Yesterday was the shittiest day I've had in a long time. Things are crazy at work, and I spent all day trying to fight interruptions to get back to the project I needed to finish. We're having our Seder tonight, so details for that were simmering on the back burner. And my mom called late in the afternoon and started a huge fight. OK, so maybe I started the fight by not caving in to what she wanted. But it was nasty, and I left work feeling like my life would be infinitely better if she fell off the face of the Earth.

My knuckles, clenched around the strap of my purse, were white as I walked to the car. I muttered obscenities under my breath. I called a friend to let off some steam, wanting to have myself under control by the time I got home to my little girl and Adam's mom.

I put it out of mind as we had dinner and played a bit. And by 7:45 p.m., I was in a wonderful mood.

Dawn of the Dead did it.

(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)

We took advantage to having the sitter-we-don't-have-to-pay visiting and caught a movie. We'd hoped to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but knew neither of us would make it through the 9:50 showing. Turns out, I'm glad. There couldn't have been a better movie to improve my day.

I laughed. I jumped. I clapped. I flinched. I hoped that the zombie baby would claw its way out of the womb (alas, it was born "naturally," but still SO COOL). I rejoiced as the undead were picked off by a gun-store-owning sniper, not someone I'd generally consider a hero type. I whispered to Adam, "They really shouldn't go out there!" and I was right. I fell in lust with the tough guy security guard and in love with the sensitive smart guy. And I can't help but root for Mekhi Phifer and Ving Rhames.

It's not the best movie ever. Adam and I puzzled over how they got in the mall to start with. And where the hell did that toilet come from? Why don't zombies attack each other (this is a whole-genre question, of course)? Where did the outbreak start? Why would they leave their safe haven? Why did the girls bother styling their hair (OK, it's a mall, it's got salons with products and equipment), but why? And how did they do it when the electricity went out?

Questions aside, though, Dawn was the most fun I've had in ages. Maybe that says something about my life, but I'm OK with that. Serious ass-kicking (and annihilation of the human race) made me feel good. And though Sarah Polley isn't exactly Sarah Michelle Geller (nor did Polley kick nearly as much ass as reviews led me to believe), the massacre of zombies -- and human -- made my day.

Anyone want to see it with me? Or better yet, watch the original and then catch this one again?

My stepdad died when I was 21. I asked to speak at the funeral. I was supposed to be one of many folks who talked, but I ended up being the only one. The preacher didn't know him, so I pretty well gave his eulogy.

When my grandma died, my family asked me to eulogize her. I wanted to talk about her, so I didn't mind. When my grandpa died, everyone assumed I would. I didn't have nearly as many personal stories as for David and Bessie, but I did it, and it was fine.

I realized recently that the family has just assigned me the title Master Eulogist, whether I like it or not. But for the last 12 years, I've only seen these people once a year, if that. I'm barely a step up from stranger. I shouldn't be their chosen one. Still, I pissed my mom off this week, I'm sure, when I told her I wouldn't do the next funeral.

One of my five uncles is dying. It's sudden, lung cancer that had gone undiagnosed for way too long. (I bet he hadn't gone to the doctor in a few decades, at least.) He's the second-oldest, and though of course I know him, I don't know him well. We weren't at all close. It's not appropriate for me to be the one who speaks after he dies.

Adam hit the nail on the head: I'm the only one with a college degree. I'm the only one with any kind of public speaking experience. But still, I said no.

Even before she asked, though, I'd been thinking of Uncle Bobby stories. Read my favorite, and you'll see why it's not right for a funeral.

--

"That Bobby S."

It should be no surprise to anyone that it wasn't just my mom and David who dealt drugs. Most of my extended family got -- gets -- high. And some do more than that. Bobby did more. He always had this improbable chain of women, strippers and the like. He stands like 5 foot 6, weighs about a buck-20 and went totally gray at 15. His bushy hair touches his shoulders. We're not talking a rock star look here.

But women were always around. Not beautiful women, mind you, but not what you'd expect. Some folks called them quarter-paper whores.

With good reason.

Bobby was harmless. As near as I can tell, he was never surrounded by the kind of violence my mom and dad were. Granted, it may be that it happened and I just wasn't as close to the situation. But for the most part, he was just an aging hippie who lived in cut-offs and a western shirt with the sleeves ripped off, so his tiny, tan arms were revealed. I can never picture him as a threat.

A high-school boyfriend and I were visiting his grandmother in a town about half an hour away from where we lived. As it happens, the town is very near where my grandparents -- and many of my uncles, on and off -- lived. I can't remember how the conversation started. Jason's grandma was sort of a loon, always pontificating on the dangers of Tecumseh, Oklahoma. Mostly, we laughed.

So she's telling some story about a drug dealer and the menace he is to society. We weren't paying much attention, probably thinking about how long we had to stay before we could find a secluded spot to park his Dodge Daytona. All of a sudden, though, my ears perked up.

