Emoting.

My aunt Kathy died a horrific death last week. As part of my grieving process, I escaped the present and blanketed myself in old photos and 8mm video clips my dad, her brother Greg, gave to me a couple years ago. I didn't know Kathy very well lately, but the times I spent with her as a kid and a young adult were formative and are precious.

The things I remember most about Kathy are the giant birthmark she had on her arm, playing with her kids, my cousins Josh and Kristin, at her house on Otto Street, one time when I was very young and she used her food stamps to buy me Planters Cheese Curls, and a story she told me about slamming on the brakes in front of a cop that was riding her ass when she was 7 months pregnant. Why these moments with Kat keep bubbling to the surface of my mind more than any others, I have no idea. Memory is funny like that.

The thing I loved the most about Kathy was her wild streak, and that's probably what ultimately got her in the shape she was in at the end. Kathy joked after my grandpa had a fatal heart attack on the toilet that it was her criminal record that he'd chosen as reading material that did him in. She had a bright smile, one that squinted up her eyes and was usually followed by a deep laugh. She let me crash on her couch when I couldn't stay with my dad, she told me grown up jokes, and she refused to take herself too seriously. I think Kathy deserves credit for giving me the gift of self-deprecation, for shaping my sense of humor, and for that tiny speck of rebellion and criminal intent that is deep in my gut.

Because it's what I do, I set out to make a memorial video of my aunt Kathy. And because it is what I do, I started looking for some ideas to rip off, something that had music that really spoke to the spark that Kathy gave the world. My project isn't complete, but these things were just too amazing not to share.

Facts

I was helping Leiah paint her new pad the other day when Ben walks in and starts dictating to me proper paint technique and how he wants the closet to be blue. I swear I have no idea where he gets this brand of bossy, but I had already painted the closet yellow and I knew he was fighting a losing battle. To spare his ego, I decided to pull out the old tool of distraction and asked him about his girlfriend at day care.

"So who's this girl I hear has been kissing you at day care?"

"She's got yellow hair and her name is Sky." He gets right down to the nitty gritty, doesn't he?

"Sky, huh? Well, is she cute?"

"No," he said, exasperated that I would even ask such a thing. "Girls are pretty."

"Oh, so is she pretty?"

"Yes, girls have to be pretty."

"What happens if a girl is not pretty?" I sincerely asked.

"She goes to jail," he sincerely answered.

This was a serious talk, and even though the inside of me was rolling on the floor laughing, I knew if I wanted to get more of these delightful 5-year-old insights, I had to hold it together. Naturally, I switched the topic to boys. "What about boys? Do boys have to be cute too?"

"No," he says, and I swear if he knew how to roll his eyes he would have. That is how annoying I am. "Boys are handsome."

"But what if a boy isn't handsome? What then?"

Ben looked at me like it's a miracle I made it this far in life being so dumb. "They have to wear ladies' clothes."

There you have it. Ugly girls go to jail and ugly boys must dress as ladies.

Tweedle Lee Dee Dee.

St. Patrick's Day has got to be one of my favorite holidays. There's beer and day drinking and a parade and legends of tiny men with pots of gold and everyone dresses up in green and you get to pinch the non-compliant... all of my favorite things AND socially sanctioned violence!!

This year, at the invitation of Ms. Seana O'Neill (Irish names do not get more legit than that), we decided to participate in the Tweed Ride. We got all dressed up in tweed, hopped on our bikes, and took over the roads in downtown Lexington. Group drunk driving has never been so fun.

Luckily no one got hurt and no one got arrested. That's not to say that no one crashed their bike in the middle of the road or that no one got in trouble for laying in a stranger's yard to look for four-leaf clovers.

We met a few new interesting people, some with very old timey facial hair, some with toy cameras, and one who was driving her special kind of crazy around downtown to espouse the health benefits of smoking. Yes, you read that right. Her dad never would have died from COPD if only he'd kept smoking. Her van is a rolling campaign for smoking.

