Full Credit For Being Alive

I INSTALLED TWO SHELVES IN MY APARTMENT BY MYSELF USING ANCHORS...

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:05:00 -0400

I INSTALLED TWO SHELVES IN MY APARTMENT BY MYSELF USING ANCHORS AND A DRILL AND THEN TOOK A SHITTY PICTURE OF THEM SOMEONE PLEASE ALERT YOUNG HOUSE LOVE

My evening, in free verse poetry:

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:55:00 -0400

Went to grind pepper over my bowl of pasta

Accidentally got some pepper in my glass of wine

Was in a meeting today that lasted over six hours

Drinking the wine anyway

nprfreshair: David Bianculli on Steven Soderbergh’s new HBO...

Thu, 23 May 2013 17:20:59 -0400

nprfreshair:

David Bianculli on Steven Soderbergh’s new HBO film about Liberace, Behind the Candelabra, starring Matt Damon and Michael Douglas:

Damon’s Scott is all aw-shucks innocence — and when a friend takes him to Las Vegas to see a Liberace show, it’s like taking a trip to Oz. They walk into the Hilton showroom while the performance is in full swing. And so do we — hit immediately, and viscerally, by the excessive glitz of it all: the gold, glass-topped grand piano. Liberace’s silver-sequined suit and heavily teased hair. And, of course, his carefully rehearsed casual stage patter, with which he entertains the audience while playing piano, sometimes with only one hand. You start the scene watching Michael Douglas but in seconds, you’re carried away, or at least dumbfounded, by Liberace.

Image courtesy of HBO

I set my DVR to record this today. TODAY. THURSDAY. THREE DAYS BEFORE IT AIRS. I HAVE LITERALLY NEVER DONE THAT BEFORE.

We are going to watch the shit out of this movie, you guys.

What is the appropriate response when someone simultaneously makes fun of Ice-T’s role on...

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:23:54 -0400

What is the appropriate response when someone simultaneously makes fun of Ice-T’s role on “Law & Order SVU” and Peter Dinklage’s role on “Game of Thrones”? Photo replies are enabled.

Sorry I'm Not Sorry

Wed, 22 May 2013 14:08:02 -0400

Anyone who calls themselves a “foodie” deserves absolutely none of your respect.
People who post online about doing nice, selfless things for others actually aren’t very nice or selfless at all.
Being a blogger is not the same thing as being a professional model.
Your Anthony Weiner joke is terrible. Don’t even bother.

Today in Idiotic Facebook Status Updates

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:08:04 -0400

[Redacted] People who have a problem regarding the statement made by the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch. I would like to voice my opinion about the companies that don’t make clothes smaller than a 6. It’s very frustrating to have to shop in the teen section of a department stores well after your teen years because these stores that sell small sizes for adults weren’t as common or all that accessible when I was younger. I hate finding hot momma swimwear and that their smallest size is a 6. I don’t think what A&F’s CEO’s remarks were by any mean intelligent but I also wanted to bring light to the fact that different companies make clothing for their respective target market. At the same time, I cannot support a company that publicly is willing to make such ridiculous statements and risk losing their classier clientele. I’m done!!

Honey, if you’re humblebragging on Facebook about how hard it is to buy clothes to fit your petite frame, you are not a member of anyone’s “classier” clientele.

My incredibly intelligent thoughts on the “gif”...

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:52:00 -0400

My incredibly intelligent thoughts on the “gif” pronunciation debate.

ULTIMATE CAT FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP 2013 (At this point, I...

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:56:54 -0400

ULTIMATE CAT FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP 2013

(At this point, I should probably start charging admission. Or at the very least put this on pay-per-view.)

Our girl kitten plays with my jewelry, while the boy is totally...

Sat, 18 May 2013 12:11:58 -0400

Our girl kitten plays with my jewelry, while the boy is totally not interested. Way to reinforce heteronormative gender stereotypes, Nico.

Exactly one month ago today, I woke up to a phone call. “Your brother is in the hospital. We...

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:29:00 -0400

Exactly one month ago today, I woke up to a phone call. “Your brother is in the hospital. We don’t know what’s wrong. When can you come to Virginia?”

Nothing has been the same since then.

I spent those first few hours panicked, genuinely scared. There wasn’t any anger or resentment or stress. That came later. All I knew was that he was sick, and he needed to get better. He became my baby brother again, during those first hours, as I packed a bag and rushed to Penn Station. I imagined him with an IV in his arm and tubes in his nose. I saw him as a little boy, whimpering to the nurses and just needing to be held. My poor brother, I thought. I’m coming to help.

