Be Mine, Be Mine

I hate Valentine’s Day.  There, I said it.  I don’t just moderately dislike it, I hate it with the power of a 1000 suns.  I recommend if you are all goo goo eyed in love and have a ‘betrothed’ that you’re planning to spill your love, affection and pink and red wrapped sweetness onto, stop reading.  This is sure to suck the colour out of your rainbow.  

Most of you will agree that Valentine’s Day is just another hopped up, over-commercialized, tacky, expensive contrived day on the calendar that forces us to spend money on crap in an effort to demonstrate the love and affection one feels about their special someone.  There are those who choose not participate in the day at all.  But I warn you, it’s a carefully placed trap.  If you recognize the day with a Valentine-y type sentiment, what are you doing the other 364 days to show your affection?  If you don’t, someone is bound to be disappointed that you didn’t offer up some gesture.  If you don’t have a ‘Valentine’, you’re really not invited to participate.  What a great holiday.

Here’s a brief history about the days origins:  Bishop Valentine was arrested for conducting secret marriage ceremonies for soldiers in Rome under the rule of Claudius II (270 AD) who believed marriage would make his men weak and unable to defend his Empire. Valentine was said to have also tried to convert Claudius to Christianity and renounce his own Roman Gods.  For these injustices, Valentine was incarcerated.  While in the klink, he became close (and allegedly healed) the jailor’s daughter.  He penned a farewell note to her, signed ‘from your Valentine.‘ He was then beheaded, unceremoniously, on February 14th.  He was later sainted by the Catholic church for devotion to his faith.  Over the centuries, young lovers celebrate the 14th in recognition of love, devotion and the sanctity of marriage.  

Coles notes version:  Love leads to Marriage. Marriage leads to Death.  This is bad.

Okay, so I might be slightly cynical.  I’m not poo-poo on love, just Valentine’s Day.   I don’t have good memories of it.  My grandfather died on Valentine’s Day.  I was heartbroken and disappointed the boy I had a huge crush on in high school never sent me a ‘secret rose’ I had hoped for weeks to receive (I had even practiced my look of utter surprise when the rose was to be passed to me in front of ALL my friends).  I never exchanged a card or gift on Valentine’s Day during my entire marriage.  A boyfriend broke up with me on the eve of the day of Love.  Good times.

Now, according to the experts (my friends who are sickly happy in stable relationships), they’re not huge fans of the day either.  “It’s competitive, all the women at work brag about what their husbands and boyfriends bought them.  When you say you didn’t get anything, they look at you with pity.”  “Exactly.  I don’t like all the hype and expectation around it.”  “Valentine’s Day?  Guys don’t think about it.”  So if single people feel like it’s a big flashing neon sign reminding of their un-coupled status and couples don’t really enjoy it either, why recognize it all?  

I’ll tell you who loves Valentine’s Day:  Retailers.  Retailers begin Valentine’s education on their most captive audience: kids.  They prey on their innocence and exuberance.  Oh the excitement and anticipation kids feel making their Valentine mailboxes at school and buying (okay, mom buying) over-priced heart-laden pieces of paper that proclaim; “Scooby Doobie Do Be My Valentine!” and “Valentine, I Choo Choo Choose You!”  They carefully fill out the ‘to’ and ‘from’ and add stickers and suckers and heartfelt goodness to stuff into classmate’s mailboxes.  All this is superfun! Until one poor little kid doesn’t get the same amount of cards as their BFF.  And that’s exactly what retailers anticipate. Why else do they package those cards in groups of 17 when the average class-size is 24?  The kid who has the least amount of Valentines evolves into an insecure and unimaginative young lover who will gobble up sappy Hallmark cards, elaborately boxed bon bons, hydroponically grown roses and over-priced heart shaped jewelry.  They do this to compensate for that one missed Valentine card in Grade 3.

The only merit I see in Valentine’s Day is chocolate is affiliated with it.  If you walk into any store after January 15th you get stoned on the aroma of chocolatey goodness, but you have to avert your eyes for fear of being blinded by the rows of red wrappers.  It’s ironic chocolate is a mainstay of Valentine’s Day though.  Cadbury  conducted a study in the UK in 2007 asked a sample of 1,524 adults their favourite way of treating themselves.  About 52 per cent of the women stated they would choose chocolate over sex.  Good for Cadbury but it makes you wonder how the men are ‘treating’ themselves....

Okay.  Whew.  I’m glad I got that off my chest. I feel better.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to ponder why I’m single over a very large box of chocolates.  To: Me. From: Me. (with Love).

