Sometime in early 2009 I asked my lawyer husband to update my will. Six years later, I’m still waiting. I know he’s been busy, but really?

In case you’re wondering what prompted my request for a legal modification:

In 2008, there was a scene in Season 2, Episode 9, of Madmen, titled “Six Month Leave,” where Don Draper utters the following bar advice: “It’s your life. You don’t know how long it’s gonna last, but you know it doesn’t end well.”

His aphoristic words have been resonating with me ever since. I am most definitely not expecting a “Happy Ending.” But if I’m in charge of said end, I am optimistic that with a well thought out plan of action, I will be fully prepared to execute the whole sordid mess my way.

But first things first. As a means to the end, I’m hoping that this blog post will help to jump start a codicil and/or serve as proof of what I want in terms of my final wishes. I’m also hoping that this blog post will hold up in a court of law because there has been zero movement on my almost seven-years-already appeal to the hubby. And it seems unlikely that a new and improved version of my VERY OLD WILL is coming anytime soon.

Anyway, pending a revised will, durable power of attorney, living will, health care proxy and DNR (no pun intended, but I’m not holding my breath), below is a quick and dirty amendment to the Last Will and Testament of Teri Dawne Schure.

And maybe this sounds outrageously depressing, but I have been busily and intensely engineering my last hoorah. While my friends have been planning European trips, and seeking retirement advice, I have been assiduously putting the final touches on my last chapter.

Control freak that I am, it should come as no surprise to those who know and still love me, that me myself and I will be orchestrating my closing performance. I am hoping for some dignity, a competent finale, with a little comic relief thrown in for good measure. Okay, it probably won’t be that dignified, because I expect all my homies to party like it’s 1999. And ever the hostess with the mostess, I am fully expecting my bon voyage to be one hell of a shindig.

I fervently hope that I have enough of a final-days-heads-up to spend them in a beauteous locale surrounded by mountains or the ocean. And if I get the dreaded Alzheimer’s, I pray my fam will do the right thing and proceed with all that I have requested in this post. (They’re probably reading this and thinking I won’t be the wiser, but just do it loved ones!)

When it’s my time, I hope to have all my cherished peeps at my side as I peacefully fade away. Oh and make sure I’m pumped full of shit loads of pain medication, and my iPod blasting. Music needs to be an essential component of my final act. I want my treasured iPod to be playing all of my fave tunes while I deliver my swan song.

And when my time here on earth is concluded, don’t count me out so fast, cuz I plan on having the last word, which will be recited aloud. And YES, it will, of course, include the as usual unwelcome motherly advice for my kids.

I am wholeheartedly expecting the end to be easy breezy although I recognize it may be stressy messy—and way more labor intensive and time consuming than I would prefer or planned for. So DO NOT forget to administer the painkillers.

And at my adios soiree, I want a B-I-G partay. No expense spared people. Pigs in a blanket are a must, as well as a signature Martini—Stoli up, no vermouth, three olives with or without bleu cheese. Oh and I definitely want a bunch of those delish Chicken Samosas from Trader Joe’s, some shrimp cocktail, and a killer Italian rum cake with chocolate and vanilla pudding smothered in whipped cream. Hey, I might be dead, but let them eat my favorite cake.

I can’t bear the thought of being stuffed into a coffin and then buried in the dirt. SO DON’T DO IT.

My daughter Ariel knows the drill. I’m to be cremated, even though it’s against my religion. She can put me anywhere she wants—in her attic, her basement, the laundry room, wherever. I’m not picky. But she needs to TAKE ME WITH. Wherever she goes, I go.

If anyone wants a Teri souvenir, I think I would make a standout piece of jewelry.

And per my usual research I found some fascinating ways to divvy me up:

Teri Hour Glass

Although it probably won’t function as a reliable timepiece, it will allow me to keep time at my own pace. Call it Teri Time.

Teri Diamond

Since diamond is my birthstone, I like this idea a lot. Plus, a Teri diamond is forever.

