One of the features of an IKEA kitchen is the schwank soft-close cabinet doors and drawers. All very impressive and surprisingly easy to install. Except of course, all great things fall at one hurdle. Our cabinet doors were on and closing softly and our drawers were assembled and ready to be soft-close-ified when we realised the drawers were missing the piece that holds the soft-close damper on. After much rustling around, I decided this was not my own oversight, but some packer’s in Sweden, and resolved to sort it out next time we took a trip to purchase a few more pieces of sturdy Scandinavian design. And meatballs.

So the doors went on, normal, bangy-type close, and we went about the business of using our new kitchen. We don’t have a car and IKEA is on the outskirts of town, so it’s not a place we go to often, and we always forget to either bring or buy something when we do go. And of course, we forgot our kitchen receipt the next time we went. So the lovely people at customer service had a look around to see if they could find us some spare parts, but alas, they would have to be ordered and could not be ordered without the numbers on our original receipt. So again, we had to leave it to next time.

Next time was sometime after the new year, and we did remember our receipt, but it turns out the catalogue numbers had changed in the meantime, so our drawers were still the same as what they were selling as far as we could tell, but they needed to see the actual closing mechanism now. Once again defeated, we resolved to bring in one of the drawers the next time.

But of course, I knew at that moment that our drawers would never be soft-close. Sure, we could empty a drawer, dislodge it from the cabinet and lug it out to IKEA with us, but we won’t. I know we won’t. We’ll forget or we’ll remember but find it far too ridiculous or know that we don’t have the arm strength and polite bus space to carry it back along with whatever else we’re going for.

I was reminded of all this yesterday because we were tidying up the DIY closet and I had the pleasure of sorting through all our extra IKEA bits and finding a better place to put them. And I came across the unused drawer dampers and briefly had delusions of digging out our kitchen receipt, yanking out a drawer, and getting right on down to the IKEA so I could have my soft-close drawers three years later. Then I came to my senses and properly admitted defeat. It will be a quirk of the house, like that missing corner tile on the kitchen island in that Dave’s World show. (Am I the only one who remembers that tile?)

This came at a somewhat appropriate time. I just read this article about the anti-bucket list in Jezebel last week about how there are just things you’ll never do, even if you want to, and it’s freeing to admit that these things will most likely not happen. That on top of the article about the New Decornographers — bloggers with unreachable, perfectly DIY lifestyles that most of us will never have, but who make us feel inadequate as we look at too many of their style blogs and Etsy shops for our own good — sealed the deal: defeat, in this case, is probably the healthy option. I’ve been trying lately to quit being so hard on myself when I don’t get the million and nine things done over the weekend that I’ve put on my to-do list, or when I don’t reach the, frankly ridiculous, self-imposed deadline on a sewing project or a print I’m working on in the shop. It’s hard for me because I pretty much feel like I always have to be doing something or finishing something or getting ahead in some other way, but it’s unrealistic, and clearly I’m not the only person in the world who has to tell herself this.

So, people, this blog will be updated when the fancy strikes. I will list prints on Etsy when I damn well get around to it. I will not impose a deadline on the construction of the jacket I want to make myself. And I will not apologise for my inability to lead a magazine-perfect maker lifestyle. In the meantime, I will also not beat myself up for drinking more beer while I plot my next crafty move. Nor should you. And I will not wince when the kitchen drawer slams as I’m putting my bottle opener away.

Objectively, I sort of think this whole situation is a good one. Yes, it’s disruptive and annoying, and yes it’s going to take a while to clean up. But it’s forced people to look at the fact that shit they cannot control will happen, and they have to figure out a way to deal with it without just flipping out and acting like an entitled-to-everything 8-year-old spoiled brat who gets whatever she wants all the time.

It’s nature. It’s kind of the boss. When it says ‘jump’, you have no choice. And if we were a smart race, we’d look at this situation and say, perhaps we should have backup plans for things we don’t really expect to ever happen, and while I know a volcano has nothing to do with climate change, perhaps we should really start thinking about some of the effects which that, as an uncontrollable force of nature, might have and what we’ll have to do about it. Even if you for some reason don’t believe the climate is changing (I won’t go there in this post), it’s still worth a change in the way we handle things.

