I just found out today that a friend of the family died →[More:]and I won't be able to go to the funeral tomorrow. I'm in Vermont and I wouldn't have had enough time to go to the post office and drive back to Albany to return the car before the last train back at 3:15. This was unexpected; apparently Frieda recently had surgery for ovarian cancer and suffered an embolism. I hadn't spoken to her in two years--she'd left someone who was very good to and for her and taken up with a psychiatrist who has been married four times, has been on speed and who I think is a smarmy asshole. I'd bought the MAD magazine DVD-rom recently and had been planning to send her the Dr. Katz/South Park parody from ten years ago (she was a shrink too), but now it's too late. Her parents had died within the past five years; the only person to whom I've been able to offer condolences is her ex, with whom she had still been in touch. Frieda had known me since I was a baby.

I want my other.