She was talking about Bobby. "That Bobby S." she kept saying, over and over, about how he'd brought drugs and danger into her neighborhood. How he and everyone he knew him were going to hell. I'm having a hard time keeping a straight face at that point, as it dawns on Jason that it's one of my many uncles she's damning.

He lived in a back room at my grandma's house, drove a variety of rusted, rattletrap cars and often didn't wear shoes. He wasn't exactly a gangleader.

But he was a menace to society. Her Tecumseh society.

We never told her we knew the heathen she was describing.

A story told by someone else. That's the closest Bobby and I ever were, except a gold-plated necklace and pen set he gave me for Christmas in eighth grade. I loved that necklace.

We must not be doing Passover right.

Either that, or God doesn't like us.

This time last year, I was preparing to host a seder for the first time. We cleaned the house of chametz. I made my mother-in-law's famous brisket, quarts of matzah-ball soup, a poppyseed chicken, a spinach salad and macaroons. I found a haggadah online -- an irreverent one, to be sure, but most of our guests were non-Jews and kids, so we wanted something fun.

About two hours before our dozen guests were set to arrive, the bugs showed up.

We had termites. They'd appeared for the first time a few days before, and various extermination services had been by, checking out the damage and giving us estimates. I'd only witnessed a handful of the teeny flying insects peeking their heads out of nail holes in our den paneling. Adam had seen a swarm at the beginning, but we hadn't had one since.

Until the day of the seder. I've got a million last minute things to do at this point, including wake and dress my child, and thousands and thousands of termites are streaming out of the wall. The spot is near our sliding glass door, and so many vile creatures are flying out that they're filling the trench of the track. Adam's trying to finish up work for the day while I'm freaking out. We'd been told to combat them with hairspray, so I'm alternately shooting that into the holes and sucking the bodies up with the vacuum. And running back into the kitchen to check on things, answer the phone, fret about getting dressed, etc.

Needless to say, it was traumatic. A picture fell of the wall, and when rehanging it, Adam's thumb went right through the paneling -- offering a much bigger escape hatch for the creatures. But by the time everyone showed up, the bulk of the corpses were gone and the swarm was over.

A few days later, Terminex got rid of the bugs and a big chunk of money we'd been saving for our trip to Europe.

Problem solved.

Until this week, when Adam noticed little heads peering out of the very same holes. (Yes, we need to replace the paneling.)

Luckily, we still had time to renew our Terminex contract. And we never had a major swarm (or if we did, Adam spared me the horror of sharing it). He learned today when the guys came to retreat the house that it hadn't been done properly to begin with, so he has an angry letter to write.

But I'm not sure Terminex is the bad guy here. We know how God feels about sending vermin at this time of year. Maybe we need to make sure he knows we're Jews. Time to break out the blood and mark our front door.

For reasons I know I shouldn't go into, I wish I could blog about work today. But I've learned from bloggers past that can be dangerous.

I'll just say there's a lot of ugliness and finger pointing. Luckily, I'm neither in the path of it or spewing it myself, but it's quite nasty.

Here's hoping for better days.

A day-care emergency landed me at home with Emma today. And, thus far, it's the best day we've had in ages. I didn't know I'd be off, so I didn't plan the day within an inch of its life. I had some work that needed to be finished today, so after a matzah-riffic breakfast, we started with a quick jaunt to campus.

Over the course of our wanderings, Emma gathered up quite a collection: a pipe-cleaner chick (that a coworker literally ripped out of an Easter decoration for her), a quarter (that the basement tampon machine launched across the room, thankfully distracting from her usual, "But why do big girls sometimes need to use those?" questions), a redbud petal (which involved picking up one every two steps, only to realize it wasn't perfect and begin the hunt for a new one) and a tiny piece of gravel. Plus, she got to make the rounds to visit my officemates, which we haven't done in a while. She started out very talkative and excited to see folks, but by the end was full of, "Can we see the press NOW?"

One of the biggest treats of coming to work with me in crossing the street to Printing Services to watch the printing press run. I send a lot of jobs over there, and there's a chair in the design area that should have my name on it (and one in a manager's office that likely does). A perk is that Em gets to visit when she's around. It freaks the press guys out, I know, to have a 3-year-old near, but I hold her tightly as we peer -- at a safe distance -- at the huge sheets of paper whooshing through. It's not as cool, in my eyes, as a web press is, but that may be my newspaper bias showing. Maybe soon we'll take a tour of the local paper so she can see one of those in action.

We decided on the spur of the moment to make the haul to Sam's Club. Some of you -- my brother-in-law specifically -- may scoff that a half-hour drive is a haul. But to drive an hour round trip to shop with a preschooler is something I usually put more planning into. We hadn't bought our seder brisket yet, though, and hadn't found time to fill every spare inch of storage space with soup and soap lately, so off we were.