But my selfish inner voice is saying ‘GODDAMMIT! I realise I’m being unreasonable, but PLEASE, MS. VOLCANO, ERUPT IN A MORE DIFFERENT DIRECTION FOR ME. KTHNXBAI.’

I want to go to Dan and Kathleen’s wedding, and I want to go to the dive bar in Philly with Sara and Donnie and Liam and Bobby for pierogies and PBR, and I want to see my family and their beach house and Randle the dog, and I want to go to Dogfish Head with Lindsay and Dan, and I WANT MY MOTHERFUCKING VACATION.

I’m generally able to quell this voice of insanity, because I know it’s no use. Volcano will do what Volcano feels like, and humanity be damned. And really, more power to it. Volcanoes are freaking awesome, in the fullest sense of the word. Who am I to try to change the course of life, you know? Human frustrations are not top of the list for the cosmos in general.

In any case, they’ve lifted the flight ban now. Quite abruptly, but they’ve done it. I feel like we’re still not out of the water though, because of the immense backlog and the possibility that the volcano will decide to spew a whole lot more. Still, I’m now cautiously optimistic about my flights next week.

What irks me is that the first thing to happen is that the British media jumps on the government and the CAA and tries to blame them for the backups. It’s unbelievable! You get pissed when the government doesn’t do their job, then you get pissed when they DO do their job. What exactly do you want? It’s not anyone’s fault that this happened, it’s a VOLCANO. There’s nothing you or anyone can do about it, regardless of their rank or relative importance, so stop trying to find some kind of scapegoat. I think the government is doing quite an admirable job really.

And the CAA. You cannot get pissed at the CAA. It’s not like they were thinking ‘Hey, let’s inconvenience as many people as humanly possible just to see what happens!’ No. They were thinking, ‘Hey, we aren’t sure what the effect of this stuff will be on all these jet engines, so lets take them out of the air til we’re sure we won’t have people falling out of the sky willy-nilly!’ Sounds smart to me. I may have been upset if I couldn’t go on my trip, but I’d much rather be on the ground than plummeting to earth because all the engines on my plane failed after an airline decided that profit was more important than passenger safety. That’s why you NEED a CAA. Airlines can’t look at this situation objectively when so much money is involved, which is fair enough really, but people have to step back and let the safety people do their jobs.

I’m petrified of flying to begin with, so I’m more than happy to wait until the people who know their shit on the subject say they feel comfortable with going back up there. Risking your life for a trip to the beach just isn’t cool.

What people should really be complaining about is travel insurance that refuses to pay out, especially if they’re stuck abroad for another week because they can’t get on a flight home and have no money to pay for extra accommodation. Yes, a volcano is an act of god, but if you can’t count on your insurance to cover the unexpected, what exactly is the point in having it?

And they should also be complaining about other travel companies taking this as an opportunity to charge out the ass for rental cars, train tickets, ferries, and whathaveyou rather than trying to genuinely help people out. People are always quick to blame for the cause of something, but it’s really the effects of the situation that show the good and bad in people and companies.

In any case, Eyjafjallajokull, you just keep doing your thing. Humans will sort themselves out eventually. And if you decide I shouldn’t be going to the US, well then, I guess I’ll just have to go with the staycation option and try not to sulk too much til you change your mind.

In any case, I’ve been looking at money. I know a few friends who do the etsy thing, but they’re all American, so I can ask for advice til I’m blue in the teeth, but none of them are going to know a lick about UK income tax and VAT and the way business accounts work over here and all that. Plus all the books I’ve read on that stuff are American as well. So I’ve been trying to do the research here and there while also redesigning the design part of my website in my brain, because it’s going to need an update and an overhaul.

