I'm not dead yet! (Sherry is dead.)

You ever have one of those restless nights? Like you're exhausted in theory but not in reality?  And so you pull out the old iPad and think, okay, just five minutes on Facebook - five minutes! But then inevitably you go all Pringles on yourself and five minutes = five hours and now you're just uselessly profile hopping looking for... what exactly? I've no idea. I never know. It's always a mystery until I've found it. (Once, at four am, I found this bizarre series of photos posted by some girl I went to school with in Florida.  She still lives in our hometown and, apparently, she hand-crafts uber-realistic Nightmare Quality porcelain dolls, calls them "her children" and gets them professionally photographed.  In the descriptions of each, she writes delightful things like, "Crying for all the babies murdered each year by abortion." Oh, Florida.  You're still the greatest!)

Anyway. Last week I had one of those nights. I was lying in bed and I whipped out my iPad and noticed an ominous mystery status on an old friend's Facebook page, and a bunch of old photos: "Remembering the good times, Sherry. We will miss you!"
 

It took me five whole seconds to grasp this:
 

One: Sherry?
 

Two: Oh ,THAT Sherry.
 

Three: What was her last name? It's something, something with an M...
 

Four: Wait. Is Sherry DEAD?
 

Five: Oh God, I'm next.
 

This is what the improvisation world calls "going A to C." Or, in real life, feeling turbulence on a plane and immediately strapping your seat cushion to your back like a fucking lunatic and screaming, "THIS IS IT! WE'RE GOING DOWN!"
 

So of course I examined all the pictures. Young, impossibly skinny girls lounging on the grass in athletic shorts and these idiotic, embroidered Letterman windbreakers that never actually kept out the wind. (They were expensive and useless and we loved them.) The burned brown practice field, the instruments lying hot in the grass. One photo brought to mind a sort of silent film in my head: all of us gathering under a dirty tent, the sky like a trembling grey sheet. A thunderstorm had rolled in during practice (typical Florida) and we were huddled together. The thing was, I couldn't place Sherry at alll. I mean, she was literally in the photo, so I know she was there... but I couldn't place her in the silent film running through my head. And now she's just an image in a photograph.
 

Commence freakout:

How does it happen that the Universe randomly chooses to murder Sherry out of all the girls in the photograph and what does it say about me that I cannot even remember her and why is all the oxygen disappearing from this room and ahhh why Universe why are you so cruel and OMG am I next??
 

(Honestly, at this point I should have just closed the computer and gone to the kitchen for some goddamn Oreos.)
 

Because now, NOW I clearly needed to know how she died. Right? That only makes sense, right? That's the next logical step? A girl I know dies and I have to know how it happened. Also, which of my college friends on Facebook can I ask, because really is it that insensitive to ask people you haven't spoken to in fifteen years --except to comment "seen it!" on their laughing baby memes --  "So, who wants to talk about dead Sherry? Anyone?" (Answer: never do this.)
 

Which left me alone with the vast, cold internet, which, as it turns out, has zero answers and is even HUGER than you realize -- like Beyonce's basement huge. Like the universe outside of Earth huge. A 34 year old woman had a whole entire life and then died and the internet is so huge it has no idea who she is.
 

Finally, after much dramatic hemming and hawing my husband turned to ask me what was wrong.
 

"Sherry's dead," I said. 
 

"Oh man," said my husband.  Then, "Sherry?"
 

"This girl," I said, "We went to college together and I can't find an obituary or a funeral notice. No memorial statuses or funeral tweets or funeral selfies, you'd think there'd be at least that. How is there nothing?"

"She faked her own death."
 

 "Not funny."

 

"She didn't actually exist. This world is a hologram. We're all inside The Matrix."
 

"Please be serious? Someone is dead."
 

"Right, sorry." My husband went back to his book. "I'm sorry about your dead friend."
 

So I ignored him.  Went back to my ill-advised research gathering.  I had yet to figure out how Sherry died and I needed to know like Captain Ahab needed to chase his stupid whale. So I kept on clicking. Then at some point I  realized I myself had zero photos of Sherry and HOW COULD I NOT HAVE PHOTOS OF SHERRY??

Commence descent into total insanity.
 

"Now what are you doing?"
 

Lunacy, I thought, digging with my entire body into the recesses of the closet.  "I'm looking for photos," I said.
 

"At one in the morning?"
 

I shrugged. Kept looking.

"I don't even remember you mentioning a Sherry."

 

That was because I hadn't. Ever. And I still couldn't remember her last name or what she sounded like or whether we'd ever really hung out (had we??) but that didn't matter. I said, "We knew each other.

 

 

"Were you close?"
 

"Not necessarily."
 

"Then why are you so upset?"

"Why?" My voice dripped with admittedly melodramatic outrage. "Because a girl is dead." Melodramatic Forehead Hair Swipe. "She is dead."

"And?"
 

And???

I wanted to yell at him, And death is upsetting? And I'm actually terrified of dying and being reminded in any way that eventually death will happen to me, that eventually it will happen to all of us, every single person, we will all die, all of us becoming nothingness forever and ever and ever and oh my Christ on a Cheesit  I need a Xanax? And that, maybe?
 

"Listen," he said. "It happens. People die. The universe decided she was done here and so... she died.  It's sad, but... People die everyday."

"I know that."

"Like every second."

"I get it."

"Literally, twenty people just died. Right now. While we were talking."

"Okay."

"And, uh oh, ten more, there they go, just now."
 

"Okay, okay, just stop," I said. I dug out all my shoes, several shirts that had fallen to the floor, a basket of crap, another basket of crap, a rubbermaid container (of crap.) And more crap.
 

"This is a disproportionate reaction."
 

"Look," I said, "Sherry and I took the same classes. I rode a bus to football games with her. We shared lunch on the field together. Probably.  At some point. I'm sure we must have."
 

"You can't even remember!"
 

"That's not the point."
 

"What IS the point?"
 

"People stop remembering!"
 

And, ah, here we were, finally: at the apex of my whole Sherry freakout. This mind-numbing terror I have of disappearing, of being forgotten.  This idea that I (and any number of people) would only ever remember Sherry as teenaged Sherry, a movie-set facade. And eventually, at some point, even that facade would fade and nobody would remember her at all. And then, eventually, it would be my turn and the dead movie facade would be me. ME.

Commence total panic.

 

"Is that all?" asked my husband, still buried in his Star Trek book.
 

"Is that all??"

How does one explain being afraid of death to someone who is not afraid of death?

"I'm going to die," I said.
 

"I see. When?"
 

"How should I know? Eventually!"
 

You know, at least when you find this stuff out in person you can face mortality as a group, together;  you get to find out how the person died and then you can hug it out, reminisce, be sad, but also be glad you're not dead. Not dead! Everyone rejoice and eat finger foods -- we're not dead!

