Shockaholic

Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank my dad for staying alive long enough for me to have a relationship worth savoring (but I can’t thank him because he passed away).

I’d like to thank my mother—so I will! Thank you, Mama, I mean, who’s a more bitchen parent than you, right? Seriously, there are no words. There are, however, a few dance moves.

Thanks to my brother Todd, his loyal cat, my Uncle Bill, Trisha and Joely and their respective clan, which pretty much covers things on the immediate family front.

Thanks to Clancy Immusland for the years of keeping me so close to sanity, I can sometimes feel the breezes.

Thanks to Garret, my familiar, my memory and without whom I would be something—but the sum of that wouldn’t be as high (but I might be).

Thanks to Gloria Grayton and Mary Douglas French, without whom I hope I’ll never have to find out how close to nothing I’d be.

Thanks to my old, but not elderly, friend Paul Slansky, who’s been known to save me from myself, or someone just as short.

And finally I’d like to thank my tribe: Bruce Wagner (for the title, for wanting to be a nurse, and for knowing what a lie is), Dave Mirkin (innovator of the “blurse” phenomenon—hybrid of blessing and curse), Cyndi Sayre (my souped-up new improved savior), Michael Tolkin, Wendy Mogel, Melissa North, Edgar and Rachel Phillips, Fred “the fixer” Bimbler, Roy Teeluck, Abe Gurko, Chas Weston, Michael Gonzales, Gale and Nikki Rich, Quinn Tivey, Nancy Braun, Teresa Crites, Kerry Jones, Dr. Jeff Wilkins, Dr. Barry Kramer, Bryan, Bruce & Ava, Penny, Bev, Sean, Salman, Melan, Max, G deB of Fee and Gee, Griplin, Helen, Nichols, Marcus, Graham, Ruby, Rufus, Buck, James B., Corby, Cynthia, Art, Merle, Carol, Steve, the Cohens, AWK & Co. and the Godchildren (James Goodman, Little Ed, Dash, Olivia and Anton), and my father’s nurses: Sarah and Augie and everyone else from the far flung east.