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The husband and I are not big Valentine’s Day people. Sometimes we do stuff to mark the occasion, but usually we don’t. This year, we had some tentative plans, but we got some bad news a few days beforehand and were just too bummed out to care.

For whatever reason, the past few years, I’ve started to develop really strong opinions and feelings about holidays and how people view them. Around Christmas, I kept getting really irritated with Christmas haters. I know Christmas as an institution creates expectations about really heavy things like family, joy, and the like. And I know that a lot of people have shitty things happen to them in life that make the Christmas microscope on those heavy things way too much to deal with. I just…I don’t know.

Valentine’s Day also has me cranky.

The baby’s school was closed all last week and I haven’t heard of any plans that the school has to make up any Valentine’s Day celebrations. That bummed me out. I always really liked making my Valentines box and as long as no one is excluded from Valentines, it’s fun having a party with your classmates.

I think that’s telling. Perhaps Valentine’s Day, to me, is more of a kids’ holiday, even though kids aren’t (or shouldn’t be) big on the romance. The cutesyness of it makes me think of crushes and puppy love and passing notes.

Anyway, I think I’ve nailed down a list of behaviors that people exhibit around this holiday that drive me bonkers.

– Being super into Valentine’s Day. “I got roses and a four-star meal and a beautiful, heartfelt card and breakfast in bed and diamonds and wee!” No, I know. You like doing something special. Cool. I think this is more me bristling at how Valentine’s Day is another arena for public displays of affection, which make me very uncomfortable in almost whatever form that they take. One of my biggest regrets about Facebook is that I sometimes catch, via my news feed, whatever moronic baby talk people I know and (used to) respect say to each other. I’ve seen whole arguments and make-ups (though not the sex, thankfully) take place on wall-to-wall interactions and I don’t get it. Why do that? And if Facebook is your main communication tool, why not message your significant other? I’m not going to act like I’m totally private about my relationship. I write some mushy stuff here and, heck, our wedding was one big make-out fest. But for the most part, I feel like constant PDA signals some degree of insecurity in the relationship and a need for outside validation.

– Being super anti-Valentine’s Day. Granted, the previous group is hard to take, and if you are less than thrilled about your romantic status, Valentine’s Day can be just another obnoxious obstacle to getting on with life. People can be very idiotic. And if you find the super-pro-Valentine’s crowd to be indirectly antagonistic, do your best to ignore them. They’re suckers.

– Complaining about how commercial it is. Um, unless you live in a society very different from ours, everything is very commercial. For every single aspect of our life, there is something you can buy to aid or commemorate it. Find something interesting to gripe about.

– Stating that, for you and your wonderful schmoopie, everyday is Valentine’s Day and/or lecturing people that everyday should be Valentine’s Day. I don’t understand this assertion. Valentine’s Day should be more like any other day? Or every day should contain some worship of how awesome you are? Nah. Shit happens and some days you are so thoroughly OVER your significant other because life can be really trying sometimes. And, really, unless there’s something seriously wrong, don’t lecture people about how they should carry out their relationship or how it should be more like yours.

– Sending flowers to the workplace. Yawn. Also, it has this…sinister undertone to it. Because while it may be partially intended to brighten your loved one’s day, the other motivation is to make co-workers jealous and, really, why are you thinking about how others perceive your expressions of love? Grow a pair.

One of my quirky pet peeves is inefficiency. Specifically, inefficient packaging. As insignificant as a concern as this may be, I think it will start to have significant consequences as people rely more on e-commerce and shipping in terms of costs, both financial and environmental.

So, for the baby’s birthday, I ordered (shh, don’t tell) this safety knife set because he always wants to help me cook and I want him to have 10 intact digits. Like I said, I’m quirky.

Today, the knife set and the other gifts that I ordered arrived and I gleefully set about opening boxes. I couldn’t quite remember what was due, so when I got to the biggest box, I wasn’t sure what was inside.

I offer my foot for scale, if that helps. I wear a size 8, 8 1/2.

Another shot of the impressive box, complete with my stained shirt. (My grandmother gave me four shirts for my birthday. I’ve worn three. I’ve also stained three. Eff my life.)

At this point, seeing the cooking.com tape, I’m figuring it’s the knife set, but I’m not yet concerned about the size because I didn’t check the dimensions when I ordered it. Maybe that makes me a bad consumer. I don’t know.

Ooh, looks enticing.

Dig, dig, dig. “Any minute now,” I say to myself, “I’m going to reach the gift. Sweet!”

Eventually, I reach China this:

I know what you’re thinking: SRSLY?

Srsly.

