I'm back home and I just feel raw.

[calimary]

106. Yeah, no kidding. I started decorating a couple of weeks ago. It's been awfully busy around here

and I slowed down. Now, I have no motivation to resume. Just not in much of a mood. And it's been said here already, but I've cried every day since it happened, also. I'm sure most of America has. This is just a complete sucker-punch. And I'm in California. Clear across the country from Newtown, CT. I find myself thanking God every time I think of my kids actually surviving to adulthood. But hell, they're no safer than any of the rest of us, as long as there are gunworshippers stalking our country, with their unreachable attitudes. You can't reach some of them. That precious gun of theirs might as well be a golden calf. I just don't see it. I just don't get it. It's sheer insanity to me.

I've been touched by gun violence twice.

I went to high school with a girl who had three brothers. One weekend, the three boys all went out to the outskirts of town to go shooting together - to this large, professional, open-air shooting range. Well supervised place, well maintained, good facilities, very professional. Only two brothers came back. One of the bullets ricocheted and struck one of the boys and killed him instantly. That family was never the same again. They just closed up. And closed down, I guess.

And later on, we became friends with a remarkable woman, very gifted as a medium. Very spiritual, and she was amazingly accurate. Kind and generous. Almost a mentor to my son. She helped police solve crimes and find missing people. We'd hit it off the minute we were introduced by a mutual friend who'd known her since they were kids. One day that third party called me up with the news that our friend had just shot herself - after shooting and killing another family member. They'd evidently been arguing. My son felt as though he'd been hit in the face by a 2x4. We were REELING. For months. NEVER saw that one coming. Especially with HER. Murder-suicide was NEVER something any of us had ever really thought deeply about, period, much less imagining that it could possibly happen to someone we knew.