It's funny that such a small thing can be such fun. We stopped at Sonic for a girls' day out treat -- OJ for her, V Coke for me. We hunted for cows and horses on the way, as the drive is partly rural. She was a little put out, I think, that so few of the samples they were handing out were kosher for Passover, but the squirting fruit bites she got to taste made up for it, I think. ("Mommy, what color are my teeth now?")

The drive back, though, is what made my morning. After countless verses of "There Was a Young Mommy Who Swallowed a Fly" (and a car, a mailbox and everything else Emma glimpsed out the window) and "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain" (where she read books, slept, ate, played and every other 3-year-old appropriate activity once she arrived), Emma and I started talking about life on a farm. Both sets of my grandparents lived on farms when I was growing up and somehow I'd never told Emma much about it.

We dissected every aspect of farm life I participated in, from feeding the cows and picking blackberries to running atop hay bales and catching catfish in the North Canadian River. She'd counter every detail I could remember with a "What else did you do on the farm?"

Not surprisingly, we don't talk about my family much with her. For the first time the other day, she asked, "Mommy, who is your dad?" I told her his name, grateful when she didn't ask more. But I was thrilled today to realize I do have stories I can share with her. And not ones that will be used as cautionary tales.

To anyone who pays attention to the sidebar:

I've pulled Emma's library basket. It's too hard to keep up with for so little response. I'm going to replace it this week with some current favorites, though, so we can showcase library books we're loving and ones from our shelves, too. Be on the lookout.

Emma was hiding doll diapers in her shirt this evening. At first, she pointed out her big belly. Two seconds later, she shoved them farther up and said, "Look, Mommy! I have bras!"

--

Cuddled up in bed just now, Emma told me, "Here, Mommy, here's your pillow." I laid my head down in the dark to discover she'd made a nest out of her silkie, her most prized possession. "Emma, you're sharing your silkie with me? How sweet are you?" She giggled. "I'm as sweet as I can be."

Yes, she is.

The good news is, I got a lot of rest this weekend. And spent a lot of time reading -- I finished one book, read two cover to cover and nearly finished yet another. (Check out the sidebar for details.)

The bad news is, I needed all the naps because I barely got any nighttime sleep. And I had nothing to do but read, because I couldn't leave my bedroom -- with its proximity to the bathroom -- for more than a few minutes.

Normally, no lamentation is left unlamented here. I had a nasty stomach virus. It sucked. On a usual day, I'd give you way more details than you ever wanted about it.

This morning, even though I'm still dealing with the aftermath, it just doesn't seem that worthy of anyone's attention. Even the sweet pile of gifts left by Emma -- stuffed animals, a wildflower, a dandelion, some pink rubberbands, a bit of clear plastic with pretty red trim, an animal cracker or two -- isn't worth examining. I'm just glad I spent the weekend in my own home, with family around me.

There's lots of bad news around these hallowed halls today. One coworker is trying to get an appointment with a surgeon, as she was just diagnosed with breast cancer. She'd just gone in for a routine mammogram. Another is in the hospital, on life support. Her husband found her in the floor at home after a trip to the Medieval Fair (around the same time I was bitching that Adam and Em got to go without me). She'd had a massive coronary.

Possibly the scariest news, as a parent, is that the teenage daughter of someone I talk to every day has been using cocaine. I know the right words of comfort in the other two situations. Or at least the appropriate ones, even if they don't help. Here, there's really not much I can say. Should I mention that I used drugs for a while and I turned out OK? Does that help? Do my tales of sneaking out my bedroom window add anything to the conversation?

My perspective on the whole drug issue is so skewed, having grown up around it. Of course I saw lots of kids snorting coke and smoking pot. They were doing it with my parents. Hell, many were doing it with their own.

I was really self-righteous about my parents' career path for a while. Yes, it put food on the table and floor under my feet, as I heard more than once. (I cooked the food and cleaned the floor, but that didn't seem to make any difference.) I drank some my senior year, mostly under controlled circumstances. I could've drank at home, had I wanted to. I could've used drugs with them, too.

I chose not to. I hated the life they'd brought into my house and thought myself so much better. Until college. I did a bump now and then as a freshman. Lived next door to someone my sophomore year who had ready access, and I stayed up all night cleaning or studying more than I'd care to admit. Spent a wild summer with my mom, between my sophomore and junior years, sleeping on couches when we slept at all.

It's a scary life. And I'm still not quite sure how I pulled myself out of the mire once I'd been sucked in. But I made it, even with my parents being as fucked up as they were.

This kid has a good family, a stable home. The chaos is fun for her, I'm sure, because she can return to her own bed and a meal on the table. I hope she realizes what she's got waiting for her.

All this bad news certainly makes me grateful for what I have.