Pirates all!

Maria, me, MaryAnn volunteering at The Floating Hospital Children's Halloween Party.

Everything is Rosie, Since I met my Rosie!

She was so amazing. I was a little emotional because after mom died, Rosie's show was a daily escape that I could could count on. She saw me me approaching with tears in my eyes and she came from behind the table to hug me. We talked a little about Mom-- the rest is a blur.

I just GET her. I understand where she's coming from, and I appreciate her willingness to be out there with her family life and her politics. The media loves the soundbites, and always shows them out of context to make her seem so radical. Of course they won't show how she interacts with her fans, including 85 year old Mary who could barely walk but still came from Riverhead, and the boy in the wheelchair, and the hundreds of others who waited hours to shake her hand.

(That's her brother Eddie in the background.)

The people in line all shared a common love of Rosie, and I had a great time hanging out with them while we waited. The line-up. I was number 3. I had showed up a week early by mistake, but I couldn't convince the others there that that should count and entitle me to #1.

After my encounter. My hand was still shaking a little, so it's kinda blurry.

Several years ago, Rosie autographed this heart for the NMF's HeARTworks Gala auction. She remembered it, and we talked briefly about me working for the Foundation.

Right?!

This would be funny if it wasn't so true!

A Little Late...

"National Coming Out Day" was a few weeks ago, wasn't it???

I love the ruckus this is stirring. I moved a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" into the Gay and Lesbian Fiction at Barnes and Noble last night as a show of solidarity!

We are EVERYWHERE-- even in Hogwarts!

Lazy-Boy Candidate Selector

I friend emailed this link to me to help compare your position on a variety of issues to those of the 2008 Presidential Candidates. I found it to be pretty interesting. I was a little surprised. Your comments?

Tequila Free Zone

I still couldn't bring myself to come back to Tequila. Even a single marguerita didn't go down easily.. I switched to a pina colada and then decided to go to diet coke. I was severely damaged in Indianapolis. So sad...

After a night at the local haunt in Huntington, we decided to stock up on junk food and all of us pile into bed to watch Dane Cook. I got ice cream. Here's the conversation:

Rachel: What flavor did you get?

Jonathan: Haagen Daz Peaches and Cream.

Rachel: You always get somehing different. I usually get the same thing.

Jonathan: Well, Lori from Weight Watchers says you lose weight faster if you "mix it up" and don't always eat the same thing.... So I alternate between Chunky Monkey, Half- Baked, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Strawberry Cheesecake, and Peaches and Cream.

Rachel: I don't think that's what Lori meant....

[as we roll in a fit of early morning giggles...]

Wade Robson on "Dancing with the Stars"

AMAZING! I love this type of treatrical and stylized choreography!

Sweet Heart

A heart and an urban cat on a NYC street.

This sweet baby was sitting on top of a stack of freight that had been unloaded from a delivery truck in the flower district in NYC. I stopped to give him a little pet and noticed his heart tag. :)

To Be in the Audience, or to be IN (the show)

I have a great friend with whom I share a great love for theatre. She refers to be as "Brother" in her blog, so I'll refer to her as "Sister" on mine. She posted something on her blog that really stirred a response in me! Click here to read her posting about how we all have to find different ways to satisfy our "bug for the boards." I SO GET what she is saying!

Wow! The grass is always greener.

I want what she has!

I want to be IN theater, not get to go see it!

I want to create it, not watch others create it.

I want to feel the audience’s energy, not BE the audience.

Getting to bankrupt myself to see all the great shows is a sorry substitute for the profound joy of an opening night call for “Places!” by the stage manager.

She is SO LUCKY! Her husband also shares with her the love of the stage, and they get to build a life together around this!

But then, I can't imagine not having the Great White Way at my disposal either. If I were wealthy, it would make it a little more practical, but I can accept spending an occasional week living on Top Ramen to feed my theatre habit. :)

Really?!

Are you kidding me?! It's not even halloween yet!

"Tea-cup Fingers"

A highlight of my summer was getting to hang out in Palo Alto with Broadway legend Ann Reinking! Here I am with Ann and NMF Board Member Steve in the bar after a long day. We are doing our best Fosse-Style choreography. If you are truly living under a rock, or don't follow Broadway, you will also recognize Annie from her many movie roles. Here is a list.

(I just came across the photo on my computer... I think I forgot to post it in July.)

Book Report- "Sick Girl" by Amy Silverstein

Working part time at a book store, I frequently come across books that I never would have found otherwise. I have shelves and shelves of them at home, waiting to be read. I recently stumbled across "Sick Girl" by Amy Silverstein and, after hesitating for fear it might hit too close to home, decided to give it a go. I was right. It was WAY too close to home.

The book is a memoir about a typical type-A law student who, at age 24, found her carefully planned out life in shambles due to an unexpected health crisis. After a period of misdiagnoses (far too common in women, even today) she discovers she has congestive heart failure, and must have a heart transplant.

