the more i get sick of home, the more homesick i get.

although last weekend, weekend #2 of the rock-star-nerd-tour, was dedicated to a sea-side, shell-lined, dually-fine wedding, going to miami is never without childhood, or childish, drama.

i suppose that part of growing up is losing. and learning to live with loss.

but nothing -- nothing -- ever prepares you to lose a childhood pet.

i'm not sure if maggie was "waiting" for my mom to get home from the airport or for me to get home from dc, but last weekend she passed on to bigger and better rawhide. and like a typical rosenbaum, maggie went out with high drama. just ten minutes after eric and i got home from the airport and sat down to eat our deli turkey sandwiches at my kitchen table in miami, maggie died at our feet (more-or-less).

i don't think i can look at a turkey sandwich the same way ever again.

so much for an uneventful boyfriend-home-to-meet-the-parents-event.

and while her odd timing makes for a good story for eric to tell his co-workers, losing her is profoundly devastating. maggie's death provides me evidence for an argument i have been supporting for months now:

there's no such thing as a grown up.

having lived through quite a bit of loss in my life, i always assumed it got easier as you grew older. after all, doesn't growing up mean acquiring experience that allows us to better deal with tribulation? but just when we think that life and circumstance have truly, once and for all, allowed us to become an adult, life sweeps our feet out from under us.

either with the death of a childhood pet (with a full-on jewish funeral in the backyard later that afternoon). or another wedding in a long series of your friends tying the knot. or the first meeting of your ex-boyfriend and current one. or a gynecologist appointment.

somehow, while we are always "prepared to fight the last war" -- prepared to deal with experiences we've already known -- the casualties of our emotions are never any less.

meredith grey said it best when the show's writers noted that "we move on. we move up. we moveaway from our families and form our own. but the basic insecurities --the basic fears -- just grow up with us."

maggie's death was -- and continues to be -- hard for me. the only good to come from the doctor's appointment was ... right, nevermind. the meeting of the significant others was anxiety-producing-enough that warrant the use of xanex. in short, debbie's weekend #2 of the rock-star-nerd-tour is actually being considered for the next edition in the series of unfortunate events.

nevertheless, the wedding was beautiful (and so was the bartender). and despite all the trials, i danced like crazy. i guess that even in profound sadness and loss, sometimes, the best we can do is dance the macarena.

i've heard it's possible to grow up. i've just never met anyone who's done it.

i've always wanted to be a rock star.

but due to my vast lack of any special talent (save for the tongue trick and hitchhikers thumb), i have consequently been forced to work with the skill set i actually do have. which boils down to one thing: anal-retentiveness.

okay. two things. anal-retentiveness and some form of academic agility.

other than that, i'm more-or-less useless. just ask my former boss.

last weekend, i was forced to go through some of my earlier posts to reformat the fabulous blog technology i purchased back in september which doesn't register apostrophes in certain fonts. georgia? 'bring it on. times new roman? forgettabout’ it. (see?!)

as i looked back through some earlier ruminations, i noticed that i paid quite a few tributes and disservices to a handful of graduate schools. and i maintain the shit-talking i did.

but only about wharton. and i'd like to now add all competitive schools in chicago to my ill-fated feelings.

somewhere in between writing a personal statement, filling out 27 applications, and effectively planning and executing the use of "profound," "concretize," and "leverage" in my business school interviews, this-little-business-school-in-boston-that-no-one's-ever-heard-of accepted me. and so did a small handful of other schools. i have, admittedly, been very fortunate.

the schools that mistakenly accepted me have not.

harvard business school, it turns out, is ... well ... okay by me. but my judgment about the law school -- which, once made, will remain forever engrained and applicable to all character references about friends and family -- remains uncertain.

and although spi and gabe, deion and cheeks will no doubt roll their eyes in abhorrence, i have quickly learned that being accepted to some harvard institution actually comes with unfair and unwarranted stigmas. naturally, while my parents beamed and called every friend, co-worker, and colombian in the family to share the news, gabe did not hesitate to inform me that i was a perfect snob for the stuck-up people at harvard.

now i am a lot of things.
i am loud.
inappropriate.
sexual.
competitive.
aggressive.
compulsive.
argumentative.
and not necessarily in the order.

but. i. am. not. a. snob.

i just like a pedicure occasionally. but for medical reasons obviously.

and while i swore i would never go to harvard ... well ... it's harvard.

and although i have been graced with the scarlet (crimson?) h, i have also become damn good at rejection. so if anyone needs any advice on how to create color-coded dartboards that defame schools which claim to "have a more competitive applicant pool than ever before" in order to adeptly reject you, i have templates available upon request.

but the part of the application process which i hadn't planned for is about to make me a nerd-rock-star: i'm going on tour. for the next 6 or 7 weekends, i'll be in some major city other than my own: san diego, miami, new york, boston, michigan, philadelphia. i think i have a "by" between michigan and philadelphia, but i learned yesterday that new haven is on standby. (so if you live in any of those cities, let me know.)

i'm not really sure how my full time and part time jobs fit into the schedule, but extra-curricular over-commitment has never phased me. commitment, on the other hand ...

let's just say that when it comes time to make a decision, being loud, inappropriate, sexual, competitive, aggressive, compulsive, and argumentative won't be nearly as helpful as if i were just snobby.

guess we all have our shortcomings.

for the time being, i'm utilizing the skill set i do have ... by color-coding travel itineraries.

i attribute my distaste for valentine's day to growing up in a jewish day school where we were never allowed to celebrate the not-so-jewish holiday.