But on Facebook, death is this weird, detached, prolonged experience; a neverending memorial in which everybody and their mother writes "sorry" on your wall even if none of them has an actual memory of you, and the only thing that's left is a collection of photos, cat memes and status posts. This is the 21st Century tombstone.

"What if when we die we become nothing?" I whispered.  "And we disappear forever."

My husband set his book down.  He touched my face gently and said, "What if when we die we become turtles?"

I shook my head. "What if this is all there is?"

"Then you won't know the difference." He turned back to his book and said, "Because you'll be dead. You won't know what's happening." He paused.  "Unless reincarnation. That's a possibility. I'm pretty sure in a past life I was either an indentured servant or else I fought the Nazis in World War II."
 

End Notes and Good Advice: Just stay away from Facebook at one in the morning. Or all the time. Seriously. This is sound advice. Go make some tea or draw a picture or read a fucking Buzzfeed article on The 29 Best Cat Fails or even better, go out and DO something in the world-- but stay away from Facebook.  And maybe CALM DOWN already because whatever it is you're worried about it's just not worth it; life is way too short, you know? Cliche but true. And at least you're still ALIVE. Right? Remember that. Because Sherry is not.

(Until you die, anyway.  And that can happen at any time. ANY TIME!)

Christ, I need a drink.

** For Sherry.

"I'm not dead yet."
- Man Dying of Plague, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

New York City is a garbage pile. And other things.

Here is a photo from my honeymoon in Hawaii:

Both peaceful and lovely.

 



Here is a photo of garbage outside my office:

Times Square, the anus of New York City? Maybe?

 

How are these two images related? Well, one is a relaxing tropical oasis and the other is a shitheap.  Literally. And now that I've been to both I can safely say, with some authority... Times Square is in fact the anus of the United States. (Is it really?) Yes. Not just New York --the entire United States.  So, to recap: while everything below the Mason Dixon is a bleeding constellation of hemmoroids, Times Square is the anus proper.  Let me explain:

 

I don't hate New York City -- I've lived here for more than a decade now and, to quoth the great Winston Zeddemore (Ghostbusters - watch it), "I love this town!" However, loving and hating this city often goes hand in hand. Like best friends who fucking hate each other. I mean, yes we have the best pizza. We have the best Chinese.  We are the theatrical cultural mecca of the Earth (and I don't mean the mainstream pseudo crap currently demanding lunatic prices on Broadway, but off-Broadway, where the real goldmine of creativity and talent is.) It's also nice that we tend to band together about all this, as if New York is our shithead little brother and while we know he's an asshole only WE get to say it. You know?

 

It's just... every once in awhile I get to thinking about living in Hawaii.  I mean, what is that like? You know? Waking up to paradise every single day? To walk out of your home onto a white sand beach, or look out your window into the valley between mountain ranges? (My husband and I drove up through the mountains of Oahu, and the homes are effing spectacular.  Some built right into the sides of mountains.  Mountains! Meanwhile, the view from my apartment is the concrete wall of another apartment.) What is it like to leave work and just go to the ocean, because.... no reason. Because it's there.  What's it like to walk along the beach all the time? Would you actually go to the beach all the time, or would you avoid it because it's always there? Or maybe in Hawaii right now someone is taking a photo of the trash heap in front of her office and wistfully imagining what it must be like to live in a city far from her stressful life and the goddamn beach and all the garbage. Because paradise never looks like paradise when it's where you live, right?

 

Whatever.

 

That person is an idiot.  New York is the worst.

 

(sigh)

Changes abound! The Tragic Hamster Is Back!

The mighty rodent hath returneth! Welcome home! Hooray! After a brief four year hiatus, I have returned to my rightful place here at Tragic Hamster so I may continue my work as a blight on the face of bloggerdom. Everyone rise and slow clap! So what happened during those four years, you ask?

1. I have aged approximately four years, assuming a linear understanding of time.

2. I have not had a relapse of Coney Island Meningitis, which I'm sure is a relief to everyone (mostly just me) although certainly all my readers (all both of you, bless your hearts) who valiantly made the effort to wade through the Game of Thrones novel about Meningitis that was my last post here. In an effort to keep things more concise from now on, I'll be limiting my posts to 500,000,000 words or less. I'm sure this is a relief for all of us.

3. I got married! (Say what, Lady Hamster?) Yes, it's true! I am an old, married rodent now. A Matron of Rodentdom. A rodent owning rodent (marriage means ownership, right?) Of course, both the sass and snark remain despite everything. But more on that later. (For details on exactly how much more, please see above for "Word Count Goals.")

4. I have begun work, slowly but surely (more slowly than surely) on several spec scripts, the content (and/or lack of content) of which I will complain about at length here. So. There's that to look forward to.

5. I have finally watched all of Breaking Bad.

Okay. Now that we're all caught up, we can get back to the good work of posting lunacy and nonsense. You're welcome, America.

Jaime Goes To The Hospital: Part One

"What are you so worried about, Scully? It's just a nice little trip to the forest."

- Mulder, The X-Files

For those of you who don't know (any of of the 9 of you reading this blog), I was hospitalized for two weeks - with an ailment the doctors still don't quite understand because... it only half exists? Or doesn't really exist at all? I don't know, they don't know -it's all very reassuring. What I DO know is after almost a month and a half of tests and MRIs and bloodwork up the proverbial wazoo, I'm still being pieced together, much like an episode of House. Or maybe Humpty Dumpty - just without the shell and the wall and the king's horses. At one point, I even accompanied my neurologist to his monthly conference to help present my case, for which my biggest contribution was springing out of my seat and insisting, to a room filled with neurologists, "I promise you I don't have Herpes."

So. Basically, that's the end of the Great Story Of The Crazy Illness. That said, there's a beginning to it as well - and I've been told by my doctors that I should keep a record of everything that happened - from start to finish - you know, "just in case" (always a phrase you wanna hear from people paid thousands of dollars to keep you from dying.) So in an effort to follow medical advice, I'm gonna begin with the beginning and take you guys on a ride from there - a great blog ride. A great big illness blogocoaster, if you will. Kosher?

Okay then.

To start at the beginning would be to start with all the blame placed squarely on Coney Island. Why? Because objects and places are inanimate and thus easy targets who can't argue that the only person to blame is yourself (shut up world! I blame Coney Island!)

But to go back even further, and to spread the blame around in as convoluted a way as possible, especially seeing as I can't blame anyone but myself (see above) or God (already sick of my blaming shit on him) we can also blame this on my love/hate relationship with amusement parks in general. For instance, on the one hand, my love for them is a bit unnatural - as in, I went to college in Orlando mainly for Disney World, where I played Mickey Mouse for two years - both for the joyful absurdity AND the free passes. But on the other hand, I hate them, too - the ticket cost, the commute, the lines, the aimless wandering, the constant odor of stale candy and moldy children, and the inevitable sunburn/stomach ache/brain ache that follows... And here in New York, the freaking commute is the worst part - as in, the subway ride to Coney Island will be long enough to age you at least ten years by the end of it. So ever since moving here, I have always, proudly, been all, 'thanks but no thanks, Coney Island!'

