Heather.
In light of the upcoming Naked Baby Angel Day holiday, and my known in-difference and often contempt for it, I bet many thought I would be spilling all kinds of ruckus humor at the latest infusion of candy coated pink and red assault of late. Yea, if I hadn't just gotten the news that I did you can bet your candy coated fingers and diamond studded jewelry that I would be. But . . . as life goes crap happens and February can now officially piss off. Tonight I got to read the news that an old friend and former grad school roommate died. Pisser indeed.
You might remember mention of Heather from the Dave Diaz posting. I met Dave via her, and rifling through my memories connects to two together in some ways and divides them apart in others.
Heather and I met by chance in Las Cruces, back in the fall of 1999. We were living in the grad apartments, and we shared the bathroom. Well, we quickly teamed up and moved off campus. We had a quaint little two bedroom on Foster Road. Heh, back then silver x-s decorated the streets while running shoes freely hung from the electrical wires. Yea, if you don't know . . . those are signs of drug dealers. If you don't know the specific drugs being tooted then you don't really need to find out. There was a raid on the building across from us the year we lived there, and in good roommate fashion Heather heard the noises and got freaked. She woke me up, and I opened the door in a robe that came open. Let's just say it was hot and I was in my knickers. The cop's reaction was priceless . . . "Noth . . . Nothing to see here . . . Nothing to see here Miss, sorry we bothered you." Ha!
Anywho, Heather and I spent endless nights up laughing and being stupid. Her keeping me company as I labored over my M.A. thesis, and for breaks she would turn on the T.V. and watch girly, quirky shows. She got me hooked on Charmed, and when I graduated and went to New York for the PhD we would call each other after watching the latest episode. The night my computer went to hell and wiped out open files (i.e. my M.A. thesis), and then the computer lab ate my disk with another electronically transmitted disease, she left a bottle of whiskey in the living room with the note "Drink me." That I did. I was still drunk the next day when I walked the mile or so to campus to see my adviser. Let's not forget that I might have lost my mind that night, when the lab ate my thesis, and I drove over the disk with my car. It did nothing except to puncture a tire (fifty dollars at Sears took care of that), but it did make me feel slightly better. Hey, don't judge. Everyone does something to release stress; some of us just make better moments to laugh at ten years later than others.
I particularly loved the night that I had to explain to her that our female neighbor was hitting on her. Good times. Short end of a disturbing story, the girl--who I can't remember her name (hey, she wasn't hitting on me)--showed up at the door in a lavender nighty wanting to borrow the broom. I, very literally, rolled on the floor laughing like a jackass when I told Heather what the gesture meant. Even better times.
The summer Heather got married I couldn't afford to make the trek to South Carolina, where she had moved, and I have always felt a bit sad about that. I never got the chance to meet Mike, her husband, the step-son, or her daughter she had a few years back. Heather and I got real sporadic about contact for about two years after she got married, and then we hooked back up (so to speak). The day before she died she was joking with me--and others--on Facebook. In a private message we were in the middle of a conversation when she died. In life . . . life wasn't even halfway done. She had been bit by a brown recluse spider a few years before, and she was having complications from it I think. I remember her telling me about it not long after it happened, her knowing that I get skeeved by spiders, and us making jokes. She told me that the doctors told her she was lucky, and I said that it just proved she was sour in the middle. We both laughed. A short while before she died she had been diagnosed with diabetes. When Heather didn't respond to my last message, I didn't really think much of it. I figured she got busy, and that we would do what we always do. We always caught up every few months or so. Guess now I know why my last few emails went unanswered. Tonight I went to send her a message about leaving me hanging when I found out she died on 24 September. Shitty indeed. She died from complications of another brown recluse spider bite. From what I can tell, most of us found out long after the fact that she passed. Doesn't make it sit any better.
Here's the infamous photo of us at the US-Mexican border crossing, the night she took me to a "Drink 'til you drown" for graduation. We are both worse for the wear.
Personally, though, I will always laugh at the memories of her making up shit to Star Trek. We paid for basic cable (back then that meant the free channels and maybe three more), and over half of the channels were in Spanish. She loved to mute the tellie and start making up dialogue. I can't post most of it here because that would require me giving this blog a hard-R rating. Yea . . . real good times.