I estimated this to be 27 feet of Fill-Air. TWENTY-SEVEN FEET. All for this.

And, look, I get it. I ordered this around the busiest shopping time of the year. I can only imagine the fatigue that the shipping staff of cooking.com and amazon.com were experiencing and I’m sure they were experiencing packaging challenges that would make me barf. But this is really ridiculous. It’s inefficient and wasteful and frankly I expect better.

Sometimes, when I’m sad like I’ve been, my sadness becomes more of me than I am. Like in Ghost when Whoopi Goldberg’s character lets spirits use her body. Sadness, with its bad posture and shitty clothes, jumps in and sometimes it’s like it gets really drunk and decides to go for a drive. (Note: I am not actually drinking away my sadness.) While it’s driving, it veers off to some unpaved road called Rage. Sadness gets tired of sleeping and sitting around and trying to think positively and goes completely batshit with rage.

I get so angry and every stupid or uncaring thing that people do, to me or to anyone, just makes me angrier. Hearing about people going insane and taking it upon themselves to go on shooting sprees doesn’t make me sad, it just makes me angry.

“We’re all miserable in some way, you prick. Let us decide how we might want to wreak destruction on ourselves,” I think.

I’m sorry to be such a downer on an otherwise beautiful Friday afternoon. But that’s what’s going on in my head.

Does your sadness ever veer off into rage?

This morning, I was feeling good, and I was all set to write this post about how I’ve been working hard on my outlook on life and our prospects for not being over-educated and destitute. But then, my mood changed again to angrily sad and foot-stompy. It might have something to do with the rain, but I think that’s just how it’s going to be for awhile, until things have the slightest hint of being less precarious.

Seeing as how I’m so mercurial, I’m going to resort to my favorite and most immature coping mechanism: making fun of people.

So, we have a Snuggie. I think it’s awesome and I’ve publicly ranted AGAINST haters-of-Snuggies before. The husband’s grandmother gave it to him for Christmas last year and he has staunchly resisted it, since he is a hater. I just don’t get it. The thing is super warm and comfortable and I’m pretty sure that there is Ambien woven into the unnatural fibers because as soon as I put it on, I am OUT within five minutes. If you have insomnia, I highly recommend picking one up.

Anyway, the husband finally started using the Snuggie a few weeks ago…but only as a blanket. As in, he’s refusing to use the sleeves, which is the whole fucking point of the thing. This infuriates me, because I had been happily using the Snuggie to its full capacity for nearly a year and now this dude comes along and claims it and doesn’t even use it correctly. He just sits there, with his arms getting cold every time he wants to change the channel, mocking me with his blatant abuse of the Snuggie, while I tug at an inadequate, regular blanket.

I’m not sure that our marriage will weather this storm.

The other people that I want to make fun of are the pro-life cupcake folks.

Now, I think if you’ve been reading me for any length of time, you’ll know that I’m very pro-choice. And that includes respecting people who choose not to have abortions for whatever reason. And I think if you’ve ever talked to me about the matter, you’ll know that I have a characteristically snarky attitude about the “debate,” because I think it’s dumb.

Anyway, I recently encountered the pro-life cupcake people, who were, I think, an off-shoot of the group who organized National Pro-Life Cupcake Day. The official day for this event was October 9th, but the group notes that you can have such an event whenever.

And the premise is to hand out free cupcakes to people, noting that baked goods represent the 50,000,000 babies who were aborted and the birthday parties that those kids never had.

So. Okay, fine. Whatever.

However, I have some questions about the logic behind this event. If you’re going for some kind of shock factor, and according to these folks, the goal is for “the cake in their mouth will become dry and the moment will hopefully become quite somber,” are cupcakes really the best way to go about it? I mean, cupcakes are pretty good, even at their worst, and I kind of doubt that reminding people of the fact that abortion exists will turn them off of cupcakes forever. And if they do, isn’t that kind of unfair to cupcakes? I mean, why drag cupcakes into this debate? They never hurt anyone. And if a person is so turned off mid-cupcake and isn’t able to finish their cupcake, isn’t that just a lot of wasted food? Food that could be donated to hungry, existing kids?

Also, if you keep handing out cupcakes as long as people keep having abortions, I think you’re sort of…doing it wrong. Because, really, if I wasn’t pro-choice before, drawing the connection that abortion = free cupcakes would sure as hell push me over to that side.

Ah, well. Road to hell and all of that.

Anyway, if you need me, I’ll be sitting on my couch, not in a Snuggie, and making inappropriate jokes all weekend log.

