Why I don't hate Valentine's Day

No, it’s not b/c I’m married to a thoughtful romantic (though I am). I'm going against the trendy grain of Valentine's-Day-is-idiotic for an entirely different reason. I like the concept of a day (“holiday” does seem a bit like overkill, I’ll admit) when a lot of people who might not otherwise think about “love” and all it entails, well, think about love and all it entails. It sends a good message. It's nice. 

Is Valentine’s Day commercial? Sure. (Most things are these days.) Is it overdone, overdressed, and otherwise like a Thanksgiving turkey? Definitely. Is it created by Hallmark as a ruthless profit machine? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised. But what I want to know is who really cares?! If Feb. 14th gets people doing nice things for their loved ones and spending time with them, then I can’t possibly see the harm. 

And don’t give me, “There shouldn’t have to be a designated day of the year for people to treat their spouse/partner with love; it should happen all the time.” Of course it should. Duh. And double duh. But for lots of people, it doesn’t. And I say 1 out of 365 is better than 0. 

So, all the Valentine's Day haters, hate away. But I'm going to smile and wish everyone a lovely day (even though I'll be sitting on my couch writing a paper). 

Me and my Valentine (on New Year's Eve - a holiday I do hate) 

Failure x 4

That is, I am once again not pregnant. 

On Saturday, we'll start using the ClearBlue Fertility monitor we dropped $150 on a few weeks ago (not to mention the cost of the test sticks; I won't even regale you with that wallet nightmare). You're supposed to start testing on day 5 of your cycle, and as you go through the days, the monitor asks you to test either for 10 or 20 days, depending on what I am not exactly sure. (Perhaps how much it wants to rip you off by forcing you to purchase more test sticks?) 

I feel like a sack of cinder blocks every time I see a woman (or man!) with a baby or small child, and since that's pretty nearly every time I step out my front door, I feel pretty consistently like bulky, porous building materials. Even before we started trying, I was pretty generally convinced that I would be unable to get pregnant, despite having absolutely zero reason for thinking this. Or, no reason other than my supposed pessimism, as Brad calls it. Every time I get my period it's further reinforcement of that fear. I know the average time it takes to get pregnant is (supposedly) a year, but until I do get pregnant, I'm going to be worried beyond belief that I will never. And if I read one more person saying (and I'm doing this in an annoying preschool teacher voice), "Don't think about it so much! It will happen when you're not trying!" I might throw up my Hi-C and peanut butter and jelly sandwich right onto someone's velcro shoes. 

Brad says it will happen soon. Butcher says he's got his fingers crossed. Amanda - with whom I have my second date tomorrow, this time at my house - says she understands how hard it is to not get frustrated but that once it happens I will be so happy and not remember what life is like without a baby. My mom says - and isn't this so my practical mother? - that she wonders if we're timing things right each month. 

I have a response to only one of these thoughts, and this is, "We just dropped $180 to make sure we get the timing right."

Some Final Thoughts on the Super Bowl

"Final?" you might well ask; "but you didn't have any initial thoughts on the Super Bowl . . ." Au contraire, my friend. 

I've had quite a few thoughts on the Super Bowl, but none in a spirit festive enough to share. But today, thinking about a quip from one of my students (a Pittsburgher and Steelers fan herself, she rooted for Green Bay) - which was an intensified version of a sentiment Brad shared post-loss on game night - I decided that since festivity is not in order, my un-festive thoughts are appropriate. 

This lack of festivity is not due to the obvious - the fact that the Steelers lost (or that they looked simply awful in Texas). Instead, it's due to my lack of, well, giving a crap that the Steelers lost (and that they looked awful in Texas). My student, for her part, is glad the Steelers lost. She feels - and I'm inclined to agree - that some kind of cosmic injustice would have been perpetrated had Roethlisberger gone from behaving badly, getting caught and "punished" for behaving badly, onto winning the Super Bowl the same season and being a major hero. (She wasn't quite as succinct, nor did she use the words "cosmic justice," but as a teacher of English, I make it my duty to find the gems hidden amidst the clunkiness.) Now Brad didn't go so far as to say that he's glad; but for the first time in the decade I've known him, a serious Steelers loss didn't hurt him the way getting a football to the gut hurts (and, believe me, I know - it fricking hurts). 