If anyone cares to weigh in on what sort of things they’d buy, that would rock. I’m doing a lot of screenprinting practice runs. I’ve got some plans for posters and things, and I like printing stationery. But I’m also thinking I’ll refine my yoga mat bag and various other simple accessories. I really want to start printing my own fabric, but I think I need to have my own screen to do that because it requires special inks that EP probably don’t let you use on hired screens. And my hired screen just split last week, so any money I had thought about putting towards my own is now going to the repair. Lame. But that’s how it goes. I consoled myself by pointing out that these things could soon count as business expenses.

Anyway, that’s what’s happening around these parts. I’ll try to post something more exciting soon.

It’s not like I didn’t do anything arty in college. Designing, building, and painting sets plus laying out all kind of campus publications fed my need for creativity. I even got to squeeze in Dr McColl’s Art History 101 class when I was a senior (it was pretty much a freshman class), and that made me wish I had started a bit earlier.

In any case, my art education now continues through my job, where I see priceless works of art on a daily basis and have access to curators who would probably be happy to talk my ear off about any particular painting in a period they specialise in, so I am not deprived. And perhaps it makes sense then that the beginning of that job coincided with me finally taking a studio class. At the end of last year, I finally did what I’d been meaning to do since I graduated college. I took a studio course. I learned how to screenprint at Edinburgh Printmakers. And it was awesome!

Since then, I’ve been taking advantage of the free 6 month associate membership to the workshop I got for taking the course. I’ve been going in pretty much every week, bumbling along trying to get better at printing. Nothing I’ve printed yet is terribly high quality, but I can see myself improving in little ways, which is satisfying. I think I’ll definitely be joining with a full membership in April so that I can continue making stuff. A lot of the other members print amazing art, but I’m really more interested in craft and making practical things like stationery and gifts for people. I like to keep it simple. But if I reach the point that I can support some kind of etsy shop or sell my stuff in the Edinburgh Printmakers gallery shop, I will not be complaining. The workshop also offers other types of printmaking like lithography and block printing, so I may try out some of that stuff once I have a member discount.

In any case, here are some of my first attempts at art in too long a time.

I printed this artichoke in class, so it’s the first thing I did. Since it was supervised, I think the print quality is actually better than some of the stuff I’ve done on my own, but that’s to be expected I guess.

I made about 50 of these snowflake cards and envelopes in a marathon session the Saturday before I flew to the states for Christmas. They made good presents for a few people.

For the first proper print I did on my own, I wanted to give myself some kind of art project-like assignment, so I decided to do something with maps. This is called ‘The Street Where I Live’ and it’s basically a google map of every place I’ve ever lived (at the same zoom level) twisted around and strung together so that the red line covers every street I’ve ever lived on. The aim was for me to be able to recognise each place by the surrounding streets and features, and I sort of can in most places. I may try this again sometime though, because it’s not printed very well at all. There are all sorts of lines and spatters and the ink hasn’t stayed put in some places. I don’t mind too much though. It kind of makes it look like scratched film or something.

Finally, to recover from all the screwups I had with the map, I did this really simple elephant print. Still not printed perfectly, but I like it anyway.

Jamie's Italian, Canary Wharf

Now. Please excuse me while I once again sing Jamie Oliver’s praises. The man is a food deity.

Jamie’s Italian is a family restaurant. They don’t take reservations, so anyone can just walk in, immune to the hype a famous chef’s name might bring to the ability to get a seat in a restaurant. It’s not a fancy-pants establishment and it’s not meant to be. It’s decorated simply with a mishmash of different kinds of chairs and simple wood tables and there’s various fresh food all over the place. And it’s very affordable. The pasta dishes are no more expensive than Bella Italia (a big UK chain), and to be fair, they’re probably far better value judging by the quality of what I ate. I can’t honestly comment on the pasta, because I had meat, which was amazing, but more on that later.