And yet...

(Undoubtedly, "and yet..." will be the quote carved on my headstone - with a skull and crossbones directly beneath it, and another quote: "Forever made of awesome" and then maybe a famous Dana Scully quote, too - although according to my mother, the headstone has to fend for itself as we tattooed Jewish freaks are chosen in life, but not in death: we're banned from all Jewish cemetaries. Which means if I DO eventually die of Meningitis + Mystery illness, it'll just be me and the Gentiles for all eternity. Can you say Interfaith Post-Death Par-tay?? BYOB, undead friends!)

Where was I?

Anyway.

And yet there was my sister, quietly counting down her last few months in the city, still living in the crawl-space behind my sofa, still eager to do NYC shit she'd never done... And of course there was also the boardwalk I'd never seen, the endless Coney Island funnel cakes I'd never tasted, and the Whack a Moles and the brand new Luna Park I'd had yet to try...

SO MUCH STUFF, GUYS!!!

(DAMN IT.)

So finally, the week before July 4th, during one of the worst heat-waves since the great brownout of 03 - when electrical wires under the streets in Queens actually melted - the two of us made it out to the boardwalk - just two Coney Island virgins getting our cherries popped.

(Except you know how some of us lose our virginity and afterwards shamefully gather our clothes and regret losing it to THAT guy?)

(Yeah.)

The first half hour we spent outside the train on the Boardwalk, excitedly snapping photos of the giant hotdog countdown clock like those tourists who take 100 pictures of the Airtrain subway platform like it's the Statue of Liberty.

Then we rode the tallest, oldest Ferris Wheel in the US and joked that I would be the first accident in 100 years. (Oh, irony. I fucking hate your bullshit.)

Afterward, we wandered out to the crowded beach, where we set up camp not far from a couple of drunk chicks slurring over their giant, $14 Cyclone collectors margaritas: "I'msooooooooover himstooooopidbooooyzzz," which of course prompted a few mock drunken slurs of our own: "Imsoooohotwhydoesn'thewanttooohiiiittthiiiiisss...." until, bored, we got up and walked along the shore, where a lovely - if not utterly stoned - older couple took our photos against the backdrop of the beach and ocean. "You guys should check out The Grateful Dead concert," they suggested. "The ampitheater's right behind you."

"Ooh, Grateful Dead," said my sister. "I love them."

"Sure," I said, "Old people in tie dye is always fun."

"You're old, too, Jaime."

"Shut the hell up, Lindsay."

So the two of us stumbled willingly into a tailgating flea market melee - vegan food, tie-dyed dresses, homemade jewelry, giant homemade glass bongs, old stoners and alcohol galore; Party in the USA, man! Here my sister bought herself a sterling silver ring and I bought myself a burritto. Not too bad for a stoner flea market par-tay in the middle of summer.

On our way out, I was given a free, mostly untouched beer - by a girl who I swear was an extra from Dazed and Confused. A few sips later and the sky had opened up; our meteorological alarm clock - time to head back to the city.

Honestly, it was just a totally fun, lazy time, y'all; Nothing special or unexpected happened; the afternoon passed as pleasantly as most summer days pass - slowly and outside of time, like a drive down the Florida Turnpike on a cloudless, sunny morning - until you realize you've been lulled into a daydream, and actually you've just zoned out for sixteen miles and missed your fucking exit - and also, you've lost an entire half hour of your life now; how the fuck did that shit happen? How do you turn this car around? Holy shi -

CRASH!

So the day after Coney Island, I woke up with a sunburn - not unusual for post-beach; admittedly, I knew should not have used my sister's tanning oil - every time I spray that crap on myself I swear to God I end up grilled like hamburger; FYI: for us translucent people, tanning oil is the kiss of death - like that coating you put on charcoal. Fire up the grill, boys! And this is exactly what I attributed the pain to - a weirdass sunburn.

"It's just all over," I told my sister, and proceeded to pace the length of the living room with arms and legs akimbo like a walking gingerbread man. "My feet are pretty fucked up. Is it possible to cook your feet inside your own shoes? And my hands, too. Like I've scraped them across a dozen feet of concrete. Like I fell off my horse something. Is that normal? I don't think that's normal."

"What now? You fell off your horse?" My sister looked up from her computer, pulled out her headphones. "You don't look burned."

I gave my still-pasty skin a cursory glance. "You're right. I don't."

"Maybe you have an invisible sunburn."

"Yeah? Maybe." I examined myself again. "Hold up. Do those actually exist?"

She put her headphones back on, answering, "No."

Fantastic.

Post-Coney-Island, Week Two:

A new sensation blossomed in my legs; a weird ache - as if I'd been on an elliptical machine for a day - and then carried it through miles of desert. For ten straight years. Much like my Jewish ancestors in Egypt with the matzoh. (Which is where the matzoh comes from, yes? No? See - THIS is why I shouldn't be buried in a Jewish cemetary. Not because I have a tattoo, but because I am Jewish-illiterate.)

So July 4th came and went (happy Independence Day!) and I managed to find my way to Brooklyn for a rooftop party - beneath the blazing hot sun, in a second round of heat wave, of course. There I spent most of the afternoon huddled in the shadows created by the four foot ledge, legs crossed awkwardly, drinking, merry-making, and explaining to my friends about my extended sunburn affliction - also apologizing for flashes of my underwear in my teeny skirt.

"It's killing me. It's fucking killing me."

"How long now?" asked my friend Corey.

"I don't know, a week?"

"You've been sunburned for a week?"

"Yeah. I know. That's a thing, right? That's normal?"

"Sure."

"Really?"

He shook his head and threw back a beer. "No."

Fantastic squared.

At this point in Sunburn Land there was really only one thought circling round my head: Clearly I'm going crazy. As in, there is a physical process involved with a Trip To Crazytown and this is the tollbooth to get on that highway.

"Everything hurts now," I told Lindsay - on that lovely July 4th evening - as a pleasant breeze coming in through the opened window hit my skin like a wall of angry glass shards, and I winced. "It's like I have the sunburn of death. It's like I set myself on fire. Except I'm not red at all. Am I going crazy?"

What I needed was validation, just anything from anyone to reassure myself that my brain had not somehow melted into my eyeballs.

"Yes," she said. "You are."

"Helpful. Thanks a lot."

Post-Coney-Island, week three.

By now the Sunburn of All Things Weird had turned into The Sunburn of Death. So I finally did what anyone would do about two and a half weeks prior to when I actually did it (shut up, world! It's not my fault! Coney Island, I SHAKE MY ANGRY FIST AT YOU!); I finally went to the doctor.