And then I found out the truth. That he wasn’t my little baby brother anymore. Instead, he was a junkie. A worthless drug addict who did so much Oxycontin in a three day period that his body literally started shutting down. It wasn’t an overdose per se, but it might as well have been. His stomach was no longer digesting his food. His organs were giving up.

This was nothing new, of course. His drug problems started in middle school, and have ebbed and flowed out of our lives ever since. But the hospitalization, the tubes literally sucking his own shit out through his nose, this was all different. I thought it would change him, or at the very least humble him into seeking out a different life.

Instead, he acted arrogant. He didn’t need surgery, he didn’t need more than one night in the hospital. So he won. He beat the drug. It was time to start all over.

Since then, everything has seemed surreal. People don’t call rehab facilities in real life, do they? No, this must be a movie. Interventions happen on A&E, not in my mother’s apartment. Fathers support their families in the real world, and don’t leave their 30 year old daughters with potentially tens of thousands of dollars of inpatient treatment bills. Only in the movies could this many terrible things happen, especially to a family that is already so fragmented and shattered that it’s barely hanging on.

To a person who is already so fragmented and shattered that she’s barely hanging on.

On Sunday, I am going to visit my brother. He is halfway through his rehab, and from the letters he’s sending, he seems to be improving. Maybe this will work, and maybe he will actually get better.

That would be a Hollywood ending, at least.

REAL TALK

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:17:17 -0400

I’m not listening to any of you paleo diet motherfuckers until I see one of you kill a cow with a spear.

Apparently I’m not the only one in this apartment who loves UVA.

Tue, 14 May 2013 20:54:00 -0400

Apparently I’m not the only one in this apartment who loves UVA.

I figured out how to add my own text to gifs today, you guys.

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:23:09 -0400

I figured out how to add my own text to gifs today, you guys.

Photos from my law school reunion. Oh, what a difference a few...

Mon, 13 May 2013 10:08:40 -0400

Photos from my law school reunion. Oh, what a difference a few hours makes.

And yes, I am drinking bourbon out of a trophy. Obviously.

Mother’s Day is hard this year. I feel badly even complaining, since my mother is alive and able...

Sun, 12 May 2013 17:09:45 -0400

Mother’s Day is hard this year.

I feel badly even complaining, since my mother is alive and able to answer the phone when I called her this morning. So many people in the world don’t have that luxury.

But it’s still hard this year. It’s hard for me, and harder for her.

Our little dysfunctional family is more fragmented today, even though we are geographically closer than we’ve been in years. I am in central Virginia, only 90 miles away from her, at my law school reunion, where I spent 48 hours pretending everything was fine. She is in northern Virginia, spending time with friends, dealing as best she can with the trauma that has unfolded in our lives over the last few weeks. And my brother is in Maryland, almost exactly the same distance from our mom to the north as I am to the south. Except, really, he is much farther away. And he will stay that far away for the next three weeks, save for our Sunday morning phone calls, while his nurses stand over him, hurrying, asking him to let the next patient have a turn.

We are, despite everything that has happened to us over the years, a close family. We are all dependent on each other, often to a fault. So even though I spent years avoiding my brother and his problems, his absence today is like a knife in my heart.

We will be together soon enough, I know. Twenty eight days is not forever, but hopefully it’s long enough to heal.

I only wish Mother’s Day didn’t fall on day number six.

Going on an unsupervised trip to Charlottesville this weekend,...

Fri, 10 May 2013 10:45:17 -0400

Going on an unsupervised trip to Charlottesville this weekend, since The Dude is stuck in the city with work. Here are some pictures taken of me during my last few solo trips back there.

My liver has already gone on strike.

Required reading.

Thu, 09 May 2013 11:30:00 -0400

Required reading.

Welcome to our kittens’ new playground. It also serves as a...

Wed, 08 May 2013 12:16:00 -0400

Welcome to our kittens’ new playground. It also serves as a recreational center, steam room, race track, and ultimate cat fighting cage match venue.

By the way, the sound of two wrestling kittens thumping against the side of a bathtub at 3 am sounds exactly like a burglar trying to break into your apartment. Which adds an additional level of fun to the game.

EXCLUSIVE MET BALL PHOTO

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:14:00 -0400

EXCLUSIVE MET BALL PHOTO

All of the references to Tumblr on last night's episode of "Veep" made me realize something:

Mon, 06 May 2013 10:21:21 -0400

It’s really an uncanny resemblance, don’t you think?