Jan. 22: An Interesting Weekend
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Hi Peeps.
Hope you all had a great weekend. Mine was…interesting. I had a surprise party for Doug (despite the fact that his b-day isn’t until Feb 4th) at Bowlmor Lanes in the city Friday night. It’s a GREAT bowling alley, although totally unlike any bowling alley I’d ever been to before. It’s got the whole rock-and-roll thing going on, great food, drinks, etc.
Anyway, had a fake-out earlier in the night when my coworker Robyn, her husband Michael, Doug and I went out to dinner. We planned on having a couples bowl-off afterwards, so we headed to Bowlmor. Little did Doug know that waiting there were 40 of his friends and family.
He was shocked — it was so cool. I think when everyone yelled SURPRISE! he had no idea they were yelling to him. It definitely took a few seconds for it all to register.
We had a great time — until a really nightmarish event started to unfold. Without going into too much detail, my mom, who is the picture of beauty and health, collapsed. It was pretty horrifying. Paramedics, ambulance, the whole enchilada. We spent the weekend on edge at St. Vincent’s Hospital. She’s out of the hospital now and doing great, thank GOD. Initially the docs thought it was a heart attack, but now it looks like it was a bad reaction (to say the least) to a medication she just started taking.
What a scene that was, though. At one point, the bouncer came up and said “she needs to sober up”. I was like “WHAT?!? She’s not drunk, buddy — something’s wrong!” He thought she was some boozing party girl; he couldn’t believe it when I told him how hold she was. She got a kick out of that.
But it really rattled me, and everyone else for that matter. Doctor Marc Siegel, our friend from the show, came over to the hospital on his weekend off to help out so I want to give him a huge THANK YOU, as well as a huge thanks to the paramedics, firefighters and doctors and nurses. My friend Julie Roginsky is a barracuda professionally — she’s in Jersey politics but she really showed her wonderful, sensitive side that night, and the rest of the weekend. The day after it all went down she sat with me and my mom in the hospital room, hanging out and just totally normalizing everything. That’s so important to do in a time of need. It made it so much easier for me to deal with everything knowing that I had people to get my back while I focused on my mom.
A lot of people feel it’s best during these types of events to sort of pull back and give those suffering a little room. I agree it’s not good to have a million people in your face going “How are you?!?! What can I do!?!” But we all need someone to lean on.
I ESPECIALLY want to say thank you to Doug — who I swear is the greatest boyfriend EVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. Poor guy spends his surprise party in the emergency room trying to get me to chill out. I kind of felt like I was losing my mind at a few points that night and in the chaos of everything, I really snapped at him. He was so understanding (I’m not sure if I would have been as understanding and patient because let me tell you, I got really bitchy at a couple points there…). I love him a lot and I know my mom does, too.
Isn’t it weird how people react in crises? I was surprised at how out of control I felt. Usually I’m pretty good at handling emotional issues but this time, eeeesh. As I write this, I just got a pop up from several of Doug’s friends (my friends now, too!) checking up on my mom. Sniffle sniffle.
Ok back to biz!!! Oh wait, first off — GO GIANTS. At the risk of being a front-runner, I have to support my local team so I’m throwing my energy into Big Blue.
I can’t believe it’s already almost the middle of the week. I thought the guns on college campus segment we did today was good. We had one of the boys shot during the Virginia Tech massacre — Colin. What a sweet guy. I was surprised after hearing what he went through that he feels it’s a bad idea to allow students to carry concealed weapons. I’m not sure if I would have felt that way but again, I didn’t go through the hell he did. What did you all think?
The dog story…I don’t really know how to react to that one except to say BIZARRE. I’m not sure the original owners actually deserve to have their dog back since they didn’t seem too concerned when the dog was in bad shape and they went on vacation. But the mayor, calling them to say the dog died?!?!? How about going the legal, ethical route? We had to keep them all apart for obvious reasons.
I’m going to run but I promise I will hold back the personal drama stories for a while!!!