When her transplant finally arrives and she struggles with a world that expects her to be unconditionally grateful at her good fortune and to pull herself up by the bootstraps despite the fact that she has simply traded one set of problems for another. She is misunderstood and isolated in her feelings, and struggles to portray to role of a "recovered" sick girl for the benefit of those around her. All the while, on the inside she faces the daunting and endless threat of rejection and a series of opportunistic infections and other physical side effects from the immunosuppressant drugs.

I really wish I had had the opportunity to read this book while Mom was still alive. I found myself realizing as I read it that I was just like the friends and family in the book-- well-intentioned people who inadvertently put insane amounts of pressure on the transplant recipient to "be normal" again. To be grateful for being alive and not muddy the waters with tales of shingles and annual heart biopsies and further illness.

Mom had her transplant at age 47, and as far as I was concerned was supposed to get another 20 years. I remember ONE number when we found out that she was going to have to have a heart transplant back in the winter of 1993-- that statistics showed that over 85% of heart transplants were still alive after 5 years. That's all we had at that point, since "routine" transplants had only been being done for about a decade at that point. I focused on the 85% alive, and the fact that what would happen beyond the 5 years was conveniently and definitively swept under the rug.

Mom always said that, despite the pain from the actual surgery, she woke up from the transplant feeling better than she had on months, maybe years. Did I stop paying attention then because I needed to take it that all was good? Did she feel "sick" every day--even after she was "healed"? I know there were complications that came along, but I always thought of those as occasional bumps along the way. Did I not ask because I didn't want to know the answer? My not asking, and not understanding, must have felt awful for her. Is that sort of sense of isolation what led to her depression?

In the book, Silverstein talks about facing the constant fear of "transplant artery disease" and rejection. Mom's official cause of death was listed as "chronic rejection of transplanted heart." When she started going downhill, the doctors told us that another transplant was inevitable. As the family member, my attitude was "fine, let's do it" even though I knew that the likelihood of it coming as fast as the first one (an unheard of 4 days on the list) was pretty slim. Also, I knew that mom had real misgivings of going through it all again. I wanted to beg her to fight, but I knew that she didn't have much fight left in her.

I did not like Amy Silverstein for a good part of the book. I guess I joined the ranks of her family and friends that just wanted her to be thankful and shut up about the rest. But I learned from her, and for that I appreciate her willingness to share all the ugliness that she experienced, in addition to what we are conditioned to call "the miracle of a heart-transplant." Reading this memoir provided an insight into what Mom must have been feeling during those 7 years, 10 months, and 3 days between her transplant and when she died.

I am grateful for that.

Here are a few passages that I found particularly powerful:

"The people closest to me, whose understanding would have been invaluable, could only run my ordeals through their own filters and then invent wildly far-fetched, impossibly upbeat conclusions that had no basis in my reality as a heart-transplant patient. Their creativity had more sting to it than they would ever realize, but I knew they called it up for a good cause: optimistic nonsense about my health situation made everyone feel so much better. Except for me."

" I love my family, but I can't live for them. Maybe that makes me a bad person, I don't know. But Scott [her husband] gets up every morning and goes to work, and my son goes to school. And I'm at home feeling sick. Or at the hospital. I can't just be this fixture that hangs around so the people I love can check in on me every now and then while they go along with their busy lives. Call me selfish, but I need to have some meaning besides living for other people."

Everyone who knows someone who has expereicned a transplant should read this book to understand their loved one's perspective a little better. It will be scary. It will make them worry about the future. But it is honest, and it will paint a realistic picture for them of what they may need to do to be more supportive and compassionate.

Here's a link to the Reader's Group Guide for the book.

Mom

(here's another post about some of this "stuff" from last year)

Book Report: "Celebrity Detox" by Rosie O'Donnell

I really admire Rosie for her candor and willingness to hold strong to her views in the face of a firestorm. It must be insanely difficult to try to stay so real through it all...

People who judge her based on the mainstream media's "soundbite" approach to reporting are being unfair. Read her book, Celebrity Detox. I enjoyed it, and think it will help people understand her better.

I'm hoping to see her next week at the Book Revue in Huntington... :) She's doing a signing.

Photos from the 9th Annual Martin Bonfire in Indianapolis

More pictures on Flickr.

What a wonderful world- Hand puppetry

My cousin Sherry sent me this. Amazing!

Bonding with my Cousi-Step-Brother Through Tequila

It went downhill from here...

Babysitting Dylan Ethan

How CUTE is this baby?!?!

Dillon is Cousi-mom's great-nephew, which makes him my 5th-cousin/step-2nd cousin. (Again, for those who need a refresher: my 3rd cousin is also my step-mother. The family tree looks more like a banyon tree than a traditional tidy geneological graphic.

Hearts on Vacation

Heart at home

Indianapolis for R & R

'The Circle' in Indy

Taking a week of R & R in Indianapolis. Visiting Family, laying on the couch, drinking wine in teh hot tub. Doing a LOT of nothing!

Dancing with the Stars 2nd Week - Helio Castroneves

My new official pick to go all the way and win it!