the worst weeks are the best weeks

oy vey. mamma mia. ay coron. oh, man. it feels like the last 14-days have been a lifetime, because it seems i have experienced a lifetime's worth of emotion. likely, i am being hyperbolic; i don't think i have really fit a whole life's worth of feeling into a fortnight, but it has been intense. would you like to have an abbreviated list form of what i am talking about? (although, in the interest of full-disclosure, most of this happened in the last 10 days, but i really wanted to use the word fortnight.)

• i attended my three-year old niece's dance recital and basically fought back a barrage of tears threatening to break through the dam of my tear ducts the entire time. "childhood! families! the sweet sense of accomplishment in working hard at something and sharing it with an audience! alas, my own fleeting youth!"  i only cry publicly when watching Titanic or My Girl (okay, and basically any movie tailored for emtional manipulation).
• my car was stolen. out of the lighted underground garage at my apartment building. (it had been broken into the week prior. literally, broken into. the delinquents broke the quarter window on the passenger's side door, and rummaged through my stuff, mainly dirty laundry,but they did take my driver's license, which was stupidly sitting in a cup holder and some headphones and possibly, a spare key, which would explain the grand theft auto.)
•  slept in the house i have called home since my adolescence one last time before ownership transferred to a new couple. the block i spent the majority of the last decade on is now mainly inhabited by retirees. in my head, and sometimes aloud, i call it "old row." with love.
• my baby sister turned 20! she really used to be my baby sister, but as we age at the same rate the relative distance between our years keeps shrinking and makes it feel like she is aging even faster. and also makes her my best friend.
• when driving said baby sister home from work in a car my mother had lent to us poor carless souls the dratted prius stopped in downtown salt lake and because we were not adept at managing its complex machinery. we spent forever merely sitting at the stoplight waving at people to pass us because we couldn't even figure out how to get it into neutral while it was malfunctioning.
• my car was found! but the tires and radio were not. this made the task of recovering it quite an ordeal. however, i found a cup of evidence that the culprits unwisely left, and unfazed by the grossness sifted through it until i discovered a McDonald's receipt with a time stamp. do you want to know the psychological profile of someone who orders a steak, egg and cheese bagel and ICE in their orange juice? a hardened criminal. i've already called up mcdonald's to get some tape but haven't had a chance to go to the police with the evidence yet. (i got all crazy about solving this matter vigilante-justice style, but that was because i had done the whole batman watching thing. (extra parenthetical side note: does anyone think the dark knight rises contained an implicitly anti-occupy message? i could see how it could be read that way, but i plead political innocence on its behalf. but i once heard a sociologist say "nothing is innocent."))
• i went to a mumford and sons concert with baby sister in honor of her birthday, but lost the tickets. after a laborious search through all the trash in my car, we decided to hope to be offered a chance to plead our case. as we walked through hoping to find a ticket-taker with a listening ear, we realized we had walked passed the ticket-takers and were in the venue. no harm, no foul, eh? also, i gave (by proxy) mumford and sons an embroidered pillow i had made. i trusted one of the less beloved touring bands to get it to the headliners who had taken refuge somewhere away from the crowds (and they did and said winnie thought it was awesome). tickets were found behind glove box the next morning.
• my dear friend eliza turned 23. we relived the exploits we engaged in on her 21st year. new tradition?
• bought a new battery for the motor scooter i intend to sell, any interested buyers here? ran into a long-lost friend at the battery store who gave me his personal discount (after my car debacle came up).
• sold off my childhood, yard sale style. with my dad's relocation, the cache of crap/physical memories that our family of five had accumulated over the past 24 years had nowhere to go. good-bye books. good bye toys. good bye freezer, even though we were never close. however, we donated most of the proceeds to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (I am running the NYC marathon for them, if you don't recall. for more details, or to donate, click here:  http://www2.michaeljfox.org/site/TR/Sponsored/TeamFox?px=1012705&pg=personal&fr_id=1210 ) 
• i actually started to let people know about my Michael J. fox Foundation fundraising effort and a dear friend i met last summer and haven't seen in a year made a very generous donation. i was moved that she cared about me and the effort. 

the best weeks are the worst weeks because with the bad you know how to measure and cherish the good. every kind deed has felt immeasurably kinder in light of feeling so vulnerable. i have felt this before during difficult time. i think when things are hard you learn how to love people better and how to accept their help and affection with grace and gratitude. if i were poetic i would try to write things in profound moving words. but all you get is this recap of the madness and some ideas in prose.