But I don't want to rehash how Ben is a jerk and deserved to lose, etc. etc. - people are probably doing that all over my great city. Instead I want to talk about how his ridiculousness killed the story of football for me. We want our "heroes" to have a flaw, sure, but not the flaw of being a sexual assaulter. By being someone I would rather forget and quite frankly hate to look at, Ben made me ambivalent about the biggest game in my favorite sport. He's not Hamlet or Oedipus (I'm overlooking the problematics of the whole "murder" thing); he's just a dirtball we pay a lot of money to watch. (Note that this is not coming from some hatred of professional atheletes making a lot of money. I'm a firm believer in if-you-don't-want-them-to-get-paid-obscene-amounts-of-money-then-stop-doing-the-things-that-enable-them-to-make-obscene-amounts-of-money. And I, for one, am not going to stop watching the NFL.) 

Perhaps I've got Clifford Geertz and Claude Levi-Strauss on my mind. If cockfighting is a central component of Balinese culture, then the NFL is a central component of ours. And, being a good structuralist (which I am NOT in reality), I expect my football to have the proper elements; and one of those - a HUGE one of those - is a compelling quarterback/team leader/inspirational figure. Someone to get behind. When that's missing, the story falls apart. None of the other elements - even an "aging star with killer toughness and down-to-earth charm" (read:  Hines Ward) and a "young coach with a feel-good family story" (read:  Mike Tomlin) can relate to each other in a way that makes sense, that coheres, that creates the comprehensible structure that is an NFL team worth cheering for. 

At least not for me. 

Admittedly, my grasp of structuralism sucks. That's me and lit. theory for you. But my contention remains firm:  he killed the Super Bowl by killing the story that structures it. And of course I would think of things in terms of stories. Fiction MFA - duh . . . . 

(It should be mentioned here that I have loathed him for years - long before the scandals, long before the official hate party commenced. He's a crybaby and a drama queen, though in a unique, non-primadonna way. I just want that on the record.) 

As for the post title, these are my final thoughts b/c 1.  I'm sick of talking/hearing about it even though, quite interestingly, I haven't talked/heard much about it at all, and 2.  it's really, truly not worth any further discussion. See the abovementioned reasons.

What has happened to Southland?

                                                  

(Spoiler alert:  if you haven't watched episode 4 of the current season of Southland and you plan to, then don't read this.) 

Things should be going well in the Land of South. Sammy's horrible, annoying, nerve-grating wife is finally getting the heave-ho, and, given Sal's lesser role this season, his shrieking daughter Kimmy has been thankfully MIA. (Brad and I have long wished for violence to befall both of these characters). Add that to the infrequent appearance of the idiot Dewey in recent episodes, and season 3 sounds like it's got the makings of magic. 

But it sucks. 

The episodes have lost their tightness, the interconnectedness of the various strands. The gritty violence took a leave of absence, while the surprising humor of episodes like "See the Woman" (John and Ben in the wig shop; the missing Bentley with the Great Dane) can be found only in the occasional side comment by John. One week's action seems pretty interchangeable with the next's. And now, a television travesty has occured:  Det. Nate Moretta has been killed out of nowhere. 

Not only is actor Kevin Alejandro gorgeously gorgeous, but his character Nate was also likeable, realistic, and interesting. He was someone you actually wanted to watch. And I don't care whether his sudden death was super "real," etc.:  the simple fact is that the show cannot afford to lose him right now. This season, Lydia is the only redeeming aspect of the series. Her new partner Ochoa is irritating and uninteresting; John and Ben have been bickering like old women at a card game; and, as Greg over at SpicyMovieDogs.com says, it was Nate who made Sammy's character work. With Sal and Chickie thrust into "recurring" rather than regular roles, the show doesn't have much to work with. Please don't tell me that Lydia's gonna start hating her job and go to med school; I don't know if I could bear it. 

I can't believe I'm saying it, but I long for the time when, two or three days after watching an episode, we were driving down the highway and in a momentary lull in some unrelated conversation, Brad exclaims, "F***ing Kimmy! Every time she leaves the house she gets in trouble!" The show was that memorable and intense. 

Since I should, instead of watching tv, be doing my loads of work, I ought to take the show's current crappiness as a sign to watch less tv. Instead, I'm thinking Nate's death is just another reason we need to start watching True Blood. I could get used to Kevin Alejandro as a hunky witch.

To quote Borat,

"Great success!" 

In other words, we'll be having a second date.

