Good plan. Fabulous hair.

Burrell, I was just going to offer this to Allyson: I am not close to ita, and certainly wasn't close the way you are, but if I can help you write her obit, I will do whatever. I feel particularly impotent, right now. This is a way in which I can be of use.

Allyson, please stop being hard on yourself. You got out of bed (or at least plan to). Hooray. You've been going through intense, medical treatments. Get your shoes on, get the phones, and then stop by the emotional break store and by yourself a double dose. Also? Ice cream and maybe some exquisite hair product.

Betsy, it is nice to see your pixels here.

I've been a little knocked for a loopy about how of my grief is manifesting in anger. I'm being careful with my words because it spirals out so easily.

Everything is wrong and there's no perfect picture or obit that can BE ita and that's the worst bullshit ever. I resent those things for fucking existing in the same thought as her.

So yeah. Get up in the morning and do something. Resent the hell out of it. It will suck. But you'll leave another mark on your world, and right now, that matters a helluva lot.

It's been really nice to see everybody again, Cindy. I hope to be here more often.

It is completely wrong and stupid, Allyson, but you have pretty hair and no one could do it better. Please hand off everything you can.

Burrell, I'd be glad to help too. Back in the day, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and newly minted reporters wrote the obits, I wrote many, many obits.

I love Ginger more than ginger (and more than MaryAnn, for the record).

Okay, girl, I know I watch more cable channels than most, but I would really like to skip the Jamaica commercials. They're too hurty.

Thanks Cindy. I am going to try working on it now. Maybe right after I pour a wee glass of wine for myself.

Thank you too, Ginger

Pretty hair roll call: Allyson, Kristen, Polgara, Burrell, bon bon, Cindy and Ginger, and if anyone attempts to deny it I shall kill them with someone's pinky. Not mine. Mine are pretty useless for anything but typing.

Alibelle, that is such a great story.

I actually only ever met ita in person at the LA F2F, at prom, when she was full of post-belt-test weariness and I felt too shy to pester her when it was amazing that she'd managed to drag her pounded-on self there at all. And I just assumed there'd be some endless array of F2Fs and visits to LA, and there weren't.

I want to choke the shit out of all her doctors. Even if whatever happened was something that couldn't have been predicted or prevented, all the moments of pain that came before it *were* predicted, with 100% reliably, and absolutely could have been prevented, or at the very least eased.