At least I'll have some answers, at least I'll find out I'm not crazy, I thought, as I sat in the waiting room - valiantly trying not to touch my own skin - for fear of screaming out in white-hot pain like a prisoner being beaten in a shower stall with a wrench.

"The good news is there's nothing wrong with you," said the doctor.

I cocked my head to one side and perched on the edge of the exam table; my organs were cooking themselves inside my skin like marinated Shishkebob, like the cartoon chicken from the Cluckin Chicken sketch on SNL, roasting itself. There were tears in my eyes and I suddenly had a precious, fantastic vision of bashing my doctor's head into the blood pressure reader.

"How can there be nothing wrong?" I snapped. "I feel like burnt hair. I feel like when my best friend pushed me into a cactus in the 9th grade. Something's got to be wrong!"

"Well," said the doctor absently, as he typed information onto my online chart, "Muscle ailments are rare but not uncommon. Have you been exercising excessively?"

"No."

"Lifting anything heavy?"

"Seriously? With my entire body including the bottoms of my feet?"

"Well, it could be something like Lupus."

"Lupus!" My eyes went wide. "What the hell is Lupus?"

"A degenerative disease of the skin. Forget I said it."

"What?" Now my brain hurt, too. "Why the hell would you say it if you wanted me to immediately forget that you said it?"

"You wanted ideas."

I blinked in disbelief.

He cheerfully handed me a printed presciption and said, "Naproxen. Once every four hours. It's just like Aleve."

My teeth were grinding. "If it's just like Aleve why do I need a prescription? Can't I just buy some goddamn Aleve?"

"Sure you could," he said, as if talking to a small, stupid child, "But you wanted prescriptions."

Fantastic cubed.

Later that night, as I lay on the couch with my feet perched at a level above my head, painfully munching on a Naproxen cocktail and desperately telling myself that I was fine, perfectly fine, that I just needed some Aloe, that I should listen to the advice of the idiot doctor, I somehow lost the functioning of most everything below the waist. And I realized I needed not just one idiot doctor but a whole slew of idiot doctors, namely an idiot hospital - right as my lower half just shut down altogether, which in English language form I imagine would roughly translate to: "Fuck you, Jaime - fuck you and all your asshole vital organs. Fuck you in your stupid faces and/or nucleotides. Why the hell didn't you go to the ER two weeks ago?"

(CONEY ISLAND'S FAULT!)

Moving on.

The ER was a flurry of doctors and nurses and wide-eyed, frightened, wandering triage patients. As I had come in via ambulance and in howling, obnoxious pain, I had been given top priority, although not everyone moved through the system as fast. Occasionally, waiting patients would be given a bed or a room, although mostly they just wandered around like battered soldiers, stopping only to pester doctors and/or cough hysterically into the faces of other patients, until a nurse would finally come up and beg them: "Please sit, sir. Please cough into your hands, sir. Please, I'm begging you, stay away from the computers, sir." It was unsanitary, but in an ironic way; the Alanis Morrisette of Hospitals.

The beds were parked side by side, like the Citifield parking lot, and seperated by curtain. They faced flatscreen TVs bolted into the ceiling, and mostly, the flatscreens played snow - unless they played silent, snow-covered sports and news. Here is where I channeled all my nervous energy - into a fuzzy screen playing MLB scores over and over - and where I spent most of my Saturday afternoon's focus when I wasn't being rolled into one test or another; chained to the bed by IV, hooked up to a Foley, doped up on something magical called 'Dilaudin,' and desperately trying to read Keith Hernandez' lips through TV snow to see if the Mets had won.

"So when do I get to leave?" I asked the nurse.

"You have a lowgrade fever and an elevated white blood cell count,"she said. "We're not sure what's going on. We have to keep you here awhile. Run some tests."

"Well, it better not be AIDS," I joked. (Trying as I often do to allieviate seriousness with ill-timed and completely awful quips.)

"I'm sorry?"

"AIDS," I repeated.

"Do you want us to run an AIDS test, ma'am?"

"No. I was mostly kidding. I don't think I've slept with enough assholes yet to really get AIDS. But if you think it's AIDS, run the test. Just add it to my queue. Like a line at a theme park? Get it? Say, that'd be fun news to deliver to the last asshole I slept with, right? Hey, douchebag, guess what - I have AIDS! Except I don't. But we covered that already. Have you slept with many assholes? You know how it is with them. Shit, do you really think I could have AIDS?"

"What?"

"AIDS," I repeated louder, realizing I had only managed to sucessfully scare the shit out of myself.

"Ma'am, I just need to change your IV."

"But now I can't get AIDS out of my head. What if I have that? Why do I joke about these goddamn things?" She pushed the new IV into my arm and I sighed. "Jesus Christ, Diludad is amazing."

"It's Dilaudin, Ma'am."

"Whatever." I picked at my new IV. "It better not be AIDS."

About a thousand tests later and my sister finally returned to the hospital to check on me. She stood over me for the final test, a spinal tap, and afterwards, gave me her own diagnosis via text message: "Coney Island Fever Virus."

My (new) doctor's only slightly more informed diagnosis: "Meningitis." Except she had a look - kind of like the befuddled expression my dog gets when we sit together on the couch and I rant about Fox News. "It's Meningitis for sure, just... we don't understand the burning, and we can't tell where you got it from. And you've got something else, too. Or you must. Your symptoms are too weird otherwise. And if not, then we don't know what it is." And then: "Don't worry, you're not dying." Then a tiny laugh - as if terrifying me with vagueness was the joke. Ha ha? Suddenly I wished for Shannon, my improv teacher, to leap up and yell, "No! Where's the justification? Do it again, but this time don't be an asshole with your scene partner."

"Meningitis?" I said, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Don't worry, ma'am, it's viral, not bacterial."

"Meningitis?" I repeated. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"No, Ma'am."

"Meningitis?! What the shit? Motherfucker. Shit. Shit shit. I need to call work. I won't be in on Monday. What else? Is it possible to get some dinner soon? I'm fucking starving." Then, hocked up on drugs, I promptly passed out. This was two am on July 10th. I would not see the outside world again until the 22nd.

The next day, my sister sat beside me in my isolation (sorry- PRIVATE) room wearing the blue decontamination gown my doctors had ordered her to wear - as if she had entered the underground medical bay in Independence Day ("there can be no peace between us! nooooo peeeeeeaaaaaaace!" Man I love that movie) - although I was reassured that I was not contagious. Even though my room had several specialty anti-bacterial scrub-down stations. Even though it practically had an airlock. Not contagious! Nonetheless. I was now an anomaly. A medical mystery. Someone you'd see on Gray's Anatomy, just without the deep dark secret from my past and Katherine Heigl being annoying and Dr. Bailey shooting witty insults at me. And as a result, I had a team of doctors working on me - all with no ideas.