"we love our students all year round!" read the inevitable note home to our parents every year on february 13th. "so we please ask that you encourage your children to not celebrate the saint's holiday in school."

but when i got to middle school, saints became fair game. so did non-jewish boys. but my distaste for the holiday never waned.

really, most likely because i hate the color pink.

however, a little research reveals that, in actually, st. valentine's day as a lovers' festival actually has no relation to the saints but rather the customs have been handed down from the roman festival of the lupercalia. a festival where the names of young women's names were put into a box and drawn out by men. in reality, this is the origin of 'valentines' -- cards linking men and women together for sexual purposes.

i could have sworn that part of ice-breakers during orientation freshman year of college.

by the way, the roman catholic church officially cancelled valentines day in 1969 when they realized it had gone from a festival of love to an orgy of consumerism.

festival of love to what? i stopped reading at "orgy."

at this point, it would be natural to continue on about the hallmark-ization of the holiday or the superfluous celebration of an emotion that should, in theory, be celebrated all year round. pending, of course, who you are.

rather, i see it as an excellent opportunity for self-loathing. but i'll probably go on as directed above.

whether we're single, dating, married, or divorced, the dreaded february 14 arrives each year to ambush our self-esteem. no other days convinces otherwise happy people that they're in fact social pariahs.

if you ask me, our culture's obsession with love and coupling could be better utilized with a little focus on happiness. and energy drinks. which, in a new study conducted by ten kids at a wedding held at the same hotel as the monster-energy-drink-national-convention, has actually been proven to be the purest source of happiness.

yet perhaps the most profound thing to happen to valentine's day since it was officially cancelled in 1969 (insert 69 joke here if not already conceived) happened when eve ensler re-envisioned february 14 for every twenty-something kid with the vagina monologues (which you should never see with an ex-significant other and/or hook-up sitting a few rows in front of or behind you).

the vagina monologues is feminist, funny, sexy, and grave. it has been called "the stories of triumph over a woman-hating culture."

i think it's a triumph for those of us who do not shy away from intimacy and sexual provocation.

so in honor of the three separate gentlemen who asked me out on a valentine's date today while i was getting lunch at cosi and in tribute to this blog being a forum for education in addition to self-deprecation, i present my all time favorite vagina monologue fact:

the clitoris is pure in purpose.

it is the only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure.

the clitoris is simply a bundle of nerves: 8,000 nerve fibers, to be precise. that's a higher concentration of nerve fibers than is found anywhere else in the body, including the fingertips, lips, and tongue, and it is twice ... twice ... twice the number in the penis.

who needs a handgun when you've got a semiautomatic?

well then, happy v-day to me.

"i don't care if you think i'm racist.

... as long as you think i'm thin."

once said sarah silverman, a prominent jewish comedian (aephi?).

(she also said "i don't set out to offend or shock, but i also don't do anything to avoid it.")

i don't really care what my college-wash-u friends think about me.

as long as this weekend, at the wedding, they think i'm thin.

...just kidding. kind of.

i haven't seen the vast majority of my college friends since the day after we were proud to be the only class to graduate from wash u as a top ten (but hardly big ten) university.

we graduated. i packed. we cried. i drove to dc. and began my first job four days after listening to thomas friedman's "i have a dream" speech. (that was thomas friedman, right?)

having a handful of truly good peers when i left college was a remarkable feat for me, since when i got to wash u freshman year, the prospects of me being socially inclined were slim. i was sure that i was doomed for a hundred years of solitude, and i was fairly convinced my life was over.

(which, if you think about it, is a pretty typical debbie reaction to anything mildly new or different.)

and just like every other situation in my life, a certain someone stepped in to rescue me. i rarely consider myself a damsel in distress in need of saving. i can take care of myself. yet a select few people know that i will probably ask for help when i don't really need it -- and know that i will never ask for help when i actually do.

and that's when the certain someone sent a little colombian jew with big brown eyes and a bob haircut bouncing into my dorm room.

