The good with the bad. Again and again and again.

Well. Today’s been a day, hasn’t it?


It all started at some wee hour of the morning, after Ariel posted her screaming rage about that damned softcore site. Personally, I don’t give a rat’s ass (and I have one in my purse!) what anyone else says about us "overreacting." I want every wench’s photo off that site unless she specifically WANTS to be there. It burns me the fuck up to see my peers working, walking, Wenching, totally unaware that some asshole is snapping furtive photos from behind the bushes—from the poor quality, he was some distance away—to submit to a pathetic fetish site, so other assholes can sit around jerking off to our images. Worse yet, he’s making money off of it.

I talked about it with melissaamy for a while, then bronxelf_ag001 appeared like a whirling column of fire and sand. Within half an hour, she and her Assassins Guild had alllll the info they needed. She briefed Lars at 7am, I spoke to him around 11. He threw some phrases at me, and by 2, I had an IWG cease-and-desist note. bronxelf_ag001, however, has some very good ideas on how to deal with this situation, and for now, we’ll leave it at that.

So finally, at 4am, I went to sleep. Enraged and nigh unto homicidal, but sleepy. It works for me.

This morning, my dog awoke me at 6, then at 8. After that, I sort of drifted a while, not really sleeping, not really awake. As you can imagine, the puppy tap-dancing on my head did not a restful morning make. Somewhere in there, my mother calls. She inadvertently reveals to me that the secret Mother’s Day gift I’d planned for her had been in turn revealed to her by one of my co-workers: I got tickets to the AVA’s performance of "L’elisir d’Amour" out in Haverford through the production’s excellent bass baritone, Keith Miller, who happens to be my customer at the store, bless him. Everyone knew it was a secret—I was planning to pick my parents up and whisk them off, and they wouldn’t know til we got there. It’s how I surprised them with a trip to Winterthur for their anniversary a few years back, and it was wonderful fun. So what happens this time? One of my coworkers runs into them at the Orchestra Saturday night, and spills the whole thing. Bless my mother, she tried not to let me know she knew, but it just came out in our conversation.

Ah, but wait, there’s more fun in store in this convo. Remember how bitter I was about so many deaths this year? Well, guess what?

Apparently, my Uncle Irving died this morning.

My feelings about this are more mixed and uncomfortable than I can say. I’m not looking for sympathy or condolences. While I loved him in my youth—and he was probably comparatively healthy then-- when I grew older I saw how horribly he treated my Aunt and Grandmother, and how controlling and nasty he could be. After my Grandmother’s death, at the funeral and the reading of the will…it was a grim eye-opener to how far he’d gone, taking my Aunt with him. She’s always been a very timid woman, and he spent 40 years dominating her. It was a strange and unhealthy dynamic. At the reading of the will, my family circled the wagons around my Aunt. She knew it was time, even more so when he pounded on the door of the ladies room for her to come out as we stood there talking. With his doctor’s cooperation, we had my Uncle committed that same day. The diagnosis was, I believe, paranoid senile dementia. I can honestly say now that I never saw him again.

The insane legal battles started soon after. With my Aunt here in Philly, and with the difficulty between them, the State appointed him a guardian. She seems to have been a greedy, conniving bitch: she tried to get my Aunt and Uncle divorced, she hired lawyers and demanded my Aunt pay them, she may even have taken things out of their New York apartment—in addition to trying to list it for sale at far below its worth. She was legally required to update my Aunt and her lawyer as to my Uncle’s condition. We had no idea he was in the hospital until weeks after he’d gone in. So if nothing else, we’ve hopefully gotten rid of her. The trouble she’s caused is partly the reason my Aunt has seizures like the ones that landed her in the hospital last month. And my Aunt should be enjoying her money, not haemmoraging it battling this witch. I’m hopeful things will go smoothly now. I don’t expect them to, but it’d be nice.

So in a way, I’m glad.

In a way, I hate that.

Chalk it up to being human, I guess.


So. As I said, after drafting a letter for Lars and the IWG in the afternoon, I optimistically tried to nap, and thus, of course, found myself running late to pick up my parents. Well, I wasn’t that late, except for the minor fact that I’d meant to be early. Alas. But I found them, and whisked they were, and for once in my life, I was very early for something. The seats weren’t bad, and the performance was absolutely lovely. As my folks, inveterate opera-lovers, declared, those singers have bright futures, all. My mother laughingly commented that Keith is built like a football player. Grinning, I replied, "Five years as a fullback for the Denver Broncos, one year for the Oakland Raiders." Hell of a career switch, innit?

So the black spot on THIS occasion occurred as the lights came up after the final curtain—a woman a few rows in front of us stands up and starts calling, "Is there a doctor in the house? We need a doctor!" There is much milling, but no one seems to be doing anything. I dropped my shawl on my mom, and ran up the aisle to the foyer. There was no one from the hall’s staff or the AVA there, but there was a woman already on her cell phone, calling 911. I went back inside, and after a few moments, made my way down to the people standing around this woman and her companion, an elderly woman who seemed mostly alert. I told the first woman someone had already called 911, and she sighed and said she thought, hopefully, they wouldn’t need them. I have a feeling her friend may have had a seizure, but come out of it. Wouldn’t know what that’s like, would I?

We made our way back through the sweet evening air to the car. In the parking lot, a policeman was already arriving. Several of us pointed Centennial Hall out to him, and he took his first aid box and went up. I told him she was doing better. All’s well, I hope. Or so it seemed at the end I saw.

I pulled into McD’s as we drove home through Ardmore, pointing out some bitter landmarks to my folks.

What a surprise. Worst hamburger I’ve ever had, and they covered it in nuclear onions.

Oh, yes, it’s time for bed.