The world is a lot less whole without Mikhail Zaplishnyy in it. 

I may not have known him as well or for as long as my husband did, but during the past 2 years that I have gotten to know him, I learned that he was the type of person who could see through people and their intentions in his own way. 

His ability to make others laugh was and is unique, cheesy and terribly inappropriate, which is what made him so much fun to hang out with. 

What really made him stand out to me though was his almost intimidating wisdom. It wasn’t just the fact that he was in his 30’s and we were a bunch of 20 somethings dorking around. His experiences went beyond the extra decade he had on us. 

Just as remarkable as his depth of wisdom was his generosity. When he saw in someone the kind of friendship that could last with great meaning, he would do more than what was even expected of a close friend. He treated those he loved like family and I am forever grateful for that – especially towards my husband who considered him a brother.

When we found out that he had cancer in December of 2011, none of us doubted that he would beat it; however I couldn’t help but questions why such a terrible thing could be allowed to happen to such a wonderful person…but I think that’s normal. 

As he fought it, we rooted for him and cheered him on. When he conquered it, we figured it was over and done with. End of story. 

Sadly it wasn’t because in October of 2012 we found out he had leukemia. Despite the difficulties, he pushed forward with the help of his wife, family and friends. Even after the second round of chemo that nearly took him from us, the war wasn’t over yet. In fact it lead him to Arizona where he sought alternative treatment since the Doctors at Princess Margaret felt that there was not much left for them to do.

Seeing him last week, my husband and I saw how he was taking it and we wanted to support he and his wife and keep them happy and distracted as much as we could. With a heavy heart, we left a few days later on Friday night, wishing we could stay. 

On Monday we found out that he died in the early morning hours. I cannot even begin to express the sadness I feel over the loss of such a great person. There is so much I wish I had said before we left that night, but I know the regret and grief I feel are nothing compared to what his wife, the family and close friends are feeling right now.

There is not much else I can say other than that my thoughts are always of him and his family. It’s hard to escape the fact that he’s not here anymore. When I think of idle things like a dental appointment or whatever it seems to end with the horrible fact that he’s not going to be there. It’s like this endless mental rope I’m following that has this frayed part in it that’s not joining with the rest and it’s frustrating because it makes the rest of it seem not whole…which it isn’t. 

And then another part of me is thinking, “So that’s it? That’s how it ended? But there was supposed to be more. There were supposed to be more days, more conversations, more birthday cards to make for him, more hang outs,” but now there isn’t. That was the last time I saw him. Here was this constant means of communication with this person and suddenly they’re not there, even if you have more to say those same means of communication have just dissolved and there’s nothing you can do.

The Catholic in me is finding comfort in the fact that he is in God’s Kingdom now. People like him earn a special place in heaven, not simply because of his fight with cancer and leukemia but because of the person he was. The fact that he offered guidance and humour and so much more to those who knew him and the world as a result speaks volumes in this world and the next.

To end this on a happier note, I have to express the importance of becoming a bone marrow donor at onematch.com. It is completely free to join. All you do is go on the website, fill out a questionnaire and put your name and address. After a few weeks, they send you some swabs for your cheeks, fill out a small form with your name and information and then you just put it in the mail and you’re on the list. You could save someone’s life. All that heartbreak can be completely avoided if you join.

Married Life

That's right hoes. I am a married woman...! The wedding was absolutely amazing. Definitely the best party I've ever thrown and will ever attend. Strangely, I wasn't the least bit panicked throughout the day which is huge considering I used to have panic attacks and here I was about to get married and not once did I panic. I'm not lying though, I had to hold back the tears because I definitely didn't want to be one of those weepy brides, so I managed to hold it together that day (EXCEPT when one of my dear bridesmaids took both me and my husband aside to tell us her speech which was super touching and made me tear up).

For those curious of how it went, here's a miniclip of our wedding a couple weeks ago!