In a moment of "better judgment," we ditched Lynda the Smoking Lover and headed to McCarthy's to toast the Irish. I thought I was drunk until I went into McCarthy's. One old guy talked to me for about 10 minutes before I finally had to say, "It seems like what you're saying is very important to you, but I literally do no understand a word coming out of your mouth." To which he replied, "grengngheljhlblarerebgbjljheerersnsghshsrghgh." I think the old lady he was with peed her chair too.

McCarthy's was just bad enough to give us sense and just good enough to be a good ending. We got to watch the UK game and as we started heading home, a real Irishman gave us the accent and wished us a happy St. Patrick's Day. I was in bed by 10:30, and my hangover was completely gone by the time I woke up. The luck of the Irish.

For those who care.

I have just a few weeks left of nursing school. That fact doesn't jive with the absence of knowledge in my brain, but somehow it's true. I have almost accomplished this bizarre idea that settled in my mind three years ago. I'm still not quite sure how it all happened, how nurse trumped graphic designer and professional organizer and party planner on the list of Things I Could Do to Make Money, but it did and so we are here.

The past three years have been spent getting used to poop and snot and giving shots and pretending to hear heart murmurs and trying to mask the look of disgust on my face when lunch comes to the unit. I have been completely annoyed with the woman thanking God for helping her stand while I cleaned the diarrhea off of her legs. I have been shocked by the drug addict whose arm had become so swollen it had to be cut open and left that way until she recovered. I have been heartbroken at the baby with CMV who was deaf and struggling to breathe and tragically inconsolable. I have been humbled by the man whose sinus infection went into his brain and took away the personality he always had. I have been astounded by the woman whose heart was being paced by the device taped to her throat. I have been mesmerized by the Congolese woman who clucked her way through childbirth. I have been scared of the wound-up man pacing the halls of the psychiatric unit with an animalistic look in his eyes. I have been grateful for the news that they got all of one man's lung cancer through surgery. I have been inspired by the 91-year-old woman with no children and no husband who had an endless string of friends at her bedside.

I have seen and been a part of things I didn't know were possible, and even more incredible, I have cared for people going through these things. Somehow, I managed to merge compassion, intuition, responsibility, knowledge, and common sense to a productive and useful end, even though that end was usually one lap around the nurse's station.

I can't believe how fast it has gone by, how much has been crammed into it, and how much I have yet to experience. And I can't wait for the part where I make money again. I think we should probably have a party to celebrate.

Another week in Kentucky.

Last Tuesday I got out of school and went to walk the Arboretum with Leigh. It was so gorgeous even Mack couldn't resist the Kentucky, and we met up with him at the field to watch him fly his airplane. The whole day felt like I was high on drugs and it was all because of warm sunshine. I even brought my scooter out of hibernation.

On Friday, the sky turned tornado green, pea-sized hail bounced around the backyard, and apparently West Liberty went from being a town to being a field of garbage. It was a strangely pretty day on Friday, with bursts of sunlight trading places with ominous clouds until the sheets of rain blew in and swirled up what's left of the leaves in the gutters and made fun of us for "new construction."

And then today. Today I wake up to four inches of snow on the ground. I feel like I live in a state of bipolar.

Babies belong in skinny jeans.

Because I have not seen her or her wonderful mommy in months, Anna granted me a play date last weekend while she was visiting her Gigi.

She showed me what a good zoo keeper she'd by closing the doors on all the animals on her Busy Poppin' Pals toy. Then she taught me how she keeps her petite frame by doing a quick jumpy workout. Then she got on all fours and demonstrated her new reverse-crawling technique, which is sort of like forward crawling but totally opposite. Then I taught her about those naughty little piggies that are always running off to do errands, and she got a real kick out of the weee-deee-weeeeee-weeeee one.

After about 45 minutes of casting her spell on me, Anna's Gigi came home. I know only an idiot stands between the baby meat and its Gigi, so I stepped aside while Jen's mom fed Anna her homemade lunch. She ate just a few bites, and then the baby angel whose soulful eyes rival those of Hanley got very sleepy. Her Gigi was going to put her down, so I moved in to steal one last cuddle.

That's when Anna grabbed my face, leaned in, and gave me the sweetest open mouth kiss of my life. We are lovahs.