It's like a first date! only not

That is, I'm going to visit my old high school/early college best friend this afternoon. I haven't seen her in almost five years, nor have I talked to her or texted with her or e-mailed with her or sent telepathic messages with her. In other words, no contact. Brad and I moved away for me to get my MFA in 2006, she got married and bought a house in 2007, and so on and so on - all the while incommunicado. 

Then she e-mailed me out of the blue (well, we do exchange Christmas cards, so not 100% out of the blue) a few weeks ago, and we immediately started chatting it up big time. Like almost daily. And so, here we are, two weeks later, and I'm Google-mapping her address and about to wrap the little bath toys I got for her baby (a completely adorable 9-month old boy. Whose birthday is 2 days before mine. I'm more than a little bit jealous, of course). 

Yesterday, in the absolutely-no-talking-section of the library, Butcher asked me if I was nervous. I responded with a resounding YES. It seriously feels like a first date; or like I told Brad this morning, a try-out. In other words:  like high school all over again. Will she like me?? Will I like her?? Will we laugh?? Will there be things to say?? Can we avoid awkward silences?? 

So, to prepare for this "date" (or, "audition" if you prefer) - which begins around 12 or 12:15 - I'm going to shower and fix my hair. I'm going to wear skinny jeans and a green cowl neck sweater. Yes, I've had the outfit picked out in my mind for days. Unfortunately, all the car drama (I haven't even written about getting rear-ended in my Honda last Sunday - add up the b.s.!) ate up the time I had to get a haircut this week. Which I needed anyway. But really wanted to get before seeing her. 

Is this all absurd? Maybe. But I'm excited. Wish me luck! 

Random Memory: Fuzzy and the Closet

(File this under humorous; just desserts; and lackadaisical pet-parenting) 

This popped into my mind yesterday, and it's too enjoyable not to share. 

Back when Brad and I were first married (fondly, "the olden days"), after I dropped out of law school but before I started grad. school for library science (why oh why did I do either of those?), we both worked at the community college. This was his "real" job at the time - in quotes because it was not paying "real" money, nor was he getting "real" hours - and it was quite possibly the place where I made the most money I have ever made. Which isn't saying a whole lot. But still. 

We lived in the city then, North Oakland to be precise, with our two cats, P.J. (girl cat) and Fuzzy (boy cat). We've had them since they were 8 weeks old - and "we" were five months old (that's another humorous anecdote) - and at the time they were 4 or 5 years. They liked to sit in the many, giant windows looking out onto Craig St. And onto traffic and a Sunoco and PAT buses. Their food/water was in the dining room; their little box in a little space behind the front door. It was cramped, but it was our first apartment all togethe (awwwwwwwww!). 

Anyway, for me and Brad to be at work at 8:00 a.m., we would leave around 7:15. Pet the kitties at the door, tell them lovey things, and then we'd hike however many blocks to where we parked our car (couldn't afford to park in the garage under the building); join the exodus of commuters, curse the traffic, almost be late every day (except for the days when we were late); stay till 4, then drive home in the same sort of traffic. 

One particular Friday, however, we got a little frisky and made a trip to the mall after work. There we raided Macy's sale racks/tables, bought Brad dress shoes for work (they were black, I remember), and otherwise dilly-dallied, buying or not buying. We probably ate food in there somewhere because we like to eat food. 

It was winter, and when we got back to the apartment it was dark out. I'd guess 7:00, 7:15. Could have been 7:30. Any way you slice it, we're talking about 12 hours since departure. 

Wait, what's that I hear? Sounds like scratching at my bedroom (fabulously huge) closet door. Let me open it. Oh! There's a cat. Oh! He's been in there for twelve hours. Poor Fuzzy - oops! We loved and coddled and cuddled and apologized to our little beast (and by "we" I mean "me" since I'm the one who failed to check he wasn't in there before shutting the door). So:  love, coddle, cuddle, apologize, repeat. Then we forgot about him. 

Brad did a fashion show for me, modeling his new kicks in the living room. Then we see sweet little Fuzzy sitting in the shoe box, on top of the gray-black tissue paper, staring out at us with his big, dumb eyes. Aw, how cute - cats just love their boxes! 

Except this wasn't love. This was revenge. He peed right there in the shoe box. Twelve hours of urine, thirty feet from the litter box. And anyone who's had a cat knows there's not many smells worse than the smell of cat pee. I guess it was owed us. Though it would have been more fitting had he peed on something in my closet. Thank goodness he didn't, that's all I'm saying. And it's a good thing Brad liked those shoes.