I could really use a hug right now.

One Bad Apple opened last night. We had a wonderful audience who laughed and gave us so much energy, and the cast took that energy and ran with it, and it was an AMAZING opening night. Absolutely fantastic. I want to send my thanks out to everyone who made it possible for this to happen. (Sidenote -- when I was little, I used to imagine that when I was thinking of someone, a little beam of golden light was coming out of me and connecting me to the person that I was thinking of, and that if I thought of enough people at once ((used to be my way of praying, of giving thanks)), then I would just start to glow all over and be like a star...)

However, this morning, my sister and I noticed that our hamster, Fiona, wasn't looking so good. Fiona is actually the hamster of my sister and her roommate, and has been around for about a year, but she was staying with us over the summer. I don't want to drag out the story, but about two hours after we found her hunched over and breathing raggedly, she died. I -- can't bring myself to actually explain what happened, but she was in my hands, and I felt her shudder and her claws just began to clench all of a sudden and ----

I've never cried from fear before, but this was one of the scariest things that has happened to me in my life. Probably the scariest, watching something die in my hands.

We buried her. I'm still trembling and cannot believe it actually happened. I didn't know her very well at all -- I only saw her for a couple months this summer, but we certainly spent a lot of time together today. That was kind of huge. My thoughts are with my sister, who is really hurting about it. And my heart also goes to my other animals -- Abby, Tigger, Summer, and Cosmo --- they mean so much to me.