Q. ita? ITA!? Where the hell are you, ita?

A. Shh. Calm down! Jeez. ITA is 'I totally agree.' ita, at whom you should not shout, is this unspeakably cool chick who likes knives and built the Phoenix Board by willpower alone. She is a 'charming Jamaican/Canadian/British thang' and we all want her and want to be her.

Yeah.

Something I remember thinking when I was in the hospital that I mean to share here and didn't get around to because the wifi was spotty and my consciousness sporadic: when I found out that i'm allergic to oxycodone and all the related pain meds i was prescribed dilaudid for post-surgery pain management. My one and only reference for dilaudid was ita! and her miserable experiences. I expected everything related to it to be a struggle in self-advocacy and was utterly shocked when it totally wasn't. They gave me that stuff like it was pudding or jello-cups (albeit in carefully measured and timed doses) and sent me home with a full bottle. Refills were irritating in the way that anything requiring a paper scrip is irritating, but the only hassle i ever got was from the pharmacy, never from the drs or nurses. I know that my situation was vastly different (post-surgical temporary usage for a middle class white lady) and oral dosage is regulated differently than iv dosage but it also pissed me off a little it was so damned easy for me to get every granule of pain meds i needed while she had to fight so damned hard and it still wasn't enough. Not even close to enough. And it's not like she wasn't a fighter, not like she didn't know every rule and jump through every hoop and make every phone call and appointment...so why wasn't all of that enough? Why couldn't all those doctors find what was wrong and FIX IT??

And sorry for the anger venting but seriously, that shit is fucked up. I don't know how she made it through so many days with so much pain. I don't know she managed to write, or draw, or think, or move, or sit upright. And I'm pissed off at how much she didn't get to do and enjoy because of it.

I just really want to be able to do something that will put some substance into this sense of loss.

I woke up this morning and just was incredibly sad for the thought of a world without ita. I do not want a world without her. Not at all.

Edited: God, erin_o. Now I'm angry too.

At Krav, K told one of the instructors who knew her. His response was "fucking glitter!" Remember her full on glee of using a sparkly Lush bathbomb before Krav and then getting glitter everywhere. She was always stoked to get her partners all glittery before sending them home.

I love this so much.

Thank you, Allyson for everything you've done and for that wonderful idea and thank you Ginger for offering to coordinate.

I've skipped (and will go back to read every word, of course), in order to post this:

Ginger, I realize I can't help in talking to people and stuff like that, due to being available on different timezones and a possible language barrier, but if there's anything I can do in order to help you, anything at all, I'm completely there for the task, and task you may find relevant.

Allyson...you've done your bit for king and country. Take a break, grieve and weep.

This, this, this. This.

Serenada memories

Thank you for the link.

If River Tam can be Serenity, then ita can certain sure be the Phoenix Board.

Beautifully said.

I keep switching between what seems to be real. It's either work and life are real and I'm pretending that ita's death isn't, or that all that's real is ita's death and the rest can just go and fuck itself.

I am also echoing Susan W.. When someone truly great dies, the only comfort I find is by thinking how to commemorate them in my daily life. How I should/can be a better person to my fellow humans, and to my environment. And there's so much inspiration I find in ita to motivate me to do it.

At Krav, K told one of the instructors who knew her. His response was "fucking glitter!" Remember her full on glee of using a sparkly Lush bathbomb before Krav and then getting glitter everywhere. She was always stoked to get her partners all glittery before sending them home.

This broke me.

Due to my terrible habit of not noticing posts in Press, I missed this terrible news all day yesterday and only realized something was amiss from COMM posts.

This is truly terrible news. I never met ita or even emailed her about anything personal, but my on-board interactions with her were always wonderful and her love for the board was so clear. When I joined the board I was intimidated (wrongly) by so many of the "main" posters,but despite the fact that she could kill me with her little finger I never felt anything but welcomed and embraced by ita. She grew and changed as the board grew and changed, and was a constant. I am not sure I see how the board will continue without her,though I know, of course, that it will. And the amazing thing is that I don't think she really knew how important she was not only to the technical functioning of the board but to the personal functioning of it. I will miss her and for those that knew her better I am so sorry.

I am pretty amazed, to be honest, how much this news has saddened me; I doubt I'd had any contact with ita this decade as I drifted away from here not long after Angel finished. But I have so many memories of her back on TT and during the exodus here; like someone said upthread or on Natter, "trying to get a laugh from ita" always drove me, and I think a lot of us, to be funny. She was just the cool, you know? Anyway, I've spent a lot of the day thinking about her, and you all, and hoping everyone's as OK as can be expected. I should maybe drop in here more often - I watched ita build this town, it's bad enough to know I hadn't spoken to her in so long, I don't want to feel the same about the other pioneers.

Teppy, there's also the Enforcers photo from before this board existed. It came from the F2F in October 2000, taken in our San Francisco garden: Betsy on one side, me in the middle, ita on the other side. There's a crossbow being pointed at the camera and ita is in leather and leg brace.

A few years later, when I was thinking of doing a book based Daymond John's pre-FUBU stories, he sent me down to experience a Hollywood club from behind the velvet rope. ita, in torn tights, her Docs, and a schoolgirl uniform plaid microskirt, came along as my muscle. The eight foot tall bouncer took one look at her, bowed, and let her scope out anything she wanted. Ironically, I ended up not doing the book with Daymond and used the nightclub experience in Kinkaid #7, Dead Flowers, in which Domitra features.

Christ. I miss her. She was one of my two "internet daughters", along with Vortex, who is coming down to see me today. There is going to be some serious weeping going on.