Yes, I am in the weeds, to use a term from my waitressing days. Lots of stuff going on at work, I’m doing some after hours stuff for the project I’m working on for class (I will tell you more about that later, because it’s really interesting), three freelance writing things are due, and I’m still vomiting pop culture all over MamaPop and shiny baubles on WeCovet. Also, I have hazy memories of having a baby and marrying a guy at some point in the past few years, but I might just be delirious.

Also, the G20 will be here next week and I’m getting, like, secondhand stress from it. The baby has off of school and it looks like I will be off Thursday due to my work building being on super lockdown. I may also take off Friday just because I know the commute will be hellacious. And as much as I respect the freedom to assembly and whatnot and most likely agree with the stances of many of the protesters, I would much rather watch that unfold on TV and not, you know, 10 feet away from me. Tear gas makes my hair frizz n’at.

Because of all of this, my misanthropy gland has been pulsing overtime and I’m currently much more irritated with everyone ever and their dumb fucking thoughts and actions than I usually am. Which is to say, just fuck off already. But in a nice way.

Why, yes, I did just quote “Karma Chameleon.” What of it?

I am cranky today. I’m having a lot of trouble getting work for various jobs (9 to 5, internship, freelance gigs) done and it’s making me alternate between anxious and furious.

So, to cheer me up, I’m going to share some pretty pictures with you.

Do you recall a year or two ago when color photographs from the 1930s and 1940s were making the rounds on the internet?

Photographers from the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information took these pictures around the time when the Great Depression was winding down and when World War II was gaining momentum. The photographers aimed to document the hardships of Americans during that time and to spur government aid.

A few years ago, the Library of Congress put the exhibition of these photos online.

To me and to many others, the pictures were so stunning because they suddenly brought the very recent past to the present. I think if you grow up with color photographs being a given, like I did, you draw an imaginary line in your cultural consciousness. On this side is color and that which I can relate to. On the other side is black-and-white, long ago and far away, and intangible hardships that I could never possibly grasp.

Suddenly, with just a glance at a picture like the one above and those raspberry dresses, it all seems real. You can smell the dirt and feel the heat of the day and hear the sounds of the carnival that might have been a huge treat for the whole family. The kids are most likely well into their 70s now and somehow getting to see them this way makes their experiences that much more understandable.

Now, if those weren’t cool enough, the LOC also has a gallery of pictures taken by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. They are also color photographs but they are from 100 years ago.

Yes, really. Go check them out and be sure to read about the colorizing process. I’m going to go try and be less bitchy.

The classics never die.

That is my current attitude. It really does not help that just a day ago I was happily lazing around Tracey‘s house with Angela, reveling in several days spent with good friends, having good conversations.

Today, life is not really up to my standards.

There are lots of things that I could say about this whole catastrophe.

I will say right now that I do not want to discuss the legitimacy of the accusation. I’m just not going to get into it with anyone because offensive shit is always said in such a discussion and I’m at a point in life where I just avoid certain minefields.

I’m mostly just really furious with Roethlisberger not having the sense to behave like a grown man with a lot at stake. Regardless of what may or may not have gone down in that hotel room, this is not the first time that he’s acted like a reckless douche. And this is not the first time that he seems to have forgotten that it’s not just one career, and it’s not just one team. It’s a whole city and our pride in what WE accomplish year after year, the Steelers being a big part of that.

The really interesting aspect to all of this is how the Rooneys and Tomlin will respond. They are not subscribers to the theory that any publicity is good publicity. They run a respectable organization and don’t tolerate typical antics from their athletes. However, will Ben get special treatment?

The husband and I went to a wedding on Saturday night. The groom has been friends with the husband for a number of years, but neither of us had met the bride, despite them being together for over two years. She knew of the husband and knew that he was DJing the first portion of the evening. But when she spotted me at the reception she looked a little concerned, like I might be a wedding crasher.

“I’m [the husband]’s wife! Also, you and I are friends on Facebook! Congratulations!” I saw the spark of recognition and all was well.

By the way, the husband’s DJing portion was pretty rad. The bride walked out to “It’s a Man’s World” by Marvin Gaye and then right after the couple kissed and started making their way down the aisle, he played “Lovely Day” by Bill Whithers. It was pretty sweet.

The ceremony and reception were both at Phipps, which was lovely and the couple kept things light by just having a tower of cupcakes from Dozen and hors d’oeuvres. The only flaw with this plan was that they had an open bar (wine and beer) and the hors d’oeuvres were light and limited. Soooo people got kind of rowdy…including a certain blogger we all know and love and whose name rhymes with jbibby.

The husband and I were 1 for 1 for exes present. My ex was easily avoided. The husband’s ex came and sat with us to chat at around Chardonnay #4 on a relatively empty stomach. I remember this conversation going just fine and even commiserating with her over our badly stubbed toes.

