Sup dawgs.

Dear Beloved Strangers,

Who enjoyed the break, raise your hands? Whose husbands enjoyed the break from your compassionate crying and stuff? Whose husbands were sick of it, and thisclose to blocking my URL from your routers? Sorry.

I got burnout. Not blog burnout...cardboard box/funeral/driving/overeating/bad weather BURNOUT. I also got sick of the title of this blog. It was a placeholder at the time, when the blog was a wee baby new blog and I couldn't think of anything but lines from Legally Blonde. So I changed it.

I moved in. And for the first time in seven months, I feel like my emotions are where they should be. Living with my host family was like taking emotional percocet. I'm away from them now, in my apartment by myself, and the pain I've been assigned, but haven't yet owned entirely, is now revealing itself. This is good. It is the only way I can really heal. I have to own my loneliness and let it catch up to me.

I tagged along with my aunt to an annual family dinner where they celebrate the life of their late father. I heard there was food, so I signed up. He had 10 children and who knows how many grandkids. They sat around and told stories about him, remembered their favorite quirks of his, and laughed for hours. While it was heartwarming, I still went home and sobbed. If I didn't hurt that Rbf was a generational dead end, I'd be some kind of insensitive hag. So I'm glad this still rocks me. I ache that he of all people should have been remembered by a dozen of his offspring. In my head, I pictured them imitating their dad's dance moves and health food and how many times a year "dad" lost his phone. I wept because I realized that when Rbf died, it didn't just erase a person from the world; it erased an entire lineage that was to be. The magnitude of this loss is bigger than my comprehension. I thought of that popular Mormon family quip the SSB girl makes fun of..."all because two people fell in love." This usually accompanies massive family portraits with no less than 24 subjects...all "offspring" of these two people that fell in love.

I went through all these stupid boxes and eventually just dumped the crap on the floor. I'll find a place for it later. I have been doing this for weeks, moving random clutter up my stairs and into my apartment. Today, I spent hours "unpacking" and at the end of it, felt like I had done no more than move messes around into new, differently shaped messes. I think about the trailer my uncle had to borrow from his neighbor (TWICE) to move me two times in six months. I watched the sweat dripping down five people's faces as they moved my furniture up two flights of stairs. Wait, why are they moving my things again? I look at the stack of life-after-death quackery books I hug in embarrassment as I leave the Salt Lake library. I look at my life, how it is a foreign place to me and doesn't feel like it's my own. I look around at this apartment and wonder how I ended up here. And my only answer is: All because the wing broke off.

SO, since we're never not discussing my dead boyfriend and surely you're not sick of hearing about it...why don't I tell you about my funeral expertise? Because I'm a total funeral ninja. Yeah, turns out, when you bury three men at once, that crap's not cheap...even if you get a good deal.

This has been weighing on my heart, heavily, for seven months. I made a contribution for his headstone, but not enough to cover his share of the funeral. People might think I'm trying to be generous, but they don't understand. I'm not. The thing nobody else knows were his expectations of me. He would view that expense as my responsibility. I'm slacking, not generous.

So I set up the Jed Mingo Memorial Fund. If you see that this blog eventually gets monetized, that's where the funds are going. I figure this is all about him and what happened to the family. I have used their names and faces. It should help them. I feel my contribution should be no less than what it would have been if we'd had time to get married before the accident. Whether or not his mother or family knew this (and they didn't), he does: those costs are ultimately my responsibility. It's just going to take me some time to do it right. So there's that.

OK this page bores my ass off...PICTURE time!!!

Here I am with Macy, a 14 month old lab/golden mix CCI service dog in basic training. She stayed with me for four days, and she was my date to the CCI reception on Friday.

She also helped me adjust to this, and it is much worse than it looks...just so you can feel appropriately sorry for me:

Left: Macy judges me for not unpacking anything even though I've lived there a month. At right, I sport like 4 inches of my natural hair color in some form of weird self-sacrifice. Meanwhile, I appear not to be controlling my dog, and unable to decode this strange contraption called a BELT, while other CCI-ers are explaining to their animals how to make baklava.

This is Macy sprawled on the floor of the Little America, doing sudoku in her head and dreaming of the disabled children she will help when she is done with training.

Below, this was fricking funny:

When you evolve past butt-sniffing to identify another dog, you use a really sophisticated thing called visual recognition. If it looks like a dog and sits like one...especially that still (CCI dogs can)...well then it must be a dog.

Last day with me. In my super clean car. CCI people, if you're reading, I hurried and totally put her in her crate right after this picture was taken. Did I give you ADD yet?

K bye.