Anyway, married life is awesome. I feel a lot more comfortable as a couple now that we're married. Probably because I don't have wedding things nagging me at the back of my mind, like wondering if the violinist will get back to me or if the gifts for the guests are sufficiently padded so that they won't break (we got them mugs with our names on it underneath a claddagh ring). Everything worked out in the end, nothing fell through and everyone had a wonderful time. The staff at Sunnybrook Estates were amazing and there's no way I could be happier with anyone other than my dear husband, my loving and crazy Mory who stalked me in high school :)

Countdown

There's a good reason why some Apocalypse didn't happen, despite the fact that a bunch of gringos were all like "Ermagherd, Mayans predict the end of the world!" or putting my people down and being all like, "Ermagherd, Mayans were stupid and didn't really know anything" and all that other gringo bullshit. Seeing as I am part Mayan, I delved into my roots, learned about my people's religion, built a pyramid in my backyard and made a heart sacrifice to the Sun god to ensure that the passing into the New Year (yes, technically speaking, it was New Year's for us) would be easy and fruitful. 

Interestingly enough, as I was making the sacrifice, the God of Corn appeared to me and was like, "Girl, you gettin' married in a matter of weeks."

And I was like, "Yeah I am!"

Then the God of Corn goes, "Don't you know? If an end of the world is coming, there's no way we'd let it happen before your wedding! Not to say that it really is the end of the world, because for our people, it's just the end of a cycle and the start of another one."

"Like New Year's?"

"Hells yes, like New Years!"

"So you mean I ain't gotta make a sacrifice or nothin'?"

"Nah, homes, it's all good. But seeing as you already have a heart in your hands, I'll just take it and bless your home with abundance of food, and call it even."

So that's that.

In other news, I'm kind of running around crazy with the wedding coming up. I still haven't confirmed a wedding bouquet and the violinist is hard to get a hold of, so I'm thinking as a way to improvise, I'm just going to get together a random mish-mash of flowers from the grocery store and put the songs for the wedding march onto an iPod or something and have someone push play. 

I'm not mad about it. I think it adds more personality to the ceremony. After all, things aren't going to go perfectly, I don't expect them to go perfectly and if it means saving some money along the way, I am all for it. 

Worst comes to worst, I'll hum the song while holding a couple hor d'oeuvres. It'll make for a funny story and a fantastic wedding video.

Stand Your Ground

There's something really wrong with Florida. Zombies, bath fitter or whatever that drug is called and yet another case that people are saying resembles the Trayvon Martin shooting.

45 year old Michael Dunn was at the convenience store with his girlfriend and asked a car full of teenagers to turn down the volume. Apparently they weren't down with what that jive turkey was gobblin', so that led to an argument between Dunn and 17 year old Jordan Davis who was sitting in the back seat.

Anyway, Dunn allegedly felt threatened and opened fire. Not once, not twice, but about 8 or 9 times before driving away. Davis, who was shot twice, died in the car.

That, my friends, is fucked up. Especially because Dunn is claiming the whole "stand your ground" law, so who knows if anything will happen to this guy.

Now I know what a car full of teenagers can be like. They can be asshats and act all tough and talk back. They're teenagers, what would you expect? That's not to say that they deserved what happened, because they didn't.

All I'm saying is that Dunn, a grown 45 year old man, should know better than to squabble back. If the kids aren't listening, if they're being douchy and disrespectful, don't give them the time of day. You've said your piece, you're the adult -move on. What's more, if he genuinely felt threatened, why didn't he just drive away? He certainly had no trouble driving away after shooting EIGHT OR NINE TIMES.

I'm not going to lie, I'm sure there's more to the story than what's been published thus far. Maybe he really did feel threatened by the kids if one or more of them claimed to have a weapon. Maybe his ego was hurt and Dunn, being a gun collector, whipped his cock out and got a little overexcited.

But the thing that bothers me the most is that the majority of these articles start out by saying who's white and who's black. For all we know this wasn't racially motivated like the Trayvon Martin shooting which had a clear racial bias on the shooters' part. Yes, I understand that the dead kid is black, that the shooter is white and he's saying that he stood his ground, but that's where the similarities seem to end.

Dunn didn't chase this kid down, he didn't continually go out of his way on this mission to "clean the town" of vagrants or whatever. He simply asked if the kids could turn down the volume -something anyone would ask in a public place.