Teri Paint

You can mix me up with a little paint and use it for a Teri portrait.

Teri Candlesticks

You can create a one-of-a-kind Teri pair to add height, shape and interest to your tablescape. I would also be quite handy during a blackout.

Teri Suncatcher

Mix me into some stained glass and hang me someplace sunny.

Teri Bust

You can create a three-dimensional Teri likeness of me. This bust will not only be my spitting image, but it will also allow me to keep an eye on things.

Teri Jewelry

You can accessorize a la Teri wherever and whenever.

Teri Stemware

Handy dandy way to never drink alone again.

Teri Mask

Create a Teri mask King Tut style.

Teri Maracas

Drag Teri out for special musical occasions.

After reviewing all of the options, my personal preference (listen up Ariel), would be a Teri candelabra.

My favorite Disney character has always been Lumière from Beauty and the Beast. He has such panache and a bona fide bon vivant! Yes, I could definitely envision my candelabra self. The more I thought about it, the more excited I became.

So excited, that I e-mailed foreverence.com with questions regarding a custom candelabra. Mr. Dawson from Foreverence, got back to me immediately and was enthusiastic about working on a custom, 3-D-printed urn in the shape of a candelabra—ASAP. Mr. Dawson wanted to connect by phone to go over the project details. And he wanted to know if I had a specific candelabra in mind and if I could provide a photo. He was adamant about getting as much information as “we” could gather to assist their designers.

Whoa, maybe I’m not that excited.

And then there was the price. A mere $2,495.00 for a unique and custom urn. It seemed like an arm and a leg for a simple candelabra of my cremains, and I wondered if there was any wiggle room in the price.

Oh, and the process takes about two weeks once the design is completed. Mr. Dawson ended his e-mail with “Let me know if you have any additional questions, and when you would like to get started.”

Back off Mr. Dawson, I’m not in that much of a hurry. Plus, I need to shop around. Make sure your price is in line with comparable candelabrum.

But I did take scotch tape to paper to create the following rough draft:

Okay, maybe my rendering needs some fine tuning. So once the Teri takers have placed and received their orders, I will leave the rest of me to my imaginative, fashion-forward daughter to design the perfect Teri taper holder.

But whatever Teri masterpiece my daughter deems appropriate to create, I want it engraved with the following:

Don’t forget to dream.  Don’t forget to laugh.  Don’t forget to live.

As someone who resides on the South Shore of Long Island, I was mildly interested in Bravo’s new show about six women from the North Shore. If there were any secrets, they were quickly and boringly revealed in the first two episodes. And only three out of the six are wives. The rest are single.

The show makes it abundantly clear that the “Wives” are wholly and utterly financially dependent on the past and present men in their overindulgent lives. According to the divorced Andi Black, “The men on the North Shore have the power, and they have the control.” I’m not sure where that leaves Andi.

Black’s friend Liza Sandler is being forced to sell her opulent mansion as part of her ultra-lucrative divorce settlement and is, in her words “paralyzed” by her current situation and ex-husband. She confesses to having an affair (according to the Page Six article it was with the modern day mad man, Donny Deutsch), which resulted in her divorce. If you’re going to play, you got to pay. Although it seems that Liza played, and her husband paid.

Gail Greenberg’s husband is a plastic surgeon, so she thinks she’s all that, except that she’s not. But she is impressively zippy on her SoulCycle exercise bike. Dr. G throws a fashion show at the Race Palace (an off-track race site), and as the models sashay down the runway, they announce what type of plastic surgery they had done by him. Noses, and lipo, and boobs! Oh my!

Black disparages people who live on the South Shore, calling them unsophisticated. Greenberg accuses Susan Doneson (originally from Oceanside/South Shore) of not being classy and questions her upbringing. Another South Shore dis. Their superiority is laughable. Black, who is living with Sandler and sharing her bed, discusses with her roomie, cringe-worthy topics like passing gas, and putting flowers in private and personal spaces to eliminate odors. These girls actually believe they are veritable pillars of sophistication and class.