We started with a carafe of the house wine, which is organic and delivered to them in environmentally friendly tetra pacs to keep costs down, then decanted for the table. It was great, and only £15 for a bottle-sized carafe. In the middle of London! Score! With that we got a bread basket that had about 4 different kinds of fresh, freaking amazing bread in it. I could have eaten tons of the stuff. There was crispy flatbread with rosemary, foccacia with garlic, rosemary and salt, breadsticks, and plain old white italian bread. All served with olive oil and vinegar, of course. We also got an artesian meat board of wild boar salami.

I could have eaten antipasti all night, but the thing I was really excited about was my main course. I haven’t eaten veal many times in my life, and not at all since I found out how cruelly they raise veal calves. So we’re talking years and years and years here. Recently in the UK, thanks to various crusades led on the celebrity chef side by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and on the production side by some awesome British farms, rose veal has popped into existence. ‘Rose’ because the meat isn’t white, because completely white veal requires the kind of horrible, boxed-up life most traditional veal calves lead. (For more info, read this article from a few years ago.)

I’m completely for rose veal, because veal can be a completely ethical thing to eat, and should be. Veal calves come from the dairy industry, which can’t use male calves, of course, so because of the drop in demand for veal raised in horrible conditions, many of these animals are just destroyed, which is an absolute waste and pretty horrible. The calves used to produce rose veal are not raised in a box they can’t ever move around in. Instead they have a good, healthy life where they can walk around, grazing, doing cow-type things, eating solid foods, and even be around their mothers (or stand-in mothers) for a while.

I like eating meat from animals that I know have lived a happy life, and I know that all the meat served in Jamie’s restaurants is pretty much guaranteed to be ethically produced. But you don’t find something like rose veal in your typical Italian chain restaurant these days. Jamie Oliver putting it on the menu at his place is a huge step forward for getting a variety of quality, ethically produced meat into more and more UK high street restaurants. At £15.95, the rose veal is one of the most expensive things on the menu, but that is a damn good price for the enormous, tasty, stuffed rose veal chop that I ate with relish and pleasure. It was so good I was literally sopping up the sauce with my fingers when it was gone. Seriously. Ask Scott.

Scott, by the way, had one of the specials, Porcetta, which is roast pork belly stuffed with all kinds of amazing things. It was just as good as my veal. I probably could have eaten both of them twice over.

Now, as we were going all out, we ordered dessert and coffee as well. I had the chocolate hazelnut cake and Scott had the lemon ricotta cheesecake. Both extremely tasty. And after such a big meal, I didn’t feel disgustingly stuffed like one sometimes does when overdoing it. None of the portions were that extra bit too big. If I had been feeling more gluttonous, I would have ordered more, because walking past the open kitchen on the way upstairs to the toilets revealed plates and plates of deliciousness just waiting to go out. (I love when the kitchen is open, because then you know there’s no shady stuff going on and you can see what the food is like before you even sit down.) And let’s just say it took all my will power to not yoink one of the enormous loaves of focaccia from the bread table and stuff it under my shirt to get it out of there for stuffing my face later in the night.

To top it all off, we were brought the bill in good time without having to chase someone down for it. This is so rare in this country that I nearly fainted.

There are many, many reasons why I think Jamie Oliver deserves the praise and attention of the world, but the essence of why I think he’s so awesome is his simple approach to a healthy obsession with food. He wants everyone to learn how to cook, and love to do so. His recipes aren’t fussy and niether are his restaurants (including Fifteen, which, while slightly more upscale, isn’t pretentious in the least. In fact, the whole idea behind that restaurant is about as un-stuffy as you can get.). He’s really just all about loving and respecting food and what comes around it—family, friends, life. The Jamie’s Italian chain is a great example of this philosophy, and I really, really hope it keeps growing. I know I’d be a regular if he opened one in Edinburgh.

I know Starbucks has these sometimes, but I’ve tried one of theirs, and as with almost every kind of cake they have, they make it far too sweet and ruin the chocolate and cheesecake flavour balance. Do yourself a favour and make your own. Not only will it be tastier, but also far, far cheaper.