My sister offered up more of her own theories - although hers hadn't changed much since the less fun version of Spinal Tap had offered me Meningitis instead of pithy 70s rock music:

"Who knows what was wandering around that Grateful Dead concert, Jaime. I bet you that chick with the beer was just passing shit out, just handing people beers and drugs and Meningitis. That'll teach you - never accept a beer from a stranger. Now you have Coney Island Meningitis."

(SEE?? IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT, CONEY ISLAND!)

Which brought to mind an image of - not rollercoasters or Luna Park - but the adorable monkey from Outbreak, who, with one accidental scratch, killed his nameless poacher and then 3/4ths of an entire California town. What if my desperate need to never be left out of the theme park fun had finally KILLED ME?

Fantastic to the fourth power.

One nice little trip and now I was that bikini clad idiot who'd poached a beer and as a result was the first to be afflicted with a mystery condition - and thus I wouldn't even get an awesome death scene like Kevin Spacey - I'd just get some gruesome cut-away before they incinerated my body and brought in Renee Russo. Fucking great. Thanks for the memories, Meningitis Island! See if I ever come back and ride your hundred year old roller coaster!

Le Sigh.

This we'll just call ground zero: the beginning: an innocent little trip to Coney Island that ended in HORROR. (So head on over to Coney Island, kids: where Meningitis will infect you and kill you. You hear me? IT WILL INFECT YOU AND KILL YOU.

Insert cheerful commercial for Coney Island.)

More Meningitis fun to come in Part Two...

How to Get a Boyfriend

This weekend, my sister and I watched Fake Fiance on Lifetime (mostly because neither of us could find the remote and... you know) - and like all Lifetime movies in which the title gives away the plot (I don't want to ruin it, but there's a fake fiance involved) here's a valuable lesson I learned about us single women in our 30s: if you're still looking for true love, first become a crazy bitchface (men love being treated badly! It reminds them of football!) until the wedding day, when your ex-teen 90s heartthrob/fake-boyfriend you hired from the internet will realize it's YOU he's been looking for this whole time. And then...true love abounds! Hurrah! Marriage! Babies! Golden Anniversary! This plan is flawless!

Okay. So in all seriousness guys, here's the really sad thing about this God-awful TV romp starring Middle Aged Version of Clarissa Explains It All and Distinguished Version of Blossom's Older Brother Joey (Remember how ripped his jeans were and how floppy his hair? Oh Joey Lawerence, you beautiful, aged, sitcom Adonis...) Anyway. The Bad Idea portion of my brain actually at one point said to itself, "Dude, why are you not all over this?? You should be taking out an ad on Craigslist! You should buy a husband! You can afford it - maybe not a good one, but at the very least a workable model that requires little maintenance."

(FYI: the bad idea portion of my brain is sort of like the 13 year old version of me -just with poor hand-eye coordination, no patience at all, and extreme ADHD, and also prone to things like driving her best friend's station wagon without a license into a neighbor's front yard, and/or stealing SHARP CURVE road signs from the embankment by the canal, all the while insisting, "nothing bad will come of this!")

(True stories, all.)

So what does this mean to me, given my long history of pulling batshit crazy ideas from the people inside my TV? Well, on the one hand, pop culture has taught me that there are many creative (i.e: unusually degrading and stupid) ways to ensure that men will rain over me, like the great Donna Summer once sang about.

For instance, I could become the accident prone but beautiful assistant to a wealthy, insufferable buisnessman, or maybe the accident prone but beautiful maid for a prestigious NY Hotel - but that's only if I'm looking for Hugh Grant. Or Jennifer Lopez. Or just a scathing review from Roger Ebert. But on the other hand, while I am naturally quite accident prone (a plus in the romantic comedy world!), I am not quite at the Danger Zone Level of Desperate Retard - yet. But on the third hand (some people have these) I'm also spending my Sunday nights couch-hugging with my sister, earnestly watching Lifetime. So who am I to say what strategies work or don't work? Maybe the fake fiance plan IS flawless. Maybe I'm the idiot for not having thought of it myself. (As otherwise I've become one of Marge Simpson's spinster older sisters.) But whatever the case, bottomline is most of the lessons I've learned about love I've learned from the fictional world of TV and movies - and all have been super helpful.

So. Here's a selection of those lessons about how to find True Love (or The One!), courtesy of Time Warner Cable, insomnia, a random selection of movies I feel compelled to watch every single time they're on - usually around 3 in the morning - and the advice lady in my brain, who I imagine looks like Lily Tomlin:

If you want to fall in love, first go to a Southern barbeque and wear a low-cut bodice and giant hoop-skirt and flirt like a whore with every man in sight. Sure, being an unfair cocktease is way hard- pun totally intended! - but it does serve a purpose in the end - especially with a war on and men dying before you can get your flirting on. But of course, the most important thing is to make sure the hottest, douchiest guy in the room (i.e: the one you really want) catches you doing something endearing but retarded - like wearing fancy, low-cut curtains to jail to extort money, for instance, or selling yourself in marriage to anyone for any reason, good or bad. (After all, a woman's greatest weapon is her heaving bosom.) So. After your many husbands eventually die tragically for reasons that will mostly be blamed on you, your one true love (not one of your husbands, but this douchebag dude) will be so desperate to catch you before you hooker yourself again, he'll ask for your hand in marriage. Score!

SCORECARD: Total Fail. War just changes people, yo. Also, Rhett leaves Scarlett on the stairs, and the last line of the movie is "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." (Which in my book really just tends to mean, "Chase after me because I know rejecting you in a douchy way only makes you want me more!" but again... my track record with men is like -5, not including the guys who were straight before they dated me.)


If you want to fall in love, first become a hooker. (This totally works! Ask anyone!) Flash your shit somewhat half-heartedly - or until a luxury car pulls up and a ruggedly handsome rich dude invites you to his hotel room for approximately 5-7 fully paid days - or until he catches you doing something endearing but retarded: singing Prince in a bathtub, telling old people at the Opera you peed your pants (adorable), doing the Arsenio whoop at a Polo match (adorable squared), or just having sex with a lot of men for money (adorable cubed). All of these (including the paid blow jobs) are acceptable methods of wooing. And besides, what rich handsome millionaire wouldn't want to 'save' his nerdy, doofy hooker? (Don't answer that, Tiger Woods.) BOOM! Happily ever after!


SCORECARD: FAIL - hooker is redeemed but man notices burning sensation when he pees. Herpes medication needed for sustainability.


