We’re currently iced in up here on the mountain. When I look out the window, all I can see between the fog, snow and ice is white. Kind of like a surreal heaven.

Thanks again for all of the emails, comments & phone calls. Yesterday, I must have been on the phone for half the day with friends and family that called to check on us and express their condolences. (Except for Nana. She hasn’t called. Something about not understanding why I’m so upset. I’m guessing she wants everyone to save up their grieving until she dies. That would be so unlike her.) I told my cousin that I can’t imagine how much people must be on the phone when an actual person dies. Maybe that’s why people send food. You don’t have time to cook because you’re always on the phone.

My husband, who is still in San Francisco, told me yesterday that he can’t talk about Lil anymore for a while. He said that every time he thinks of her it makes his nose hurt. I think that’s a big boy way of saying, he doesn’t want to cry. I think.

Speaking of food, I am fully admitting to eating and drinking through my grief. I told my friend Marina yesterday, while I was shoveling potato skins into my mouth and chasing them down with a cheap merlot, my new goal is to get on the next season of the Biggest Loser. And when I’m falling off the treadmill at 300 pounds and Jillian is yelling at me, asking me why, why, why?? I’ll say, “I had this dog named Lillian…”

In a crazy twist of unfair doggie fate, my sister had to put her dog down yesterday due to the same illness Lillian had. Her Jack Russell, Bailey, battled lymphoma for a year and a half. Yesterday, my sister called me from Nashville with the sad news. *sigh* More wine. More food.

Weird…in the past three month, between my two sisters and one cousin (= 4 cousins in all, genius) two of us became pregnant and two of us have dead dogs. If you haven’t yet guessed, my sister Bobbe and I are not the pregnant ones. I think it’s only fair that my cousin and my pregnant sister name their babies Lillian and Bailey. Circle of life and all. Right?


Lillian liked to put Bailey’s whole head in her mouth. It was very sweet.

Editor’s note: Please don’t equate my crass, sarcastic, irreverent manner of speaking with being uncaring or recovered. I am dealing with this pain the way I have dealt with everything painful in the past: food, wine and bitchery.

My new motto is: There’s always time to fall apart later.

And don’t worry – I do.

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