Black bottomed cupcakes

For the chocolate cake:

• 1 1/2 c flour
• 1 c sugar
• 1/4 c cocoa
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 c water
• 1/2 c oil
• 1 tsp vinegar
• 1 tsp vanilla

For the cheesecake topping:

• 1 (8 oz) package cream cheese  (And don’t mess around with anything that’s not full fat.)
• 1 egg
• 1/3 c sugar
• 1/8 tsp salt

Optional:

• Chocolate chips or bits of a dark chocolate bar

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.
2. In one bowl, mix all chocolate cake ingredients together (and no, it’s not a mistake, there’s no egg in the chocolate cake bit). It’s probably best if you do this with some kind of beater, but if you like your baking to exhaust you, you could whisk it up by hand.
3. In another bowl, beat together all the cheesecake topping ingredients.
4. Line a 12 muffin tin with cupcake cases and fill each about halfway with chocolate cake mix.
5. Top each with a tablespoon or two of cheesecake mix. Try to drop this in the middle of the chocolate cake mix. It will look kind of like it’s sinking, but don’t worry about it.
6. Top each cupcake with a few chocolate chips or bits of dark chocolate if you want to.
7. Bake for around 15-18 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. The chocolate cake part is extremely dense, so it will probably look a bit more moist than you’re used to seeing with other chocolate cake.

In general, the cheesecake bit is supposed to stay kind of in the middle of the cake bit on top. Mine was a bit runnier than usual this time so it ended up around the outside of the top. Either way, it tastes just as good, so don’t fuss too much over what it looks like.

These are ok right out of the oven, but they’re the best when they’re cold, so if you can resist long enough, wait til they cool, pop them in the fridge for an hour, then eat one. Tasty times.

I haven’t seen David Smith since high school, but I went to school with him from the time I moved to Maryland in 4th grade until we graduated from Frederick High. We were never close friends or anything, but he was in a bunch of my classes over the years, and he was always someone I thought of as a good guy. My clearest memory of him is from one of those awful Middle School dances that pretty much everyone went to in order to stand around and feel monumentally awkward for a few hours, even if a dance wasn’t really your thing (it definitely wasn’t mine).

David was the first person to ask me to dance. Ever. I declined because I was a wimp and I didn’t even know how to dance anyway. Though from what I’ve been reading, maybe he could have taught me a thing or two if I’d accepted the offer. In any case, he just brushed it off and went to ask someone else. I think it was just a matter of having fun for him, so it probably seems insignificant. But middle school is a time when a lot of kids could be and often were quite cruel about anything and everything. This particular dance was fairly soon after I was accosted in the girls’ bathroom and asked ‘God, what’s wrong with your face?!’ in ultimate disgust (by someone else I also remember quite clearly, and for that statement alone), referring to my erupting teenage complexion.

A statement like that wouldn’t bother me much now, but naturally it really got to me then. So being asked to dance when I thought I was the epitome of an ugly middle school mess was amazing. I think he probably boosted my self esteem by 110% without even realising it. And that pretty much defines what I remember about David. He was a nice kid. Nice to everyone, and genuinely so. There are plenty of other snippets from elementary school and high school that I remember, but that’s the one the pops into my head unprompted every now and then and makes me smile.

I didn’t even know David was in the Marines until yesterday when I heard about his injuries. Shows how good I am at keeping up with things. But according to the outpouring of love and memories on Facebook, he loved being a Marine. And while I really don’t agree with the war, I will always back the soldiers who fight it, because they have more bravery in an eyelash than I do in my entire body. So I’m glad to hear he was doing what he loved, because that makes all the difference in life. And because he was such a happy person, I’m pretty sure that everyone who remembers him does so in a positive light.

Obscure old memories and stories show you how a person really is, so it’s too bad that they don’t often come to the surface until they’re tributes. I may not have seen the guy in years, but reading everyones’s memories on his Facebook wall paints a great picture of a full, happy life.

People live on through stories. So keep telling them.

Frederick remembers beloved student, athlete, Marine

My first embroidered elephant.