After she rejoined her date, the husband turned to me later and said, “You were all loud and kind of snippy with her.”

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? I WAS NOT!”

“Yeah, you were. It’s okay, though. It was kind of funny.”

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU MEAN, JAGOFF.”

And, yes, I do feel kind of sheepish about the fact that my last two blog entries have been about my twisted ability to accidentally get drunk, as though I don’t know what causes it.

Speaking of alcoholics, our useless neighbors forgot to put their trash out again and dumped it with ours. This practice in and of itself doesn’t bother me. I’m scatterbrained and can’t really judge anyone for forgetting such a task. However, it’s the CONTENTS of their trash that infuriates me. In the entry I linked to above, it was a bag of dirty diapers.

This week it was two cases of Beast. *horf*

As we got in the car to leave this morning, I said, loudly so that they might hear it, “I don’t want anyone thinking we drink that shit!” Think of my reputation, jerkfaces.

First:
The baby’s school instituted this new 6-day school week schedule this year. So the various classes that they don’t have everyday (ie, library, gym, music) are on different days every week. There’s no, “gym is on Mondays, library is on Tuesdays,” etc. Gym will be on, like, days 1 and 3 and library is on day 2 and so on and somewhere around the third day of the school year I got completely lost.

From my end, the schedule has been a total failure but I haven’t heard about them returning to reality where school is Monday through Friday and things make sense. So yesterday the baby got a notice for an overdue library book and owes them $18. I’m really angry about it, even though the baby and I signed this agreement thing saying that we understood library policies and blah blah but fucking seriously? Look, I’m sorry that I have to do these pesky things like “have a job” and “go to school” to “better my life” and not sit down every morning to figure out if Monday is actually the first day of the week or the third but I guess me learning this twisted math is worth $18. Jerks.

Second:
I’m a pretty healthy person. I mean, I don’t have any chronic illnesses or anything seriously wrong with me. And yet I have to see a general practitioner once a year for a physical (theoretically), an eye doctor once a year because I can’t see for shit, a gynecologist once a year to keep my, uh, motor running, and a dentist twice a year to keep me in solid foods (also theoretically). All of these appointments have to happen during work hours, which means at least five times a year I have to figure out a day when my work and school schedules aren’t completely ballistic and try to match that up with the doctor schedules which, if it’s even possible, are more ridiculous than the baby’s school schedule.

Mind you, these are just MY appointments. I can’t even think about the baby’s pediatrician, dentist, and allergist, and the two or three OTHER places that he has to go to for tests for the allergist, because if I think about that right now I may very well break something. (Happy place. Happy place.)

I’ve not successfully made it to a single doctor’s appointment yet this year because I have to make them so far in advance that by the time the appointment comes around, I have some other school or work obligation and I can’t make it. I’m pretty sure my dentist doesn’t even want to speak to me anymore and I’ve been trying to get in with my GP to get a physical because a) my parents recently jumped on my back about that because I now have Very Serious Cancer in my immediate family history and b) I want to get my learner’s permit renewed in the hopes that I can finally get my driver’s license. I get the impression that the husband is tired of driving me around because at least once a week he says something along the lines of, “You really need to get your fucking license.” (The fact that I’ve not passed the test yet is a whole other rant because I see the fucking nimrods that are allowed to just drive around legally every day and it makes my blood boil and I really need to just ask the asshole driving along at 20 MPH in the left lane the name of the assclown who licensed him. Ass.)

Anyway, it would be so totally rad if I could have like a Doctor’s Day where I maybe take the morning off of work, go to ONE building and see all of the necessary doctors in one day.

I just had to reschedule my physical because I can’t get to the appointment in time because of class and transportation and I’m just so fucking sick of taking care of shit like this.

There’s also the matter of all doctors nowadays maintaining multiples offices and what the fuck is that about? Now I have to remember that my dentist is only in my local office on Tuesdays and Thursdays and my GP is in my local office only on every third Friday. Because half the time I get an answering service and what exactly is the point of those? All the answering service can do is say, “They’re not in today and I can’t do anything for you.” Why not just get an answering machine that says, “We’re not here. We are at one of our 16 other offices rescheduling those suckers for September 2035 when hopefully they’ll already be dead and we won’t have to deal with them anyway. Call back on the full moon, but only after you’ve planted an asparagus spear and three fingerling potatoes under the south-facing eaves of your house?”

In these darker moods, it seems like life is just a huge pointless circle of shifting obligations and deadlines and I feel like an absolute tool for participating in any of it. I’ll just let Scarface speak for me.