So much has happened since my last post. Didn’t want to bombard you all with everything at the start of the year, so I decided to peak in during my holiday hiatus with some updates.

A few hours after my last post on December 13, 2010, I received a call that my grandmother had passed away. It wasn’t a surprise, really. She suffered a massive stroke in December 2000 that left her partially paralyzed. Until then, she’d been the matriarch of our family. She helped raise me. She was a fiery woman. Smart. Polished. Loved politics and sports and was just as likely to shout at the TV during an episode of Meet the Press as a Cleveland Indians game. In her presence, I couldn’t slouch or use poor English. In fact, I recall asking her one day: “Where’s my mother at?” to which she answered, “Behind that preposition.” After the stroke, those pieces of her faded away. Not her sharpness, but her power. Grandma was a Capricorn. If there’s one thing that breaks a Capricorn’s spirit, it’s feeling powerless.

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