Why Not Just Rip My Heart Out and Blend it Into a Nice Pureé?

Sometimes the proverbial rug gets pulled right out from under my feet. When it happens, I am never less affected than the time before.

Do you know what I mean? When the delicate balance of my life's routine is upset, I feel so dejected. Like nothing will ever be the same.

It's happened to me before. First with the hospital of my childhood, and again with the only Mexican food joint whose salsa I actually considered selling my soul for.

And now again. Tastespotting.com. Go ahead, click the link, and see what happens. Actually, never mind the link. I'll just paste a picture of it here:

*Photo courtesy of the now nonexistent Tastespotting.com.*

When what I should have seen was something like this:

*Photo from these traitors.*

Life can really turn on a dime, you know? Just yesterday I was checking up on Tastespotting.com, since I'd been out of town and had gotten behind on my recipes. Then today I opened the page again, and was kind of startled to realise it hadn't been updated since the day before. Figuring the Tastespotting.com crew were experiencing technical difficulties, I carried on along my merry way. And just now, at 10:40 p.m., I opened the website again, only to be met with a little handwritten note from some person named Jean with lovely penmanship who is now my least favourite individual on the planet.

Come on, Jean with nice penmanship! Couldn't you have given me some warning? Some sort of explanation, even? Let me prepare myself? I didn't even bookmark all those recipes I discovered yesterday--I thought I had all the time in the world. I thought Tastespotting.com would always be with me--or at least that if it left, I would have the chance to say goodbye. But this? This lack of closure? This is not okay with me.

I have issues with closure, and Tastespotting.com's hasty exit from my life is almost cause for me to find a good therapist. What if all the websites I read just...up and leave me some day? Decide they have some legal problems they can't work out...tell me they still love me, just not their web servers; that it's nothing I did or didn't do...these things just happen sometimes. Why even bother becoming attached? How can I ever open my heart to love again?

I'm going to get an ulcer worrying about whether I could have done something to prevent this. Maybe I could have posted my own recipes to Tastespotting.com. Maybe I could have written fan mail to Jean with the good penmanship...let her know how much I care. Maybe I could have given Tastespotting.com more publicity--more hits.

If Jean from Tastespotting.com thinks she has legal complications now, just wait until she gets a bill from my new therapist and acupuncture-for-ulcers doctor.