A while back, I mentioned that I had taught myself a new skill. Huzzah! But was not able to post the results of said new skill because the project in question was part of a super secret quilt meant for my best friend Kelsey’s baby, who was not yet born. Booooo. Well, Ms. Etta has now entered the wide world so the quilt is a secret no more.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the whole thing, but our friend Kedre got a bunch of Kelsey’s friends and relatives got together and got them each to do an animal square in their own style. I did see the finished quilt over Christmas and it’s awesome. All the squares are different but they pull together nicely.

For my square, I decided to dive into the world of embroidery. The results did not suck. And I found that I enjoyed doing it, especially because it’s something I can do while watching TV, which means I feel like less of a lump while sitting on my couch. Double bonus! I’ve done some more little projects since then (a stocking for my parents’ new dog Randle, who is awesome, and a set of dish towels for their new beach house), but this is the only one I’ve got a picture of at the moment.

Unforgettable Elephant from Sew Everything Workshop.

Continuing with the elephant theme, I made a little stuffed elephant with a pattern from Sew Everything Workshop by Diana Rupp. It was fairly easy except for sewing up the top seam. I’m absolute shite at handsewing, and even more hopeless at slipstitch, so I gave up on trying to hide the stitches and just did as neat a seam as I could. It ended up ok, especially because no one, let alone a baby, cares about a little visible thread when an elephant is involved. I also figured it was more important to make the stitch strong rather than invisible, because kids like pulling at stuff. In any case, I think I’ll be making more of these little guys, because I sort of want one, and there are other babies I know who are about to enter the world.

Back in the present, this weekend I decided it’s been far too long since I’ve done any baking of the cake variety. The urge to bake was further spurred on by a visit to the Cup Cake Caffe, which is basically the wee coffee shop extension of the restaurant in the main National Gallery Complex. I was in the gallery shop buying some stuff with the gift certificate I won in the staff drawing before Christmas (Score! Good way to start a new job.) and I had been meaning to try out these cupcakes I’d been hearing about. No cupcake in my world can ever go uninvestigated. Especially when the few I’ve bought lately haven’t been up to scratch. In any case, these particular Cup Cake Caffe cupcakes were actually pretty good. They only had two kinds left at the time, so we tried both. One was a coconut cake with vanilla frosting and fresh blackberry-ish jam, and one was pretty much victoria sponge with raspberries and cream. Both were super tasty. I’ll have to go back and try the dark chocolate and cherry one. Too bad there’s no employee discount on the cupcakes.

Mocha cupcakes with Kahlua and coffee icing.

As I said, all the cupcake sampling got me in the baking mood. I made Rachel Allen’s mocha cupcakes with Kahlua and coffee icing today. They are pretty freakin’ good. I feel like maybe they could be a bit more coffee-ish. I used all coffee instead of coffee and water like the recipe says, but maybe next time I’ll go get some espresso and use that. The texture is awesome though, really light and moist and a good complement to the buttery icing on top. I may put more Kahlua in the icing next time. We’ll see.

As for the burger I mentioned, we went to Guilty Lily for lunch today and both had burgers. I think it may have been the best burger I have ever had in this city. Burgers in this country tend to be disappointing because I think the whole hoof and mouth thing a few years back freaked people out and they really don’t like cooking a burger any less than very, extremely well-done. I, as you may imagine, am not cool with this. Scott is even less cool with this, especially after he had an amazing burger at Brewer’s Alley in the states that was just about raw in the middle. Now, I don’t need my burger to be as bloody as my steak, but you just can’t cook the hell out of a burger, because it looses all its flavour and dries out and isn’t at all pleasant anymore.

The burgers at Gulty Lily aren’t quite pink in the middle, but I have a feeling if they were cooked about 2 seconds less, they would be. They were nice and juicy and fatty, as a good burger should be, and the sweet onion chilli jam that was on top of mine I could have eaten from a jar. They only had one beer in the cask, but I had a nice glass of wine (ok, two) and we’ve had the cocktails there before, which are fantastic. Highly recommended. And I think we’ll be going back and trying the breakfast, because I spied one or two plates that made my mouth water.

