Yesterday my friends fêted me.  It was something I don’t really think I deserved, but love them for it none the less.  There I was surrounded by friends from all stages of my life, wishing me and my sweet man well in our new life together.

I looked around the room at all the faces and really, I showed great restraint and didn’t bawl like a baby.  Of course during part of it I definitely ruined my mascara because my gals had me laughing so hard.

Shocking as it sounds, I did not take photos, and I wish I had.  But this is one of those cool experiences that your friends do for you that just lives in your heart forever.  Like my Driving Miss Daisy Gals. But then again, the women who put this together were part of the Driving Miss Daisy Gals.  They have seen me through so much.

So I am going to contrast it with a nasty little e-mail from a  sitting elected official from where I am moving from, in Lower Merion Township.

There is this elected official, they call them commissioners, named Jane Dellheim.  Suffice it to say, she is not the brightest bulb in the socket.  However, as she has aged, she has morphed into a nasty late middle-aged woman.  Ironically she has a very charming hubby and her daughters are lovely.

So I was watching this meeting last week and this guy  gets up and basically harasses commissioners during a public comment portion.  He is amazingly offensive, and truthfully gives of the whiff of a dangerously angry person.   No one is saying the man isn’t entitled to his opinion, but what he does isn’t just freedom of speech.  For example, in the past, people saw on Lower Merion’s cable channel where this guy attacked a private citizen verbally during a public comment portion of a meeting.  It was this young mother, devoutly Jewish, who had inadvertently taken this guy’s photo while on a public street trying to capture some traffic issues to better make her point with the commissioners.  This guy got up at a subsequent meeting and railed about a private citizen during public comment and said how he had called Homeland Security on this woman.  I am sorry, but that is not normal.

What does this have to do with last week?  Well what he said, how he said it, and the fact he was allowed to say it when many others have been “shushed” publicly for far less just hit a nerve. So I sent the President of the Commissioners an e-mail, and the others were cc’d.  Well Madam President, never responded (I did not expect a response because dealing with some of these folks is like talking to a wall), but dear Jane did:

LOL “Good Riddance”? Wow nasty is as nasty does.  How embarassing…for her.

I am sorry old Jane  is obviously so unhappy. She is also utterly unprofessional as an elected official, not that I expected much, because generally speaking she has always been as insipid as she is underwhelming.

I remember a few years ago when I was the seconding photographer at the Living Beyond Breast Cancer (LBBC) Butterfly Ball she was shocked to see me there as an event photographer.  I was polite and professional and just kept doing what I was being paid to do (take photos) and she was a bit of a freak and made a stink that I was there photographing – mind you if I was her daughter who was running the event at that time for LBBC I would have been mortified.  I actually felt sorry for her insecurity at the time.  But on the other hand, I could not believe she was running around a fabulous event celebrating breast cancer survivors trying to make it all about her. (As a survivor now this has new meaning to me.)

But what a contrast, huh?  Of course many said they could not believe she replied at all.  One of her constituents remarked how she never gets back to her constituents and ignores most of them.

Ah yes, the contrast.  There are nice people in this world and not so nice and unhappy people in this world.

Today is the 22nd of April.  I am just six days off of the anniversary of my diagnosis.

What a difference a year makes.