Now that I've spread my melancholy cheer, and the knowledge that a second friend from Las Cruces died inside of six months, I'm going to try and sleep. Hopefully Heather doesn't taunt my dreams tonight with memories of her exploding cans of soda at six am or flushing the toilet when I showered. Oh wait, that was usually me.
You might remember mention of Heather from the Dave Diaz posting. I met Dave via her, and rifling through my memories connects to two together in some ways and divides them apart in others.
Heather and I met by chance in Las Cruces, back in the fall of 1999. We were living in the grad apartments, and we shared the bathroom. Well, we quickly teamed up and moved off campus. We had a quaint little two bedroom on Foster Road. Heh, back then silver x-s decorated the streets while running shoes freely hung from the electrical wires. Yea, if you don't know . . . those are signs of drug dealers. If you don't know the specific drugs being tooted then you don't really need to find out. There was a raid on the building across from us the year we lived there, and in good roommate fashion Heather heard the noises and got freaked. She woke me up, and I opened the door in a robe that came open. Let's just say it was hot and I was in my knickers. The cop's reaction was priceless . . . "Noth . . . Nothing to see here . . . Nothing to see here Miss, sorry we bothered you." Ha!
Anywho, Heather and I spent endless nights up laughing and being stupid. Her keeping me company as I labored over my M.A. thesis, and for breaks she would turn on the T.V. and watch girly, quirky shows. She got me hooked on Charmed, and when I graduated and went to New York for the PhD we would call each other after watching the latest episode. The night my computer went to hell and wiped out open files (i.e. my M.A. thesis), and then the computer lab ate my disk with another electronically transmitted disease, she left a bottle of whiskey in the living room with the note "Drink me." That I did. I was still drunk the next day when I walked the mile or so to campus to see my adviser. Let's not forget that I might have lost my mind that night, when the lab ate my thesis, and I drove over the disk with my car. It did nothing except to puncture a tire (fifty dollars at Sears took care of that), but it did make me feel slightly better. Hey, don't judge. Everyone does something to release stress; some of us just make better moments to laugh at ten years later than others.
I particularly loved the night that I had to explain to her that our female neighbor was hitting on her. Good times. Short end of a disturbing story, the girl--who I can't remember her name (hey, she wasn't hitting on me)--showed up at the door in a lavender nighty wanting to borrow the broom. I, very literally, rolled on the floor laughing like a jackass when I told Heather what the gesture meant. Even better times.
The summer Heather got married I couldn't afford to make the trek to South Carolina, where she had moved, and I have always felt a bit sad about that. I never got the chance to meet Mike, her husband, the step-son, or her daughter she had a few years back. Heather and I got real sporadic about contact for about two years after she got married, and then we hooked back up (so to speak). The day before she died she was joking with me--and others--on Facebook. In a private message we were in the middle of a conversation when she died. In life . . . life wasn't even halfway done. She had been bit by a brown recluse spider a few years before, and she was having complications from it I think. I remember her telling me about it not long after it happened, her knowing that I get skeeved by spiders, and us making jokes. She told me that the doctors told her she was lucky, and I said that it just proved she was sour in the middle. We both laughed. A short while before she died she had been diagnosed with diabetes. When Heather didn't respond to my last message, I didn't really think much of it. I figured she got busy, and that we would do what we always do. We always caught up every few months or so. Guess now I know why my last few emails went unanswered. Tonight I went to send her a message about leaving me hanging when I found out she died on 24 September. Shitty indeed. She died from complications of another brown recluse spider bite. From what I can tell, most of us found out long after the fact that she passed. Doesn't make it sit any better.
Here's the infamous photo of us at the US-Mexican border crossing, the night she took me to a "Drink 'til you drown" for graduation. We are both worse for the wear.
Personally, though, I will always laugh at the memories of her making up shit to Star Trek. We paid for basic cable (back then that meant the free channels and maybe three more), and over half of the channels were in Spanish. She loved to mute the tellie and start making up dialogue. I can't post most of it here because that would require me giving this blog a hard-R rating. Yea . . . real good times.
Now that I've spread my melancholy cheer, and the knowledge that a second friend from Las Cruces died inside of six months, I'm going to try and sleep. Hopefully Heather doesn't taunt my dreams tonight with memories of her exploding cans of soda at six am or flushing the toilet when I showered. Oh wait, that was usually me.
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--KSH