...and Fun is Good.

Okay, it’s February.  According to the ‘Big Scary List’, it ‘highly encourages’ I maintain forward momentum and add another item to keep focus.  I would say that so far, I’m doing pretty good; with the exception of maintaining diligence to get the Temple as orderly as the Manor. I won’t lie, it has not been an easy task.  Committing an hour to working out and a half hour to meditate daily usually gets trumped by such silly (and allegedly ‘required’) responsibilities as caring for the Monkey or working for a living.  I have however, ignored wrangling the riot of dog fur that barricades the second floor in search of some serenity, but remarkably, the taunting mass doesn’t self clean.  Neither does the fridge, just sayin.  I'm going to have to really concentrate on developing my gift of mind control to get the residences of the Manor to do my bidding and housekeeping.  I'd start with the newts but they'd be useless making lunches.  Perhpas I'll work on the Pancake dog; she seems less astute than the other fur-kid and she might be good with a vacuum....

According to the Big Scary list, February = Love.  pfft.  

Now, let’s clarify something right up front; the List doesn’t say I have to find Love this month; I’m big on lists, not acts of self-humiliation.  I was apparently lucid enough not to write anything more than just ‘Love’ on the List.  I believe I may have been under the influence of the warm-fuzzy-happy glow of wine when I wrote ‘Love’ on the list anyway, which explains why it is scrawled in serial killer handwriting with a sinister smiley face beside it.  (*note to self; don’t drink and list).  

But you know what?  I’m not ready to talk about ‘Love’, or more specifically, romantic Love.  As much as I heart lists and intend to adhere to the Big Scary List, I’ve also committed myself to write what inspires here in my blog.  I’m not yet inspired to write about Love; which is alright by me, I’m too busy having fun.  That’s right, fun.  Oh and by the way, having fun is on the Big Scary list too.  I know.  It really is a pretty awesome list.    

A long time ago, one of my oldest and dearest friends accurately (and not so delicately) observed that unless my activities had an end goal, objective and/or purpose, I really wasn’t very good at just being whimsical and playful.  In short, I wasn’t good at havin’ the fun.  And she was right, damn it.  So, like any self-respecting type A, I immediately set my focus on being more playful and spontaneous.  I, was going to make myself have fun. 

See, I grew up in a house with a ‘Once-you’ve’.   ‘Once-You’ve’ finished your homework, you can go play.  ‘Once-You’ve’ finished the dishes, you can ride your bike.  A Once-You’ve is the creature who steals fun from everything and hoards it for itself.  You need to feed the Once-you’ve in order for it to relinquish an opportunity for fun.  Therefore, in my house, fun was mutually exclusive of regular day-to-day things.  I learned fun was potentially a reward for doing something arduous, tedious and/or necessary.

I thought for sure once I had a child I would automatically know how to have fun based on maternal osmosis and well, kids come with a whole bunch of brightly coloured fun-invoking accruements.  I even bought a 12 pack of Play Doh and all the fixin’s in preparation of becoming FUN.  One Fuzzy Pumper Barber Shop later and still, no instant fun-ness.   For the record, sleep-deprivation, vomit and an endless supply of poop is so not fun.  Infants are fun-suckers.  But, infants turn into to toddlers and then turn into preschoolers and eventually control their own bodily functions and require regular sleep.  Then the fun starts to appear. 

The Monkey has truly become my OB1 of fun.  She’s taught her not-so-young Paduin quite a bit about the necessity of this unforeseen Force and hence, it keeps the ‘Once-You’ve’s’ from taking up residence at the Manor.  It’s amazing what happens when you recognize the value of fun into your daily routine actually.  You can learn to skate and swim faster than taking lessons, or you can enjoy shoveling snow.  You wear silly hats and dance when you clean, you are more creative in your work and remarkably, you may actually look forward to wearing tube socks in public. 

Fun needs momentum to live so  infuse fun into all that you do, and be sure not to take something purely fun and impose so much rigor around that it suffocates the fun.  Say like, oh, I dunno, imposing a topic, or issuing deadlines or a minimal number of weekly posts to a blog, just as a random example... I'm sure that would kill any sort of enjoyment out of  a highly enjoyable and cherished activity.  (Mental note: Be sure not to become a sucker of the fun).

So, as a Type A, I still need to validate my effort with a hard line measurable.  I need to answer the question of whether or not I’m now officially fun, but how will I empirically mea….

‘Mommy, why are you always so silly?’

Nuff said.