew i knew, because i started laughing and asking him if he was going to shoot me with a dart or some shit. then he decides to try to pistol whip me with this thing, this little plastic gun. i'm sure it was quite a sight, me with my big polka dotted umbrella hitting him - he trying to pistol whip me with a toy gun. he grabbed my umbrella and was pulling me closer with it so he could hit me, when the cops came running down the street and yelled Police! we both turned around, and this asshole steps on my foot.

GODDAMN IT! THAT'S MY FOOT! JESUS!

Oh, wow, I'm really sorry. I didn't mean ...

so the police grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground.

you're brave for a little thing, the cop said as he finished putting the cuffs on the perp, looking me up and down.

oh no, i just did what anyone would have done...

at this point, a few cop cars pulled up, and the new cops were asking who stopped this guy ... and i heard some of them talking about whether this was the guy that had been mugging people all over the neighborhood for the past couple of weeks. i was feeling pretty good, knowing that i had helped catch some serial mugger. i gave my statement, got a few pats on the back, and limped down the street to my apartment, realizing my foot was killing me.

that, or i stubbed my toe on the coffee table.

either way, i have a broken toe. and it hurts like a mother.

i am many things. i am a wife, a sister, a daughter. i am an auntie. i am a student, i am almost a lawyer. i am (i hope) a good friend. i am a pretty decent cook. i am a good parallel parker. i am a lapsed violist, and a lapsed christian. i am wondering if i drink a little too much wine for my own good. (i am convinced i do not, for now.)

i am currently considering drinking right from the bottle.

i am seriously thinking about staying in a hotel tonight.

i am not sure why i called my parents about this intruder, whose droppings i just found in my kitchen. i am not surprised that they laughed hysterically at my near-hyperventilating. i am surprised i did not scream when i realized what those droppings were. i am not sure i did not scream, come to think about it.

i am positive no fewer than 10 people walked past me laughing, while i stood on the corner of 19th and columbia as my parents tried to convince me i don't need to get traps if the exterminator is coming tomorrow.

i am now the proud owner of four No View, No Touch (tm) mouse traps.

i am not sure whether i want to find a mouse in said traps in the morning or not.

i am totally sleeping with socks on.

i am now stomping and singing when i take more than two steps in the apartment.

i am considering naming this thing yacobina poppertof to make myself feel better.

i am not feeling better.

i am not going to be happy until that fucker is dead.

reading dutch's triptych on the early morning after his son was born, (also, yay little gram!) i was thinking about my own quiet early mornings lately. in the past couple of months, we've had two 5am saturday cab rides to national. both times, though i wasn't thrilled at having to get in a cab at that ungodly hour - on a saturday, no less - and was also pretty annoyed that the cab company decided not to honor their promise to send a cabbie and left us to our own devices ... both times, i found the trip strangely soothing. there's something about seeing this city in darkness - and quiet, not just after dark, with the college hangers-on stumbling down my street after a long night of drinking. there's something so calming about the victorian facades, no steady wash of headlights running over the bricks - about the monuments lit, and knowing even from a distance that they aren't being swarmed by an unrelenting army of tourists. both of those flights i was going to national to catch at that ridiculous hour were to michigan, not for playful romps with nephews or wine festivals or for vacation. not for those things i love michigan for. the first was for christmas, where i knew i'd hug my brother for the last time until god knows when. the second, to spend the weekend in a cancer wing, reminiscing about college and ignoring the staples in jason's head.

but for the 20 minutes we spent basically alone on the roads of dc, silently gliding past the kennedy center, admiring the inky waters of the potomac, i felt calm and strong. this city has seen tragedy and joy that eclipse my spectrum of either emotion. on those mornings, i could almost feel the strength of this place as we passed the golden statues guarding the memorial bridge. i'm not sure what this year will bring, but i'm sure that a 5am cab ride 9 months from now will offer the same calm. i'm sure i'll stare out the window, allowing my forehead to rest on the cool, dank window, too tired to be concerned with how grimy it is, smiling slightly at the beauty of lincoln's memorial and the dignity of the kennedy center. i'm sure i'll find it comforting, and i'll know everything is going to be alright.

i'm trying

i am a little hesitant to blog about the delightfully normal and bad-news-free weekend we've just enjoyed, fearful that the fates will think i'm taunting them and put me in my place. there was a happy hour full of friends, a saturday with starbucks and shopping, an attempt at grilling that may or may not have nearly caught our house on fire, a trip to the woolly mammoth to see no child, brunch, and a monday holiday that was - for a few hours at least - deliciously warm... breakfast was eaten at a sidewalk cafe, and midday beers were enjoyed at a restaurant where the windows had been thrown open and the fresh warm air tickled the freshly painted toes in my flip flops. until the cold front and the pouring rain, of course. but even walking the few blocks home in the rain, me in my flip flops and b in short sleeves, was done with laughter and smiles. it was a good weekend.

it's been a rough few weeks. and to say i've been in a funk puts all previously claimed funks to shame. but i'm trying to pull myself out. i'm trying to remember that things that affect me often don't involve me. i'm trying to remember that there are plenty of problems i cannot fix. i'm trying to remember that there are plenty of problems i should not fix even if i can. and i'm trying to remember that i graduate in less than three months now, have only 12 weeks more to deal with one of the most insufferable people i know and put an end to my long and storied secretarial career. i'm trying to watch more movies, walk with an extra bounce in my step, and notice the buds as they begin to appear on the trees. i'm trying to distract myself with homework, though i know that will surely be short-lived. i'm trying to embrace the fact that 2008 is shaping up to be a year of transition, and that transition isn't always easy.

maybe i should have given up worrying for lent.

this is totally turning into the most depressing blog on the Interwebs.

the last time i voted in person was actually in a primary as well. i've been voting absentee for a half dozen years, clinging to my parents' address - though it wasn't the one at which i grew up - long long past a time when i would have considered living there. it was a primary in the summer of 2002. it was my brother's first voting experience, and we two piled into our parents' 1957 chevy (a beloved prop in our family that has been in my parents' garage for 28 years now) with them and drove with the windows down and the beach boys up to the elementary school assigned to us. i remember it well because it was a scene from much earlier in our childhood, the brother and i, cruising around with our parents in the same cool car listening to the same band ALL THE TIME always with the windows down. and because it happened either right before or right after (that i don't remember) we all learned our family was about to grow exponentially. i remember thinking about it a couple weeks later though, how precious i found that one last car drive before everything changed, when it was just the four of us, and it was simple. it was so simple. because the adoration those four people in that car had for one another then, and still, is unchanged even as the family itself is not.

it's true that i'm emphatically happy with my life, and with - i can say with absolute confidence - every single decision i've made for myself in the six years since. i know that version of me would be thrilled with this version of me. but on this election day, after voting in this primary, with the heaviness on my shoulders of helplessness brought on by four grave situations simultaneously, the worst of which being my desperate brother lying in a hospital bed two timezones away while they scan his brain and back and stick needles in his spine to see if his damaged body is still well enough to be sent to iraq, where his job will be sticking his torso - and soul, in effect - out the top of a hummer with a machine gun ... today, i cannot think of one thing i wouldn't give to find myself back on that primary day instead of this one. i think i would gladly make all those tough decisions again, i'd even go through the torment of law school again, if doing so would replace the hope and joy i remember in his laugh from that day. but alas, though big sisters are good for things like explaining to brothers voting for the first time the difference between a primary and an election, there are apparently some things that sisters cannot make sense of and some pains that sisters cannot heal.