I’ve just unfriended someone on facebook for the first time in ages. It’s not someone I know very well, so it’s no great loss. But why, you may ask, have I done this? Because this person was constantly updating their facebook status via text WHILE DRIVING on a long distance trip. And I don’t feel like I should waste my energy getting angry about this sort of thing every time I want to know what my actual friends are doing.

The kind of stress and fatigue caused by long distance driving takes enough of a toll on concentration, but texting while driving because you’re ‘bored’? No. You’re an adult. If a long distance car trip is too boring for you, you shouldn’t be doing it. Listen to some music, have a conversation with yourself, take a lot of rest stops, but don’t use your phone. Not for texting OR talking. It’s irresponsible, unsafe, and moronic.I can’t think of a single situation where sending or reading a text while operating a vehicle is necessary. If I ever discover such a situation, I’ll be sure to tell you, but until then, pull the hell over. If you don’t feel like pulling over, it’s not that important. And your facebook status? NEVER that important. In fact, not really important at all.

You may think it’s none of anyone else’s business that you text while you drive. You may feel like I have no right to tell you what to do. And I say if you get into an accident because of what you’re doing, you deserve the consequences. It’s a choice you made. But the person you crash into while you’re attending to your facebook status does not deserve it, and that’s why you need to stop. The people in your life who care about you also don’t deserve it, so you’re being selfish as well. And all to send some bullshit no one cares about.

I can’t believe it’s not illegal yet, but if you’re caught texting while driving, your license should be revoked. If you think this is harsh, take it up with someone who’s been hurt or killed because they got into an accident with someone who was sending or reading a text.

If you think I’m an asshole for thinking this, go ahead. I’d rather be an asshole for trying to prevent disaster by pointing out that you’re being unsafe than be an asshole for killing someone because I was too bored to pay attention to the road.

Last night, right before we turned on episode 20 (Simple Explanation), I was talking about how Kutner was my favorite character (for various reasons, one of which was his reference to Harry Potter a few episodes previous, confirming his status as a lovable, clever dork. Just my type. I’m not going to lie, I had a little crush on him.) I think the coincedence of timing is probably half the reason I was so affected by what I saw next.

No other character in the show saw the suicide coming, and how could they? The absolute last thing I expected to be watching was Kutner in a pool of his own blood 5 minutes after I was singing his praises. And it REALLY shook me. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. (I’ve had a lot of time to. All I did today was paint the windows.) I even had some weird dreams about it.

I’ve been trying to figure out why it’s affected me much more than I’d ever expect the death of a fictional character to. I mean, yes, I cry when I read pretty much every Harry Potter book from 4 on. Every time. But that’s about an 8 year personal connection to an epic story that I read during a great period of change in my life. I really like House. It’s a great show. Probably my favorite. But I never thought I’d freak out about it like this. And for a character I’ve only known for about a year that hasn’t been nearly as big a part of my life as Harry Potter has.

Maybe it’s the unexpectedness of it. Maybe I’m freaked out that someone I know could easily be suffering without anyone’s knowledge and I don’t want to think they would be capable of such a thing without any prior indication. Maybe it’s that Kutner reminds me of someone I used to know. Maybe it’s just because I liked the guy.

There hasn’t been a lot of death in my life. My grandfather died, but it wasn’t completely unexpected. I miss him, and I wonder what it would be like if he was still around. I wish he could have seen me graduate from college. But he had been having problems for a long time, so it was sad, but it wasn’t really a shock. My dog died last year, and I’m still upset about that, but he was also old for a dog and had the problems that come along with that, so I had been dreading that phone call from my parents silently, in the back of my mind, for a long time. More than anything, I was upset that I wasn’t around to say goodbye.

I’ve been lucky to go over 25 years without any sudden, unexpected loss in my life, and maybe that’s why I’m so shaken. I haven’t been completely unprepared for something like this, and I think last night I got a taste of what it would be like if I was. And it’s scary.