While the women of the North Shore are quick to put down the geographically challenged who reside on the wrong side of Long Island, Black and Amy Miller are the only North Shore originals. Greenberg grew up in Harrison, New York; Cori Goldfarb is from New Jersey, and the rest of the women were originally from—the South Shore.

Cori Goldfarb and her husband own a spa that according to Black, is always empty. There is much discussion amongst the Goldfarbs and their COO about one of their not so hot products, the anal relaxing cream (they sold 7 in a year). The COO scolds them: “You don’t need to worry about the women in this community’s asses.” I kid you not.

Goldfarb brags that her friend Amy was an ‘It’ girl in high school. “It” doesn’t work, and is financially supported by her volatile boyfriend. Her 20-year-old son is seen running after an ice cream truck in a pink tutu and bunny ears. More sophistication. Amy’s boyfriend buys her a car—a Volkswagen Bug. Or is it a Beetle? A Mercedes 350 would have been a lot sturdier.

Doneson talks non-stop about working working working, but then asks her reluctant ex-con husband for money, complaining to him that she only has $1 in her wallet. Maybe Bravo will do her a solid.

While marrying wealthy and powerful men may have its advantages, it is by no means a reflection of a person’s sophistication or level of class. And Secrets and Wives is the perfect example of that.

If these Wives are any indication of what one might find on the North Shore, I’ll stay put, right here on the South.

The world’s largest social network can be frivolous and sophomoric at best, and downright invasive and potentially dangerous at worse.

So what is it about Facebook that keeps me coming back?

According to the mighty F, the average user spends 20 hours a month on their site. That seems like a lot to me.

In the beginning, I’ll admit, I spent quite a bit of time looking at all the photos and comments from my newly-found Friends. And okay I posted my share of pictures. But NEVER a selfie. I’m not passing judgment; I’m just saying. But after a while, I got weary of all the emotional updates, the drama, the photos, the over-sharing, emoticons, and puffery.

Now when I log into Facebook, I mostly post entries from my blog. And who knows, maybe my Friends think my blog posts are worse than a selfie. Only my 216 Friends would be able to answer that.

And okay, I sometimes find some heartwarming and impactful videos and posts on Facebook. My favorites are the videos of soldiers coming home and surprising their loved ones. But there are also posts and videos that make me cringe.  A lot.

Come on people. Stop with the parental and grandparent bragging already. Your kids and grandkids can’t be that perfect!

And how many photos of you, your children, your pets, your grandkids, yourself, yourself, yourself…There is no need to finish the sentence. You get the picture.

Just last week Mona invited me to play Candy Crush Saga. A couple days later Penny needed my help to uncover an extra clamshell.

But the worst are those hateful, borderline racist Friends who use Facebook to highlight their repugnant views on politics, race relations, sexual orientation, climate change, religious differences, and whatever other derogatories they feel like sharing. Amidst the thousands of puppy love posts and videos, I have to view this smut?

It’s true, Facebook gives me the option to Unfollow but really, who wants or needs a Friend like that? I’m not interested in muting their opinions. I would much prefer to Unfriend these miscreants, although I never take this option lightly.

And I have a unique idea for birthday wishes. Instead of a Happy Birthday emoji, pick up the phone and say the real deal. But admittedly it would be time-consuming to call all of your hundreds of Facebook friends and family.

Facebook curates our lives. According to some, a relationship is only real if it’s on Facebook. And if there is a breakup, a must on your list of things to do is “Unfollow,” “Unfriend” or in cases of severe heartbreak—“Block.” If you have added this person to your “Life Event,” this too needs to be updated. And, of course, you now need to switch your status to “Single.”  I recently saw a post on my News Feed that Joe Blow was in a Complicated Relationship. I would hate to be on the receiving end of that missive.

