happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city--george burns.

I flew back to DC late last night--yes, that's right, on Thanksgiving. And even though there was no turkey waiting for me when I got home, the crisp air that hit my face as I walked out of the airport felt good and sweet, like November is supposed to.

Coming home a day early meant that today hasn't felt like a Friday, and all in all I feel a little off my game. Then again, I guess that's to be expected. I still haven't been able to think too much about the last seven days, to digest it all and reconcile what I eventually need to reconcile. It just feels like a half-remembered bad dream.

Oh, and my car died today, but that's OK. Although I'm not all that superstitious, experience has taught me the old adage that "things happen in three's" holds true. The first two events were, as you know, my grandmother's funeral and our house being robbed the next day. The death of my car, then, completes the cycle. Believe it or not, I'm a little relieved, because the passing of that third event should mean that the bad luck is behind me. I had actually been anxiously awaiting the third "catastrophe" so that I could move on with my life, and there were far worse things that could have happened than the hassle of calling AAA (Especially considering the tone that the previous two events set).

Nonetheless, today I tried very hard to get my mind off things. I started off the day with a big, comforting bowl of oatmeal (my favorite breakfast) and spent too many hours at Target listening to Christmas music and buying myriad odds and ends for both my apartment and my friends and family. I was going to go to the gym, but felt that my time would be better served getting a huge flatbread salad from Cosi and then going home and taking a long shower and curling up on my couch.

And then I wrote down a list of things I want to do during Christmas break. (It's beyond me that the only thing that stands between me and winter vacation are two 15 page papers. Where on Earth did this semester go? ) My lofty cold-weather plans include painting assorted pottery at ColorMeMine (!!!), going to synagogue and making my first concerted effort in four years to meet other Jews (...), cooking REAL food (and becoming a more adventurous cook in the process), and maybe visiting my Uncle in Connecticut again (I'm hooked on this whole invention called "New England").


This is all, fingers crossed, assuming my grandfather doesn't pass away, which is a distinct possibility. In which case, I'll be back in Florida despite my best efforts.

I also, in the spirit of the holiday, composed a brief list of what I'm most thankful for:
1. My parents, and sister, and my grandparents
2. My and their health
3. My Uncle and Aunt
4. Refer to 2.
5. My Boca friends, my Williamsburg friends, and my Georgetown friends.

..."Oatmeal" would have been on that list as well, but it seemed that if I wrote that down then all bets would be off and I wouldn't be able to, in good conscience, look anyone else, not mentioned on the list, in the eye ever again....because how do you explain to someone that they were trumped by breakfast cereal?

Tonight, still in pursuit of regaining my pre-thanksgiving routine and composure, I was feeling adventurous and inspired by this great blog I came across: http://eatliverun.com and I made the most DELICIOUS and filling dinner! I found a great recipe for rosemary and thyme baked chicken and added a side of mashed sweet potatoes and sauted spinach. For some reason, the decision to cook a real dinner tonight made me feel calm for the first time in several days. Despite all the sweets and bread that we had while sitting shiva, we hadn't really had too many sit-down meals. It felt good to do so tonight, to add back some semblance of normalcy.

we are for each other; then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis

My grandmother passed away. My grandmother. She passed away. She died. My grandmother.

No matter how many times I say it or re-say it, it never sounds right. How does a woman like that, a woman who never stopped talking, stop talking for good? Her apartment is now hollow and quiet, all that's left is the puffing sound of my grandfather's oxygen machine. Is this death? Is this what it sounds like?

And then there's my grandfather and, thanks to age and senility, there's his inability to hold onto the memory of his wife's death for more than an hour. It slips away from him; the glue refuses to hold and things fall apart and each time we have to remind him where his dead wife has gone to.

The fact is I've been lucky enough in life to never have had to deal directly with death. In fact, I've thought astoundingly little about death and what death means and what I believe death to be. If you asked me two weeks ago what I thought of death, I'd say it was when your heart stopped beating and your brain stopped thinking and your being stopped being. But now, I don't know about any of that.

I tell my students to stop thinking in binaries. Maybe I should do the same. Specifically, what I'm thinking of is William Wordsworth's "We Are Seven" and the little girl who insists that she and her siblings "are seven" even though "two were buried in a grave." "Are" and "Were" are verbs meant to separate what is from what was, but lately it doesn't seem enough--as if, there needs to be a verb for all that falls in between.

If she is around, at least I know that she'll be glad at how the ceremony went and she'd, for once, love the way her hair and makeup were done. Of course, the lingering crumbs all over her counters and Chloe Dog on the furniture might be enough to aggravate the dead to rise again.

I don't think I'm coming home at all this winter break. Florida is a place where people come to die and, after this whole ordeal, I am very much in the mood for (the) living.

I write/ and write, and transcend/ nothing, escape/ nothing, nothing/ is truly born from me,/ yet magically it's better/ than nothing

I've been wanting to start a blog since August, ever since I began graduate school at Georgetown. I'm not sure why I waited so long. I guess that although I've been nearly bursting at the seams with feelings of what I can only think to describe as a type of mania--an extreme and unrelenting sense of elation--those feelings have also prevented me from writing anything down. In other words, I've been suffering from sensory overload, from too many good things occurring all at once. The result has been that those feelings--until now--have pretty much transcended any type of (human) articulation. For one reason or another though, tonight I'm finally able--and willing--to harness those squeals and spasms of delight into...real words.

Over the past two months, it's become more and more apparent that a Master's program in English literature is more a lifestyle choice than an academic means to an end. It's only November and I've already presented my first conference paper, spent more than a handful of "happy hours" talking about literary cannon, seen four productions at the Shakespeare Theater Company, and met some of the most wonderful and wacky English majors I could have ever hoped to meet. Basically, the term "graduate school" has come to mean anything entailing a combination of good literature, good wine, and good people.

And even though I'm having the time of my life, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to going home for Thanksgiving and seeing friends and family (and eating turkey and obscene amounts of pumpkin pie).

There have been a good deal of personal demons that I've spent the last year working hard to overcome/come to terms with, and I can't even begin to explain how incredible it feels to finally be able to wake up each morning and feel happy and strong and confident; in truth, a year ago I would not have thought that these feelings were possible; heck, a year ago, Georgetown wasn't even on the table, let alone finishing my senior year. But, somehow, I'm here and I've done it.

I'm excited to see what else is in store.