If you want to fall in love, first find yourself a tiny farm where you can treat your dreamy British farm assistant like assface (remember: men love being treated badly!) until you're kidnapped by a prince and a six-fingered man. But more specifically - just imperil yourself on a daily basis until you manage something endearing but really retarded - like selling yourself in marriage to a REALLY rich dude, because again, a woman's only weapon is her body. What you'll eventually realize is that men like you best when you're just a pretty vessel for bejewled gowns. Also, that true love means coming back from the dead and jumping out of a window onto a horse. Seriously. Or else it's needing men to come to your rescue every fifteen seconds. Or something. (Men love rescuing damsels! It reminds them of their childhood obsession with Superman!)

SCORECARD: FAIL. Repetitive piracy and kidnapping needed for sustainability.


(Sidenote: The Princess Bride is otherwise awesome. Period and end of sentence. "Never mess with a Sicilian! Especially when death is on the line!" "ROUSes? Rodents of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist." "I have a kingdom to run, a wedding to plan, a wife to murder, and Gilder to frame for it. I'm swamped." Go watch it NOW, guys. And then learn from it and find a swarthy farmhand with a kick-ass British accent to treat badly and fuck your brains out.)


If you want to fall in love, first move into a high-rise posessed by a fifteenth century demon so you can mack on the first charming doofy idiot with a bulging proton pack who breezes through your front door. Play aggressive and hard to get with him. If that doesn't work, play the Posessed by a Fifteenth Century Doberman Pincher card. This will be your big chance to let him catch you doing something endearing but retarded - like having returned to the very same apartment where eggs fried themselves on the counter and sinister demons beckoned from the fridge (FYI: men love saving you from demons and your own stupidity! It makes them feel like they're in a video game!) This is how you'll get him to rescue you on the first date (women always need rescuing! We can't fall in love otherwise!) and carry you down 120 flights of stairs into a ticker-tape parade. And by the way - not at all lofty to expect a ticker tape parade. We women expect unwieldy pomp and circumstance. Also, shiny things and men who will save us from giant marshmallow men.

SCORECARD: FAIL. Demons and kidnapping needed on date night for sustainability. Case in point: are Dana and Peter together at the beginning of Ghostbusters 2? No? Exactly.

(Sidenote: Ghostbusters 1? And Ghostbusters 2? Awesome squared. "That's right, your honor. This man has no dick." "It's a river of slime!" "Being miserable and treating other people like shit is every New Yorker's God given right!" FYI: I refuse to believe it's so wrong to put myself out there and expect Peter Venkman to show up. As in, sometimes I sit in the NY Public Library and wait for him to come busting in. ONE DAY HE WILL, GUYS.)


If you want to fall in love, first lose the bra, super-glue Cinnabons to your head, and move to a galaxy far far away. This for sure always works, you guys. And while you're at it, you'll want to spend some time kidnapped - because while you are a badass space renegade, you are first and foremost a lovely damsel with interesting, dessert-shaped hair. So. Now all you have to do is insult the guy who comes to save you (Remember: men love girls who insult them and shoot at them! It reminds them of playing paintball!) until finally you've been rescued and imperiled so much you're exhausted, and you realize it's time to play the Super-Slutty Gold Bikini card, and.... so, okay, any time you whip out your tits, that'll do it. For men in space or anywhere else.

SCORECARD: FAIL - Intergallactic war, cinnabon stylists and the perpetual perky breasts of a twenty-five year old needed for sustainability.

(Sidenote: All implied misogyny aside, if any of you out there in cyberland have still not seen Star Wars, you are dead to me.)


If you want to fall in love, spend at least one summer frolicking on a California beach where all the gayishly handsome and vocally promising gang members like to hang. Work your wiles on just one of them and follow him everywhere - like from your home in Australia to a hip American high school where you can express your love in the style of 50s pop (or what the 70s is sure 50s pop sounds like.) Eventually you can go insane and your harmonious gang member will catch you doing something endearing but retarded - like changing every single thing about yourself to suit whatever you think he wants. In the end he'll be so enchanted by your crazy leather pants, the two of you will fly off into the sunset together.

SCORECARD: Total Fail. High school romances never work for various reasons - usually youthful stupidity. In this case, death by flying car. (Or a little from column A and a little from column B.) It's always something. Still. Go Grease Lightning!

If you want to fall in love, become a hooker and find yourself another mother-effing hooker. (Duh, mofos. DUH.) But seriously - go ahead and become a hooker. There's a reason this one's in here twice, ladies - IT WORKS. So go nuts! Throw crazy parties in your swank Upper East Side apartment, wear awesome clothes bought for you by skeevy pervs, and spend your days as a completely irresponsible, money-grubbing slutbag. Eventually a male hooker/writer will come along and hear you doing something endearing yet retarded - like playing an adorable banjo on a windowsill. Or, I don't know, lying about your past, ripping up your apartment in a blind psychotic break, or scheming to wed royalty from Mexico (Men love obvious mental instability! It reminds them of their moms!) In the end he'll be so taken with your slutty insanity he'll help you chase after your pussy (cat) in the rain. (And who doesn't love a wet pussy[cat])?

Scorecard: FAIL. Too many dueling STDs; non-hookerish behavior required on behalf of both hookers for sustainability.

(sidenote: if I looked like Audrey Hepburn and could pull off Givenchy, my career path would have taken a whole other turn. Or so says the Bad Idea portion of my brain. Who needs to contribute to society in any meaningful way when your legs are that long and you look that good in expensive hats?)

So in the end, all I'm saying is I'm romantically screwed, you guys. And not in a good way either. Romantically SCREWED.

(Upside: Hot Tub Time Machine is coming in the mail any day now. I.e: Time travel love! Hurrah!)

That's all.

Facebook Intervention Needed

I'd like to begin by saying I am an admitted Facebook addict - sometimes, to the point where I'm literally refreshing like a dude waiting for a 15 minute gang bang on Xtube to load. But don't get me wrong - I totally understand that this is ludicrous. That in another era, this would have been considered visual and emotional torture. ("Jaimala, come look at photos of Grandma's trip to Seminole Bingo in Tallhassee. There are six rolls and two hours of video footage, one of which may or may not have been shot with the lens cap on - you know how your grandfather is retarded.")

But sometimes, in between obsessively spying on my friends' walls and photos and event invitations, it just strikes me - how the internet has somehow turned eavesdropping, voyuerism and torturous trips through photo albums into something not unlike an out of control Heroin binge.

I don't even know what it is about Facebook - if maybe it's the sheer volume of useless updates, that when added all together form a social networking algebraic principal similar to when you add all negative numbers to create a positive, and perhaps this somehow releases specific social-networking endorphins in the brain - and thus in the end going through some old middle school acquaintance's photo album feels like you've just come all over the place and need a cigarette.

