The hour is late for me so I am taking a glass of wine and walking away from my laptop and off to bed. It seems like it has been an 80 hour day.

Holding all of you in my heart.

I"m just so... resigned. We keep losing good people.

I hate knowing what you mean.

Earlier today I went to click "Buffistas Home" and thought "yep, it is."

{{hugs}} all of you

It's so sad and sudden, I have no idea of what to say.

I know, Gud.

The "house that ita built" made me cry. It's perfect.

I keep waiting to find out that this isn't real.

But also this.

I just submitted my timesheet for the period through 1/15 (they make us guess ahead of time which is just weird). I billed 120 hours. No wonder I broke my diet last night. And was freaking out earlier that somehow not seeing another friend post here or anywhere and then she didn't text me back for an hour and OMG surely there is more tragedy (there is not. What is is plenty. But my brain is so on overdrive).

I had to keep it together at work, but I emailed M to tell him what had happened. He never met ita, but he's met several other Buffistas and knows what this place means to me, and he was able to come meet me for lunch. That was good, to get to talk about ita and what she meant to me and to us.

I think tomorrow we'll watch "Out of Gas," but tonight I'm just drinking tea and reading here and, you know, crying. I've been thinking about how much ita loved LotR, and especially the "hobbit moment" when Merry and Pippin leap into the fight with the Uruk-hai, crazed with grief and horror over Boromir, and are just immediately carried away as if they weighed nothing at all. I'm remembering how much that got to her, watching them risk their lives, despite being so thoroughly overmatched and outnumbered, because they could not do otherwise. I loved how much she valued their courage and their heart.

I called Deb from work to firm up details for our dinner tomorrow, and she asked me if I'd heard the news. I don't usually check the board at work. I checked in and started crying at my desk, so I closed my door, stopped reading the board sobbed for a bit and powered through my day. Later tonight I was at a meeting for one of my boards and one of my CT family asked me if I was okay and I started crying again. This is awful. I really loved her, she was such a strong person, even in the face of her pain. I hated when her knee was messed up, because she couldn't be her best ita. I was so happy when it finally healed, and I remember being with her in LA when she took her orange belt test. (kick ass by the way). I was so mad at the universe when the migraines started, I just wanted my girl to have a break, dammit. And now she's gone. I was so frustrated with her doctors. It was FUCKING RIDICULOUS that she had to go to ER for pain management and deal with the idiots who thought she was drug seeking, and waste her time and energy just trying to get some goddamned help.

Sorry for the dump, I've been holding in all day. Trying to resist the urge to scream FUCK at the top of my lungs. I would say fuck it and just scare the shit out of my neighbors, but I know that it wouldn't really make me feel better. FUCK.

I've been writing vicious letters to her doctors in my head a lot of today.