I spent the last hour reading the epic ONTD post about Bea Arthur's passing. Laura told me about it on Saturday, and I yelled out, "NOOOOOO," like I was Darth Vader. How many of us grew up on Golden Girls? Even today, I'll be flipping and run across an episode, and sit and watch, and it is still so funny. Today, if someone pitched a sitcom about four elderly women living together, they wouldn't even be able to sell a pilot. Sometimes I think about how lucky we are that certain shows came out when they did, and made it, because I'm trying to imagine a world without those women, and I can't.

Horror and tragedy. Last night, I was entering a doze state when I heard the front door bang open and closed. My first thought, obviously, was, "Why is Marshall home on a Thursday night?" Because no one is so cavalier with slamming doors after others are asleep than Marshall. Then it occurred to me that it must be my dad. I got up at the same time Laura did, to find out that someone had backed up into our blue van.



My dad had been downstairs watching TV when he heard the crunch. He looked out the little window and saw the high schoolers all get out and look at the van - they had completely smashed in the driver's side door, rendering the car undriveable.



Then the kid who lives across the street from us (we call him Pugsley, but my mom thinks it's a mean nickname, so for the purposes of this blog, we'll call him the kid who lives across the street) ran into his house, and the girl driving the car took off.

We called the cops, who responded about forty-five minutes later. In the meantime, the younger kid across the street, who's in elementary school, and another friend of his just paced around in their driveway, in sub-freezing temperatures and near midnight, on the lookout for the cops, so we thought at first. Then we turned the lights off, and two minutes later the kid who lives across the street ran out to get something from HIS car parked on the street - who knows, but my dad ran out and stood and watched him, in case he was thinking of taking off himself.

After the cop arrived, the girl, with a simpering girlfriend in tow, showed back up. They stood in the street and giggled and never said a thing to my parents, standing right there. Apparently, her first words to the cop were, "I'm just seventeen, and I've never had an accident before, and I just didn't know what to do!" In the interminable amount of time it took for the cop to fill out paperwork, I ended up going outside. My mom asked me why I'd come out.

"To see who it was that hit my car."

No response.

"I see she's not even sorry about it."

At this she looked up at me from behind her waves of hair and snotted, "I AM sorry." Now, I've heard those words in the same petulant tone of voice too many times to mistake any actual sincerity in them, so now I was mad.

"Really? Then why didn't you come up to the house and tell us that right after it happened?"

"I wasn't going to do THAT. I panicked, and went home to talk to my dad."

And then my bullshit meter WENT OFF. And so did my heart. Boom boom boom. It did that shaky thing which is wont to turn into tears if allowed to go on too long, as I'm sure at least some of you have experienced.

"OH YEAH? You don't have a cell phone? You couldn't have gone into his [pointing to the house across the street] house to call? And it took you forty-five minutes to figure out that you're not supposed to leave the scene of an accident before you decided to come back?"

She muttered something about how it wasn't forty-five minutes when my mom, sensing imminent danger or possibly an assault charge, told me to go back into the house. I snarled, "Stupid, spoiled brat," over my shoulder as I went inside. Laura, who'd stayed inside, opened the door for me and added, "Fucking idiot," a most welcome contribution. Then we glowered from inside the door.

Finally, my parents came in, and we sat in the front room and watched for half an hour as the girl was put in the back of the police car and given tickets for hit and run and not having proof of insurance with her. She was much more sober upon her exit, perhaps finally understanding the seriousness of the situation. My dad found it hard to believe that a girl her age, having gone home and told her father that she'd hit a car and left, would have let her come back alone and without checking that she had all her paperwork in order. Just a little liar that hoped she could get away with it, who now hopefully has $500+ in tickets.

And oh, the poor blue van. It's been with us through thick and thin. It now has a single working door. No radio, no clock. The air conditioning doesn't work, and the heater has to think about it. The windshield wipers scrape across fitfully, and the defrost just laughs at us. The driver's seat has to be propped up with a box. The reverse makes the car shake. The transmission's going. The engine...oh, the engine. Twenty miles an hour up hills, a roaring forty down them. But goddamnit, it gets us to the library and Grandpa's, it gets me to work, it corners like a bull elk on ice, and I love it.

Jesus Christ, we lost to Baylor in the first round, what the fuck. We're going to get a four seed. I don't believe this.

KU, KU, what hast thou dunst?

I absolutely cannot believe that Heath Ledger is dead. I've been watching the news for the last forty-five minutes, and it still hasn't sunk in. I wasn't particularly a fan of his or anything, but the news has still hit me like a ton of brick.

I guess I just hope it's accidental, but I'm not sure they'll be able to know for sure whether he just overdosed or whether he intended to commit suicide. So sad all around.