Whatever the case, I do have enough self awareness to worry that I will eventually end up on one of those A&E shows about addiction. That I will give an incoherent, on-camera interview about Facebook while desperately surfing Facebook, and then a substance abuse counselor will somberly gather all my friends and family in some remote motel which I will know nothing about until the "lunch with Mom/exit interview," at which time they will all sob and clutch letters that begin with, "Jaime, we worry that Facebook is becoming like a family member to you. Please X out of your Status Feed and graciously accept this gift of rehabilitation today..."

So. Having said that, I was surfing Ye Olde (or Ye New) Facebook today and noticed a bunch of interesting quirks which I would like to now share with you, my blogland friends. (Sidenote: Do you see how even when I'm blogging I immediately turn to Facebook? As if I'm just dying for an excuse to uselessly roam around the internet for another wasteful two hours? Because I'm at work and my God how did people do that all day without Facebook?)

(See? Obsession. Boredom is partly to blame, but still.)

Anyhow.

Please feel free to chime in if you have any Facebook observations of your own:

What I've Learned From Facebook:

1. Some women live their entire lives in string bikinis. Their days are filled with coolers of beer, illegal fishing off the side of a boat, and many shades and hues and styles of ass-crack. Sometimes ass-crack against a spectacular sunset. Sometimes ass-crack against a lovely meadow. Sometimes ass-crack against the backdrop of another ass-crack. Sometimes a slide-show of ass-crack against a cacophony of breast-crack. And of course, mojitos. Part of me wants to be one of these women, but alas, I do not have a boat.

2. Profile photos allow for dramatic transformations - either into celebrities, toddlers or infants, or else what is either an ultrasound or an epic sea monkey battle (or maybe a combination of both - a fetus fighting a sea monkey army? Maybe with lightsabers? Wouldn't that be totally awesome?) I keep meaning to ask these friends how their transformations actually took place - if only because I wouldn't mind living for a week as either an infant or a sea monkey. Or Paris Hilton. Mostly because you get to poop wherever and whenever you want, and you also get to be carried around all day in a colorful traveling accessory. And who doesn't want to live like that?

Speaking of which...

3. Some people celebrate their poop - sometimes, more than 3 times a day. My poop, by comparison, goes relatively uncelebrated.

4. Lots of people have moved to share-cropping compounds called FarmVille, where every day they tend to livestock, cultivate iguanas, discover mystery eggs, raise cattle, and build stables. Here, everyone is considered equal and all material items and workloads are distributed evenly amongst the villagers. Nobody is richer or poorer than anyone else, and there is always enough healthcare and magic dragon eggs to go around. Which I guess begs the question: was FarmVille created by Obama as part of a secret government plot to rename the United States The Socialist Farmville Republic of That Lesser Country Underneath Canada? (because we all know how you really feel about us, Canada - WE ALL KNOW!) I suppose only time will tell.

5. Actual clubs (Drama! Key Club! Future Homemakers of America!) are now a thing of the past. On Facebook, people mostly join clubs to promote something they hate, which they may simultaneously also LIKE. (i.e: the organizations known as I Hate When You Stop In the Middle of the Street To Take a Picture, Are You Freaking Retarded?; Stop Bragging About Your Honors Student Because Nobody Cares And You Are Dumber Than He Is; If Your Child Screams In A Crowded Movie Theater I Will Physically Beat Him With This Icee - and so on and so forth.) Confusing? Nah. Communities have always been built upon everyone's shared (beloved?) hatred of a common enemy. You think the United States was formed because we so loved the British and their scones?

Okay, so I know there's a lot I'm leaving out here, but I've gonna cut out of this blog post early to surf my news feed. It's been nearly an hour since I've refreshed. Surely you understand.

Grandma's Mojo is the Best!

For those of you who don't know, my grandmother (who made MANY guest appearances in my comedy monologues) passed away a few weeks ago. So what you're about to read is my occasionally rambling, always inappropriate online tribute to her - to be followed immediately by the picture of an adorable puppy (what assuages grief better than baby animals? NOTHING. Except maybe baby animals in costume.)

Commence tribute:

My grandma was an old-school broad - seemingly unsinkable, like Molly Brown. Back in the day, she took care of (what seemed like) an impossible number of Morrises - whether cooking daily meals filled with love and chicken ("everyday with the goddamn Chicken!") and far too much Paprika, providing those homeless among us with lodging, or perhaps issuing unwanted social commentary - she was always the family gate-keeper (which I suppose makes my grandfather the family Key Master? Minus the coming of Gozer and turning into a Doberman thing? Or do I just relate way too many unrelated situations to Ivan Reitman films?) Or, actually, perhaps a better analogy is Grandma as ring-master - or that creepy guy who runs the sideshow at the traveling carnival - minus the handlebar moustache and tophat. You get what I'm saying.

That she's gone now is bizarre to me - as if Bev could be susceptible to something as pedestrian as cancer; that's like Chuck Norris dying in his sleep instead of in an underwater boxing match with Satan, God and eight killer sharks like the prophecy of course always promised. (Or like how Lost turned out to be a bad metaphor trapped beneath an ancient wine cork. Really, Lost? The island is just a bottle of Sutter Home? THERE'S A REASON NOBODY BUYS THAT CRAP AT WHOLE FOODS, LINDELOFF!)

(Tribute-interuptus!:)

(Dear Lost, You shredded my heart like so much emotional pornography and then you answered none of my questions, and then, tragically, you died. Yet, I still love you. So. Please bring back Sayid's naked chest and Sawyer's wind-swept floppy hair. Maybe in a spinoff? Sayid and Sawyer: Wet, Half-Naked and Awesome. Okay? Call me, Lindeloff!)

(Finis-tribute-interuptus! - sorry, dudes. A shit ton happened in the past month and I am all over the place trying to catch up.)

Anyway.

My grandma was supposed to live forever (no offense to all of you out there with mere mortal grandparents) - after 88 years of perfect health, a smoker's Brooklyn accent (somewhere between Coffee Talk's Linda Richman and The Exorcist's Linda Blair), not to mention 6 packs of Marlboros a day since the mid 1930s. Seriously, you guys? Anyone who consumes that much nicotine and makes it to 88 should outlive the Earth.

Beyond this, my grandma was always the shit to hang out with - even during those painful months before she died - mainly because she never once felt sorry for herself, never once made apologies, and had an excellent memory and an endless capacity for stories about everyone else's fucked up, retarded bullshit. (Sidenote: "fucked up retarded bullshit" is, I believe, a phrase I first learned from her when I was two.) Basically, you could ask her what she ate for breakfast and instead of an answer, she'd give you every assinine offense any Morris had ever perpetrated against the act of breakfast over a span of at least forty years.

Once, right after I joined J-date (a Jewish dating disaster deserving of its own entry) I called her up and asked her what she thought about romantic relationships. What makes them work, what compells folks to stay together, that sort of thing. And instead of giving me the usual grandmotherly speech about love and all its nauseating granduer, she launched into a seemingly unrelated diatribe about how, to save a bit of money right before the war, my grandfather bought himself a car with no floor; literally, it was just seats and cardboard on a metal foundation - what she called his "quaintly stupid piece of shit."