"i'm iiiiiiiiiiiiiilana!" she said.

i'm lonely. i'm depressed. i'm homesick. but "i'm debbie," was the only thing that came out of my mouth. same thing.

the rest is history. ilana and i became (almost) best friends. which wasn't hard because she was pretty much best friends with everyone. she was just like that. ilana was kinda like gabe (www.gabrielroth.blogspot.com) in that respect. but with smaller ears. and a bigger butt.

come to think of it, a lot of my frineds in college were just easy-going-easy-to-get-along-with people (save for spi). well, either that or all my high-school-miami-friends were not-so-easy-going-not-easy-to-get-along-with people.

anyway.

ilana, like most college freshman not clever enough like me to request a single room, had a less than ideal forced-triple roommate situation. frustrated, she essentially moved in with me. my once roomy 8x8 single turned into a forced-double dorm room. needless to say. we became close -- there wasn't enough room to not be.

that year, ilana made me practice my spanish (and yes, our families know each other in colombia). she is the reason i minored in business and am consequently pursuing an mba. and after i failed my first calculus test, it was ilana who pointed out that i should probably not become a mathematician.

our junior year, ilana fell in love with a guy who lived down our hall, and she has never looked back. she did everything she could to woo him, and when that didn't work, i gave her my copy of the movie "notting hill," sent her to the trash chute conveniently located directly outside his room to empty the recycle bin (see, amy, i recycle), and locked the door behind her.

ilana is getting married this weekend. to our RA (residential advisor) ... the guy who lived down our hall next to the trash chute. they still have yet made it all the way through "notting hill."

and except for spi (see with friends like these...), who i more-or-less saw by accident, i haven't seen my college crew in almost two years. and for whatever stupid reason, i'm nervous. what if they think now that i'm fat? or uncool? or an overachiever?

and what if they realize i've always been those things?

so naturally, i've spent all week primping (primp = answer to a jeopardy clue this week). i watched what i ate. i bleeched my teeth. i deep-conditioned my hair. i got my dress dry-cleaned. i painted my toe nails. i tanned.

by no stretch of the imagination, i stretched my aephi legs this week.

and come time for the wedding, i have no doubt that there will be pictures of me a little intoxicated, wearing flip flops, touting my cleavage, and probably winning the "fist in my mouth" contest. the contest i will no doubt have instigated.

afterall, you can take the girl away from college, but you can't take the college out of a girl.

just like you can take girl away from the RA, but you can't ... eww.

last night, as i was watching the state of the union, i had just one wish (you can keep reading, dear political-fearing siblings: i promise this intellectual exploration does not require that you have read a newspaper in the last four years or that you know the difference between federalism and despotism). i wasn't hoping for an answer to healthcare reform or a single silver-bullet solution to social security. i wasn't hoping for any tragic fate to befall our unethical leaders or any sudden onset of leprosy.

and besides wishing that either geena davis (commander in chief) or president david palmer (24) was the president actually describing the status of our nation, i wanted, more than anything, for the president to slip-up and say "fuck."

really. how great would that have been?

much attention has been paid recently to censorship and the loss of the first amendment right of freedom of speech (at the very least, you know that dear political-fearing siblings, right?). even more attention has been paid to the effects on children of bad language, bad video games, and bad pierce brosnan movies. in fact, there are claims that a single exposure to the f-word permanently harms a child.

are you fucking kidding me?

oh, i mean, are you joking?

don't get me wrong: i am not a staunch liberal unaware of the potential problems with profanity (i.e. lack of ability to express oneself adequately). but a single f-bomb permanently harm a child? does a fairy die too every time a dyslexic reads advertisements for french connection united kingdom? as a twenty-something who uses language for purposes of personal expression and sexual innuendos to get a rise -- pardon the expression -- out of people , i just don't find any threat or profound evil in fuck.

i mean, other than STDs.

a few weeks ago, eric and i went to see a performance by our favorite NPR radio host, ira glass, MOT. ira hosts a show called, "this american life" -- a story-telling program based on a different everydaynormalamerican theme each week. it's not a news show or a talk show or a call-in show. they make movies for radio. it's kind of like the infamous "car talk." except just one host. and no cars.

ira spent a bit of time voicing his fuckstration with how the federal cummunications commissionary's limitations affect his show. it's not like he wants to offend his listeners with an endless stream of profanity (did anyone else notice that profanity begins with the prefix "pro?" derived, of course, from the same latin root as prophylactic). it's just that, in the middle of a particular episode that tells the intimate and powerful stories of individuals affected by gang violence, there is really no better way to describe something inserted "up one's ass" other than saying ... "up his ass."

and yet, in final editing, his lawyers instructed him to bleep the expression from the program.

clap if you believe in fairies.

as a young communications professional whose job it is to craft words into meaningful, thoughtful, and often deceiving messages (pre-lawyer practice), language -- for me -- is cathartic. swear words are often used not in shock or anger, but rather as a sort of a social lubricant.

having worked in an environment where cursing (and leather straps) was used as a form of punishment ("here's the fucking article you were supposed to find yesterday" and "you fucking did what?"), i understand and appreciate the belittling effects imposed by the power of swear words.

yet what ultimately underlies the phenomenon of cursing is that the real meaning of a word is only as powerful or harmless as the emotion behind it. (having written my law school personal statement on the power of language, i am now clearly qualified as an expert on the subject.)

afterall, free speech is not about licking, i mean, liking what other people say, is it?

titillating question, no?