And am I the only one who hates when people post photos of us without our permission? I recently logged onto my Facebook page and discovered a fill-my-computer-screen picture of me with someone I barely knew. Whatshername looked sensational, but I looked hideous.  I mean really? Get my approval before you start posting UGLY Teri pictures! I tried to be as polite as possible when in a private Facebook message I asked her to remove the photo or cut me out of it.  The next day I was relieved to see that it was down, only to resurface the next day with a bulldog face where mine had once been. I immediately unfriended the biatch. Yes, somewhere out there in the Cloud there is a picture of me as a bulldog.

Have you ever opened up Facebook to a huge photo of yourself that you didn’t post? As I prepared to post one of my blogs on my Facebook page I saw to my horror a picture of me in a white bikini bathing suit!  What was more embarrassing than the photo itself (if that was possible), was that my Friends assumed I posted the picture myself, WHICH I DID NOT DO.  The bikini pic had been taken five years earlier in Greece, and I didn’t even know it was in the Photos section of my Facebook account. The photo went viral with my Facebook peeps and God knows who else, with likes and comments from many of them wishing me good tidings in Greece. When I complained about it to my friend Robin, she reiterated my biggest fear: She was shocked that I would post a full page image of myself in a bikini; from five years ago. I was beyond humiliated and added a comment to the picture letting everyone know THE WHITE BIKINI PHOTO WAS NOT POSTED BY ME, after several failed attempts on my part to delete it altogether. I’m still trying to figure out how to get it off my home page and news feed.

Does anyone agree with me that the Like button is overused, and in many cases, used inappropriately? Someone posts a death, and everyone clicks Like.  There’s something wrong about liking someone’s death or sickness. Facebook should think about adding RIP as a button option.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word, so I think Facebook should also consider adding a Sorry button. This button would make it super easy to undo all of your wrongs with a quick click.

And then there is the TMI danger of revealing too much about yourself and your family. Friends who are incessantly posting photos of their children including their names, what school they are picking them up from, what extra-curricular activities they are participating in, etc., etc.  And how about those photos tagged with a geographical location that clearly identifies where they live. I mean seriously people? Don’t these Friends think this could be dangerous?  Every time you post about your child or grandchild on social media, you are helping to create a data-rich, enduring and potentially problematic online profile for your little lovies.  And it’s possible those lovies will be most unhappy when they discover that you exposed their lives to the world from birth.

Driving while doing anything social media related is dangerous, yet a recent study conducted by Braum Research found that 27 percent of drivers 16-65 reported using Facebook. Fourteen percent reported using Twitter.

The results of the AT&T survey were released last week, indicating that drivers who text are still the most prevalent of lawbreakers but are becoming so passé. These morons have graduated to using Facebook, Instagram, Snap Chat and Twitter. They take selfies, chat, and shoot videos—in alarmingly large percentages. The survey found that 22 percent of those who use social media while driving said they did so because they are addicted. Sorry, but I just don’t feel your pain.

Now let’s talk about the FBI-worthy collection and mining of our data and invasion of our privacy by Facebook. We all know that ad-financed Internet platforms like Facebook and Google collect vast amounts of data about us. Heck, they probably know more about us than we know about ourselves. Just this week, Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, announced plans to open users’ feeds to even more advertisers.

And Facebook announced in April that it would be introducing changes to its News Feed, including ranking content and advertising based on what we Like.

You may think that you see everything your Friends post via your News Feed, but you don’t. To inject advertising into our stream, Facebook uses an algorithm to control the News Feed, and what we see.

I have multiple Facebook accounts and have experienced first-hand Facebook’s double standard when it comes to the Likes that I get on my pages. For example, my Facebook page for Our Romantic Getaway has 1,103 Likes, and yet if I want to reach those people with my posts, I have to pay Facebook to boost the update to them. Really?  You’re selling my 1,013 Likes to others, and I can’t use them myself for free? Seems unseemly.

But for all my complaining, bad mouthing, and spewing, I still go back to Facebook for more.

 
Following the arrest and death of 25-year-old black man Freddie Gray of Baltimore, hordes of local residents took to the streets in protest.

During sometimes violent incidents, over 250 people were arrested, at least twenty police officers were injured, hundreds of businesses were damaged, and there were countless vehicle and structure fires.