"Sure, nobody had money during the Depression, but who buys a goddamn floorless car? I was Wilma Flintstone for a year, and I swear, we might as well have been driving a cardboard box with a windshield. And god forbid it rained. I just... can't. even. tell you. But that idiot was adorable in his Navy uniform with his short little legs and those awful jokes. And God, that assinine car. But he made me laugh. If he hadn't, I would have smacked him in the face and gone off in search of Frank Sinatra and been done with it."

we were both adorable in the 80s...

After the war, my grandparents moved to the subburbs and bought a card store - and put my Dad to work at the register as soon as he was old enough, and then my cousins and I as soon as we were old enough - and by old enough, I mean potty-trained and able to form simple sentences. Actually, my cousins and I were (I am proud to say) the best employees no paycheck could buy: by the time we were six we ran the register and the lotto machine; we also sold ugly fake jewelry to anyone stupid enough to buy it, and peddled homemade goods from my grandmother's beloved assembly line of inappropriate nonsense - a random assortment of homemade bags, screened t-shirts with sayings like "I found the keys now where the fuck is the car?!" and chocolate molded candies - Valentines hearts, birthday lollies, Christmas wreaths, naked breasts and assorted novelty penises (which also meant we frequently nibbled on chocolate pornsicles as we rode our bikes around Hewlett Harbor. Of course, years later, when I brought up the weirdness of that - admittedly a source of both pain and hilarity - my grandma, instead of directly answering the question, extended to me a traditional Jewish Guilt Branch - an offering of homemade noodle kugle, matzoh ball soup, and/or barbeque brisket. This is how Jewish grandmothers get away with everything, guys:)

"You used to ask me, 'Grandma, can I do the boobies? Please can I do the boobies?' and it was adorable, Jaimala, and a little weird, except I kept thinking maybe you were really trying to say 'Bubbulah,' like you were confusing a sentiment, but then I realized you only had a smartass mouth. Where you picked that shit up from, I'll never know. But it's not like you had anything else going on at the time anyway... But you know Grandma loves you. Now, eat this kugel I made before it gets cold - I put in extra golden raisins. I know you love those."

(That's really how they get away with it, guys - offerings of delicious golden raisins.)

Nevertheless.

My Grandma was just a bad-ass broad; she took care of the books for the store, she sold her own erotic candy, she ran the family business as if it were both business and day care - and, awesomely enough, every once in awhile, she sold cards and assorted novelties to the entire Long Island mafia (one of her many, many stories - that the mob met in the office building across the street and we were their sole chocolate supplier - for what exactly, I have no idea. But can you imagine that meeting?)

"Tony, thank you for the comprehensive power-point on cement shoes vs. red hot pokers. I admit I was unaware of our extensive Instrument Of Death expenditures. But now, before Vinny goes over our quarterly budget by cracking open the wall safe behind the trick bookcase and disabling the array of protective security lasers, please enjoy some tea and sandwiches and some milk chocolate genitals on a stick, courtesy of Bev from Carl's Cards across the street."

(Grandma's special story cocktail: 1/2 gross exaggeration mixed with 1/4th shit learned from old timey movies, spritzed with 1/4th actual truth, but always served to us with such commitment. The more I think on it the more I realize she would have made one hell of a long-form improviser.)

I hear mob bosses are suckers for chicks in bathing suits...

Fast forward about twenty-five years.

Although it had been (I'm almost embarrassed to admit) several years since I'd asked my Grandma for anything - we Morris women are known for our pigheadedness, also for our creative use of both English and Yiddish curse words - I called her up a few months before she died, needing some advice - either her hard-nosed opinion or an old-school kick in the ass - whichever she was willing to offer. I was broken hearted and feeling sort of helpless - like a kid painting chocolate testicles only half-heartedly, wondering if this was all there would ever be to life (remember when y'all were six and wistfully painting pubes on chocolate penis molds? No?)

Basically, I was having what I've since lovingly (or frustratingly) nicknamed "The Old Maid Freakout" - paranoia that my window to find a non-crazy, non-gay, non-asshole had closed. And then who the hell would I have to make bad jokes with and push a floorless car with? Surely you single women out there know what I'm talking about - usually, it ends with a pint of Phish Food, six glasses of wine, an incoherent rant directed at the dog, and mispelled drunken sexts to every retarded horndog guy in my iphone address book.

"Love doesn't fucking exist," I'd said. "And who wants to be repeatedly hurt in some fruitless, crazy, Moby Dick search for something that doesn't fucking exist? That's like I might as well go looking for Jon Hamm to give me an engagement ring - or leprechauns with Lucky Charms or talking Pound Puppies or babies who can break-dance and do you see where I'm going with this? It's all make-believe, Grandma! Everyone goes on and on about how love is just like magic but you know what? Magic isn't real. So how can love be real when magic's not? It's all an illusion! Or a paradox! Maybe? I don't know, but it's something goddamn similar!"

Then, after I took a much-needed breath from Ye Old Maid Freakout, this is what my 88 year old Grandmother had to say - in a voice strained from chemo, and for once forgoing a story in favor of actual advice:

"Don't act retarded, Jaimala. Love isn't magic - it's just hard to find. And you have plenty of time. So I think I speak for both your Poppy and myself when I say that we were worried you might be a lesbian - not that you can't be whatever you want - but really, for years we thought you were a lesbian. At least it's a relief to know you'll be able to have babies someday. Not before I die, but someday. So make yourself happy now but then, definitely, have babies. Okay? Just look at it this way: if Grandma can quit smoking, surely you can marry this Jon Hamm you love so much. I can't imagine he wouldn't want to marry you, Jaimala. What's not to like? You're my granddaughter. Just don't worry so much - you'll be fine. You have plenty of time. Everything ends up the way it's supposed to."

Oh, Grandma. Wherever am I supposed to get these pearls of wisdom without you here?

So wherever she is now, and perhaps it is outside of space and time (where a shirtless Sawyer and a shirtless Sayid are undoubtedly shuttling her around the Ever After - and come on, let's be serious - even Grandma appreciates the hottness of Sawyer and Sayid in their groovy VW van - and why can't that be the pilot of the spinoff, Lindeloff??) I hope she's watching over me. And I hope there are endless, heavenly cartons of cigarettes, and secret mob meetings, and inappropriate chocolate candy pornsicles, and of course, hot cars WITH floors (Cadillacs!) and lots of laughter (as there always was). But most of all, I hope she knows I'm grateful for all the bizarre experiences she contributed, which ultimately helped make me the awesome lunatic I am today. Thank you for everything, Grandma. I miss you.

And now, as promised, here's an adorable puppy. In costume. (That's right. I went there.)