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.

file under: life is not fair

let me just start by saying that whole foods at 9am on a saturday morning is a delight. full of fresh food but not yet yuppies, well-staffed in preparation for the oncoming slew of said yuppies ... i was thinking this even as i realized they did not have any israeli cous cous and the raspberries were approximately $12 a pint. when i reached the beer section, though, things took a turn.

i planted myself into a conversation two employees in that section were having right in front of where my beloved two hearted ale *should* have been waiting for me. 'twas not, dear readers. and since i couldn't find any last weekend either, i was pretty disappointed. i politely waited for their conversation to wane and politely whined that they were again out of my favorite beloved beer, goddammit.

when i asked for it they both grinned. oh we have some two hearted ale. we're just keeping it in the back so only the real fans get it. it was bottled four days ago. it's so fresh, it's like you're AT bell's!

ah, to be enjoying a pint of bell's at bell's ... i literally put down a pint of bell's (perhaps two hearted ale, i don't remember) on the bar at bell's on a cold fall night years ago to greet a couple of college friends with hugs before turning to introduce myself to their handsome pal. i usually can't help but think of the night i met b over a glass of bell's every time i lift a glass ...and it always makes me grin. but as we drank our wildly fresh bell's this weekend, and i saw the concern-induced wrinkles on b's forehead as he consulted with various people on his cell ... i thought of that evening in a totally different light. now those two college friends, also married, are holed up in a hospital room in detroit. he's fighting a rare leukemia after two bouts with cancer in less than a year. he's got a hole in his skull, through which radiation is being pumped with questionable success. one of his best friends, who was the best man at my wedding, is right now en route from ethiopia to detroit, where we'll see him when we fly in this weekend too.

and of course, this particular friend is one who would never harm a fly. he's the least judgmental, most accepting, happy-go-lucky guy. sure, he's got his quirks, but that's bound to happen when someone is happy in their own skin and doesn't really care what other people think. and honestly, i found him a breath of fresh air when we first became friends, back in those days when i was dealing with the loss of all my friends, a group supposedly bound by a lot of ideals none of which jive with acting as if a friend had never existed without even so much as considering listening to her side of a particular story. (the excessive eye-rolling i'm sure many of you have witnessed at any mention of organized christianity? bingo.) but i met this guy and became a part of a group of friends that took me in without hesitation, and had no interest in judging me. he was part of a group of friends from which i learned for the first time what it genuinely means to be someone's friend. for what it's worth, he played a role in making what should have been a crappy time in my life not so awful.

i hope those of us converging in his hospital room this weekend can do the same for both of them - and make an otherwise crappy time in their lives a little less awful.

new hampshire, new hampshire, new hampshire.

what can i say? somewhere belva lockwood is smiling down on us all.

i love you, new hampshire.

is it wrong to scream for ice cream by yourself?

my last first day of classes, a 70 degree day in january, and the fact that my brother left michigan early this morning and i don't know when he's coming back. to those of you that know me well, the fact that i stopped in at ben & jerry's on my walk home today should be no surprise, given those things. and sure, i got frozen yogurt, but when you put chunks of brownies and cookie dough in vanilla frozen yogurt, and then you pack it into a delicious waffle cone ... let's be honest. that yogurt didn't make it better.

so i was walking through dupont circle, starting work on my delicious cone of goodness, and i noticed people were full-on staring at me. i checked my zipper, i made sure i wasn't exposing a nipple. everything was in place. it was the cone. there's something about a person eating ice cream alone, i think. had i been with b or a pal, strolling and eating ice cream, it would have seemed normal. but alone? i couldn't tell if people were a) wildly jealous they hadn't thought to get ice cream on this balmy january day; b) thought that i was a glutenous fat ass who'd need to walk 3 miles today to work that shit off (ha! i'm one step ahead of you people!); or c) thought it looked like i was performing fellatio on that ice cream cone.

whatever. it was delicious.

as a bonus, a text i just got from b, that cracked me up: "on my way blocked by hanna montana." i'm imagining him in a cab, hanna montana in the middle of the street in front of him singing, thousands of tweens running around screaming. also a bit surprising that he knows who hanna montana is.

this year, the title goes to ...

last year, i got a little sentimental over the gift that RK gave me for christmas. it was an awesome gift.

this year though ... i think the title for best gift has got to go to a. now, i know christmas isn't for another week. but whatever. if anyone else can top months of work to produce something this awesome in every way, i will eat my words.

so a big blog shout out to a, who i imagine spent lo a many eves watching reruns of the office (damn strike) and trying to decide if she/we are over grey's anatomy (verdict is still out) while churning out this bad boy.

on a related note, this is the first year that the two of us have ever gotten both our christmas presents to one another on time - let alone within a month. kudos to us.

just stop it already

alright, mainstream media. enough.

this means you, today show, world news with charles gibson, nbc nightly news with brian williams. all of y'all.

listen.

i am currently enjoying a very successful and fruitful relationship with my friend Denial over the fact that my brother is going to be gone for a whole year on tour in the middle east. his little boys - you see, i am so close with Denial that i'm not even going to tell you how those kids are going to react to him being gone. i'm going to get a piece of cheese out of the refrigerator instead of telling you.

mmm. cheese.

so as i was saying, you seem to be really interested in driving a wedge between Denial and i. why you gotta play Denial like that? you're constantly showing these goddamn videos every single day of fathers coming home from war - all in their fatigues with shaved heads looking like my bro - to surprise their kids at school. or at the mall. or on a school trip to the mall. tonight two little kids unwrapped a big box they thought was from their dad in iraq, but actually was their dad from iraq.

for the love of.... will you please stop with these things? puh-lease.

whatareyoutryingtoprove?! stop it. stop making my heart come up through my throat like a rocket, and the tears come to my eyes so fast i think i might start spraying tears freakishly at a 90-degree angle from my face instead of just allowing them to leisurely drip down my cheek.

if i have to see one more 5-year-old boy shreik daddy while they're leaping into the arms of a father that looks just like a father i know, i'm going to have to break up with Denial. or put a remote through the new tv. and then b would break up with me. see, no one wins here.

stop it.