Many Americans think that the news media has covered the incident ad nauseam. I say it hasn’t been covered enough.

It seems everyone has an opinion. It also seems like the consensus is that there is no easy answer for what ails Baltimore.

It seems fairly obvious to me.

Poverty. Educationless. Unemployment. Homelessness. Sickness. Hunger. Helplessness. Fear. Hopelessness.

I spent my first nine years in abject poverty. I then spent the next five or so years in semi-poverty. The semi-poverty years were the good old days. It was the abject poverty that I can never forget.

Those first nine years of my life left an indelible and forever mark. Not one day goes by, that is not touched somehow by those frightening, hopeless, and haunting years.

One of my first memories at about four or five was of intense stomach pain. My belly always hurt—real bad. I would go to bed with the pain and I would wake up with it in the morning. Turned out it was a combination of hunger—and worms. Yeah—my little body was full of worms.

Back to Baltimore.

Many individuals have been quoted saying that the people in Baltimore need to take responsibility for their lives—their choices.

Okay, maybe you can say that about an adult. But how does a five-year-old child do that?

How does a teenager do that?

For any parent, you know teenagers taking responsibility for anything is a challenge.

Now back to my memories of poverty.

The worms were scary for sure. But not as scary as the bugs. Big ones. Big bad cockroaches. They came out fast and furious.  And they were bold. They mostly came out in the dark—scurrying all over the walls and surfaces when the lights would be flicked on as we entered our apartment. Our tenement apartment was meticulous. But they came in droves anyway.

Welcome home.

I still associate the bugs with my difficulty breathing. My grandmother thought I was anxious. I was diagnosed with asthma. I have often wondered if my childhood asthma was really just a byproduct of the constant inhaling of bug spray.

I was a scrawny and sickly kid. Looking back, it’s no surprise to me—bug spray and worms can wreak havoc on a child.

And then there were the shoeboxes in the kitchen cupboard under the sink. I hated that cupboard. I hated the shoeboxes even more.

Every early morning, my grandmother would take the shoeboxes and roam around our apartment, throwing the successful rat traps into it. Once one box was full, she would get another one.

And another one.

And another one.

The shoeboxes would be full of rats with broken necks. Better dead than scurrying around hangry.

My grandmother would calmly throw the rats into the outside garbage can and put the shoeboxes back in its place under the sink.

I was an inquisitive child, so I asked a lot of questions.

I wouldn’t call myself a rat expert, but I knew quite a bit about them.

My math skills weren’t the best, but I knew that where there was one rat, there were many more. Rats have large families—up to forty or fifty.

And since rats rarely walk more than a few hundred feet from their birthplace, if I saw one, the other forty or so were probably close by.

The good news: Rats had a one-year life span so they didn’t live long.

The bad news: Rats multiply like rabbits.

As you can imagine (or not), I was obsessed with those rats. So was my grandmother. She would methodically and carefully inspect all of the lower parts of our walls—particularly in the bedrooms, at about one inch from the floor.

You see, rats like to hug walls, and they would leave behind dark marks—oil from their hair.

Rat residue.

BTW, I mostly slept with my grandmother in her bed.

Oh, and rats eat mice, so they rarely cohabitate. More good news.

Although I would have preferred mice to rats.

But I didn’t have a choice did I?

While other children in better zip codes were doing whatever kids in better neighborhoods do, I was preoccupied with rat traps, rats, and cockroaches—mulling the same questions over and over in my head: Do rats eat cockroaches?  Do rats ever stray from the walls?

And as if that wasn’t enough fear for one young child.

My biggest fear of all?

The dark.

Because everything came out in the dark.

I often go back to those dreadful memories and wonder who I would have been—had I never gotten out of there.

How many times I’ve asked myself that question.

What if I never got out?

What if I was black?

Hopelessness. Helplessness.

Five-year-olds turn into 25-year-olds.

Who knows?

I might have set fire to a few cars and buildings myself.