This post ain't funny

Mom died last night at about 6:10 p.m. Devon and I were there when she took her last breath. The nurse and doctor confirmed it, but today, I still have this crazy fear that I shouldn't have let them do the autopsy, because what if she's still alive in there? What a nightmare, waking up during the middle of your own dissection.

I have the crazy.

I'd never been present for someone's last moment before, and I'm so lucky to have witnessed it. With all the drama and violence of the past few months, the universe allowed me the chance to be alone with only her and Devon when she left.

She'd been nonresponsive for a few days, with her eyes half open and no one home behind them. Half an hour before she died, I felt blood dripping onto my foot, blood from her surgical wound that was no longer clotting. A few minutes before she died, her labored breathing became too shallow to hear, then her eyes closed all the way, she drooled a bit from the corner of her mouth, and the pulse in her neck fluttered and stopped.

The part of me that believes in fairies hoped for a bigger pop -- a gust of air, a vision, a feeling, something. But it was very quiet.

Dad doesn't understand why this is happening to him, how this could happen to someone as wonderful as mom. His grief is very childlike. Or so I thought, until I found myself on the stairs wishing her Jedi spirit would wave at me from the corner.

Dad isn't childlike -- just honest.

It's so not peanut butter jelly time

Sometimes, life is a huge fucking disappointment. Like today, at the hospital, when I was waiting for mom to get out of surgery and decided to ingest calories for the sake of nourishment. The cafeteria tempted me with peanut-butter-and-jelly lolly pops. I thought to myself, "Self, this is the most amazing thing you have ever seen. You must make it your own."

So I bought it. Turns out the only thing vaguely PB&J about it was the color scheme, which was caramel-colored on the bottom and red on the top and had a generic sugar coating all around. After about 30 minutes of sucking time, the top fell off the stick and I had to toss it or risk choking to death.

I realize that last sentence is hilarious if you're 12.

Haiku of hatred

Oh Fitz, how I hate
you when you pee on the floor.
You do it always.

Will work for food

With the newspaper industry spiraling into a vegetative state, I've been considering my career options. I'm seriously regretting that philosophy minor now, as awesome as arguing semantics for a whole semester was. English has been a surprisingly versatile degree, but getting married really screwed me over. 

Note to any young women reading this blog: Never follow your deadbeat husband up and down the Eastern seaboard at the expense of your own career unless you want to end up woefully overqualified for the monkey job you have but without the management experience to score anything better. 

Not that I'm bitter or anything. 

At any rate, I've narrowed my options down to the following three. 

1) Prostitution: In a down economy, prostitution is a growth industry. And I'm a people person! One problem: The average age of an entry-level whore is 13 years old, so I'd be competing with a much younger crowd.

2) Crack dealer: Exciting, and I could set my own hours. But I hate guns, so I'd have to fight off the competition with a fucking iron pipe. And being woken up all hours of the night by strung-out junkies would get on my nerves. Besides, realistically, I'd pee my pants the first time a narc banged on my door. I'm kind of a weenie.

3) Time traveler: This one has real potential. I love to travel, and I'm totally OK with being my own grandma. I just can't figure out how to get paid to do this. 

If you have any better ideas, let me know. I already checked, and those fascists at eBay won't let me sell kidneys, even if they're mine.