Trayvon was by himself, Jordan had about 4 other people with him.

Trayvon was walking home, minding his own business, Jordan was in the parking lot of a convenience store in a car that was blasting music.

Trayvon was out for skittles and ice tea, Jordan was waiting for his girlfriend to buy wine.

You see how different the story becomes when you decide not to frame the incident according to a racially biased one from several months ago?

Crack Toof

Utensils are ugly devices. I've never really liked using utensils for food, mainly because people would criticize me for using this wrong or that wrong or they'd be all like, "Stop stabbing your food!" or some such bullshit. Also I grew up eating mostly finger food. Tortillas, rice, beans, platanos fritos, and so on. Eating with utensils? Ain't nobody got time fo dat!

But anyway, it's clearly something I haven't been able to completely avoid as I've gotten older, but for the most part, when I think I can get away with it and I'm around people who don't care about these things, I don't usually use them.

So the other night when I was eating the lovely salad my fiance made for me, I inadvertently started eating with the fork. Probably because of all the dressing I smothered on it. I didn't want to have to keep licking my fingers to press fast forward every time a commercial came on. So I'm eating the shit out of this salad when CHOMP!

...I bit...the fucking...fork.

The pain shot through the nerves of my lower jaw and my head suddenly felt like it was locked in one place. I was too busy registering the pain to move any part of my body. I released my mouth from the fork, but it was the most I could do because everything from the neck up felt like stone.

Fiance looked over at me and asked what was wrong. I was too scared to answer because that meant moving my jaw and using interdentals and labio-dentals (if you've done phonetics, you know what I'm talking about). 

What if I started saying something and my tongue ended up pushing out a tooth right in the middle of a sentence?

I could hear the concern in his voice because I wasn't answering, wasn't moving. To stop him from freaking out, I started making ridiculous noises, like an infant crying. Not that I was crying or anything. That's just bullshit. But even if I was, it would be understandable, so whatever. Fuck off.

I pull the fork out of my mouth, drop it on the plate and walk to the bathroom, remembering that I still have deliciously unchewed salad with feta cheese in my mouth. I inspect my mouth in the mirror, sluggishly chewing the food in my mouth with my back teeth and swallowing with disdain. I didn't see anything wrong. Eveything looked fine, but 2 of my front teeth felt weird. Like they were foreign objects suddenly jammed into my gums.

"Are they going to die?!" I asked fiance in a panic.

"They're not going to die. And even if they do, my mom had a dead tooth and she's fine."

I suddenly pictured myself with 2 beautiful black teeth in my wedding photos and realized that I would not be fine. There was no way I would be okay with some dead fuckin' teef all up in my grill.

Anyway, long story short, only one of the teeth still hurts and yes, there is a very visible crack in it. It hurts the way a sensitive tooth would hurt if you put a never melting ice cube against it and kept it there. I can't bite down completely because the pain shoots right into my gum and makes it feel like it's just going to bend forward from the socket and run away. 

Certain words are a little irritating to say since it involves pressing my tongue against my tooth and that hurts, so words with "th" are subsituted with "f". Chewing my big-ass African lower lip hurts, but that's probably a good thing since I can't continue that ugly habit of biting my lip anymore.

The next step is going to the dentist and figuring out what to do with this tooth. A part of me is hoping that it will be replaced with a golden tooth, then I could change my name to Cap'n Crunch or Cracka Pimp or some stereotypical name associated with having a gold tooth. Then I'll make my own circus involving cats and kittens doing cirque du soleil tricks which will lead to a private showing for Stephen Hawking, thus allowing me to play in his extra wheely computer voice chair (why wouldn't he have an extra?) which would give me mind powers. With these mind powers, I would create a black hole that leads to an alternate universe where Mormons like Romney and that chick who wrote Twilight do not exist. Then I would tell people about it and with my brain scanning powers, know who is Mormon/a Romney fan/Twilight fan and refuse them entry. Then they'd be all like, "You're racist!" And then they'd call me Mewsolini because cats, but I'd be like, "Bitch, please! You got your own universe. Why you complain?" And that universe would be named Utah.

...But first...the Dentist...