here's a link for my column in the huffington post

Click it or ticket.

Be kind. Live big.

My friend Lauren passed away a few hours ago from melanoma. She was 30 years old and the best cancer fighter I’ve ever known.

She was my mentor when I was a wee junior copywriter at H&S and eventually I helped her deal with cancer. But it was more like she helped me; calling every hospitalization, texting me dirty jokes, buying me breakfast. We were friends who understood something most of our others could not: this horrifying world of illness.

And Lauren got it. She really did. She got that life was short. She got what all us cancer kids get: an unfortunate but necessary perspective on life. We are not here for long. Remember that.

I'm shocked a spirit so vibrant and so memorable could be gone. Lauren fought harder than I thought possible. In doing so, she revealed herself. And she revealed the good in others too.

Keep that with you. LIVE LIKE THAT.

Be kind. Live big.

All I Want for Christmas is a...Tooth.

You know how sometimes you're eating a bagel with cream cheese for dinner?

No? You don't eat that either? It's a great dinner.

Anyway, last night I was chowing down on an everything bagel (don't tell my diabetes doc) and I felt a pull.

A tug, if you will.

I screamed: "OMG I THINK MY TOOTH FELL OUT!" Joe rushed behind me to the bathroom, ALL WHILE FAILING TO CONTROL HIS LAUGHTER.

He laughed so hard at me, guys. I would never laugh at him. Sure, I had a chuckle when his computer stopped printing and he acted like someone was trying to assasinate him, but still.

I looked in the bathroom mirror and this horrifying sight befell me:

That's incorrect. It was more like this...


I looked like a meth addict on Intervention. 

So this morning I frantically went to the oral surgeon, who confirmed that the tooth was abscessed and would have landed me in the hospital in a week's time.

Thank GOD for my love of carbohydrates. That bagel saved my life.

After Doctor PullaTooth extracted my fallen incisor, I was sent to a 2nd dentist to make a cast for My New Tooth, coming soon to Kelly's Mouth!

I was so actually so pitied after they read my medical history (love you, cancer) that at the 2nd dentist's office, they gave me their People's Sexiet Man Alive issue. And they are coming in tomorrow to fit me for a fake tooth as I may have lied and said I was meeting my boyfriend's family for the first time on Thanksgiving.

EITHER WAY, I ain't eating ,my Thanksgiving bird like Billy Bob Berg.

I hope you all have a nice Thanksgiving and keep your teeth where they belong: on the sidewalk after an Irish Catholic family brawl.

Toothlessly yours,

BB Berg.


(PS: I'll be featured on the Huffington Post this week. Billy Bob's gone Hollywood, y'all!)

Sandy

Loch Arbour, August 2012

I'm not sure if I'm ready to write about the storm.

The storm that has changed our lives, 

From Before Sandy to After.

I'm not ready to write about the destruction,

About how peculiar it is 

to feel homesick for places that have been destroyed.

I cannot write about that emptiness.

I am thankful that we are safe. That we are alive. 

That the damage sustained was minor.

But this is heartbreak. 

This is our home. Our towns. Our memories.

These are our flooded, sandy streets,

the streets we scorched our bare feet on as we ran home from the beach for lunch.

These are our broken boardwalks, built with the wood that gave us splinters;

these are the boardwalks we hid under when the sun shone too bright.

And this is our ocean, the one that turned on us;

This is our ocean that pulled us and our bathing suit tops under the tide,

and then smiled on us, gliding our boogie boards gleefully to shore.

I do not know a childhood memory that does not involve my home, 

the Jersey Shore.

We will rebuild. We will move on.

We will put faith in nostalgia and each other.

We will. 

We will move on.

Asbury Park, September 2012

Please consider making a donation to The Red Cross. We need your help.

What I Packed for My Hurricane Evacuation

Asbury Park, October 28

My parents live on the water (1/2 mile from the ocean and on a lake), so I booked it out of there because I’d rather be stranded with the Boyfriend than my parents, who keep yelling at me to clean my room omg I live at home now and I'm 26 where is the wine

Anyway...the eye of the storm is literally heading for where I live now (sob), so I’m at the Boyfriend’s for the next three days. 

I predict this will be the ultimate test of our relationship so I have packed the following:

1) Noise-cancelling headphones for when he watches Dexter (now-I've been shushed twice for air-drumming to Billy Joel while typing this post)

2) All of my Hanson CDs to convert him into a FANSON or else this relationship is really over

3) A razor. ROMANCE IS NOT DEAD JUST BECAUSE WE MIGHT DIE

4) His and her bottles of wine

5) Insulin in case I go all Stacy McGill during this bitch

6) Cosmo magazine (haha jk…it’s Glamour)

7) Duplicates of all my pills cos lupus don’t care bout no damn hurricane

8) A pill crusher to slip my Xanax into his breakfast for when I start to whine from inevitable pain due to life-threatening diseases that are the reason I AM NOT IN CALIFORNIA and AWAY FROM THIS DUMB STORM

9) 50 Shades of Grey in case I want to kill myself before the storm hits

10) Salt and pepper shakers because he’s lived in his apartment for 6 months and still didn’t have a set. SERIOUSLY.

11) Candles, in case the power goes out or I decide to get romanti--HAHA no.

Wish us luck/find me a new boyfriend for Wednesday!

A Life Worth Living

Yesterday-
I sat alone in Dr. Kick Ass’s office, my ears
Hearing the clinical,
the scary,
the disease names
spun from Latin.

Words–things!– that pin me to this bed,
my chest tight with what ifs.

I have never admitted to feeling fear,
Not the way I do now,
Knowing I have so much more to live for.

I know now,
more than ever-
I don’t want to leave anyone
behind.

I will swallow these pills,
I will pump my body full of these toxins.
I will sit through extractions and screens and tests
and I will 
eat spinach raw.

Because I won’t...
I won't leave anyone behind.

(Photo credit: Katie McKnight Photography)

Controlled.

Xanax Dialudid Vicodin Fentanyl Klonolipin Prednisone Imuran Vfend Flexeril Diauludid again yes more, more I can’t think of, more in the bag beneath my bed, more in the notepads stacked on doctor shelves. More for the next time. More to scare me, to heal me, to fix this, to make things worse and better. More ways to go down, more ways to fly out, more ways to take a deep breath and say:

This is not me. These are not mine, these are my body’s.

(There is importance in that distinction.)