I’m personally not a fan. Valentine’s Day has been historically unkind to me. On that day I’ve been forgotten, fought with, and even cheated on. Okay, technically the cheating didn’t occur on the 14th, but that was when it was revealed so it’s all about the same to me.

When hubby and I got together I made it very clear to him that I do not celebrate Valentine’s Day. It didn’t matter that he was amazing and would have loved to shower me with wonderful gifts, I wanted none of it. I even made it clear that should he propose on Valentine’s Day I would say no. He waited and popped the question on the 16th.

Even now that I’m married I chose to continue ignoring V-Day. Sure, I have a sweetie who would still love to shower me with wonderful gifts, but why should either of us be pressured to perform on a specific day because some zombie corporation can make an extra buck. Not to mention the number of people, women specifically, who are left feeling somehow less when they go through the day without getting a stupid box of chocolates or generic bouquet. That’s just not cool.

So here’s the deal. Valentine’s Day sucks. Instead of making it about romantic love let’s make this year about an unconditional love. Let’s love on people around us who need it. Buy a few dozen carnations and hand them out at the store to everyone you pass. Take a big box of chocolate to the office and share it with your coworkers. Leave cards under the wipers of your neighbors’ cars.

Valentine’s Day isn’t going away. I know, I’ve tried to get rid of it for quite a while. I can’t beat it so I’m joining but I’m sharing the love with more than just my family. Join me?

I’m stymied and stuck. I have sugar cookies to cut out and decorate, floors that need sweeping and mopping, shirts that need to be ironed and presents that need to be wrapped. Unfortunately I’m tired from all the baking, cleaning, laundering and wrapping I’ve already done. I’m out of motivation and I’m thinking WWSD, or What Would Santa Do?

I think that’s a good way to get through the holidays. Perhaps I’ll sell bracelets to crazed last minute shoppers. It’s at least a good stocking stuffer.

If Santa was behind on his baking he’d call Mrs. Claus (who doesn’t ever get a first name which is very discriminatory if you ask me) and ask her for a hand. If his floors needed cleaning he’d call Mrs. Claus to pull out the broom and get to work. A wrinkled red suit would be immediately care for by his loving wife. Wrapping presents shouldn’t be a problem for the jolly old elf with all those little elves at his disposal, but should he find them slacking he could always enlist the Mrs. for an extra set of hands.

I guess the answer to what Santa would do is that he’d dump it all on his long-suffering wife. So where do I get one of those? Is it to late to add to my Christmas list?

Tonight I’m waiting for the husband to arrive home so I can run out the door. One of my dearestestestest friends from high school is visiting her parents and carved out an evening to get together for dinner. I’m so looking forward to seeing her but I’m but I could definitely do without this headache. Dinner for the family is cooking and should be done right on time so hubby doesn’t have to figure out whether the pork chops are fully cooked or not. My hair is passable and my clothes survived the day unscathed so I don’t have to worry about that.

The funny thing is that the more nights I go out the more I feel like I need a night out. Something isn’t jiving there. I’m guessing that what I really need is a week of nights in to get caught up on sleep and sanity. Perhaps in January. That’s probably when I’ll get around to editing more than just the prologue too. Happy Holidays!

This morning I found a sandwich in PK’s bag that had been there for a minimum of 3 weeks and was growing mold on its mold. B threw my cell phone in the diaper pail. I spent an hour and a half shopping for dress pants for DH. (Do petite stores for men exist?) I’ve had to make apologetic calls to a neighbor for a rude daughter, fight with another daughter about the important of eating regularly and changed too many poopy diapers. I’m done.

All I want to do for the rest of the night is relax my butt into the couch with a glass of wine, a book and some ear plugs. I’m wondering if there’s an odds maker out there that can come up with some numbers telling me how likely is the success of that scenario.

It’s gone by so fast and it makes me sad to think that I only have eight more before she’ll leave the nest. I’m asking myself if I hugged her enough and laughed with her enough and did I spend enough time crying with her? Have I been the best mother I could have been or did I waste too much time and miss too many moments?

She talks about boys now and loves to sit on the phone with her girlfriends giggling over clothes and classes and cliques. She dresses herself without asking my opinion most days and offers me advice on my wardrobe. She can brush her own hair all the way down to the back ends even though it’s long and hard to reach and she puts in her own ponytails and barrettes. She wants to wear makeup.

It’s only been a little while since she spent all day curled in my arms sleeping peacefully to just the sound of my heartbeat. Just days ago she toddled her first steps toward me with a mostly gummy grin. It was only yesterday that she learned to use the potty all by herself and mere hours since she started her first day of school.

She has her own cell phone now and is begging to be allowed to stay home by herself and I worry that she’s growing up too fast. Then she comes into my room to crawl in bed with me in the middle of the night because she had a nightmare. She’s half child and half teenager, stuck in the middle and fighting a tug-of-war between wanting to grow up and the desire to stay my baby forever. It’s a battle that I know I won’t win but I’m still pulling as hard as I can because I’m just not ready to let go yet.

My baby is turning 10 in less than four hours now. The big double digit birthday. Tonight I’ll wake her up at 12:36, the exact moment she came into this world, and I’ll eat a piece of cake with her curled up in on her bed in the dark and tell her the story about the night she was born. Tomorrow we’ll celebrate with McDonald’s and this weekend she’ll have a sleepover with her friends.

Tomorrow night after she’s gone to sleep I will celebrate myself. I will pour myself a glass of wine and reminisce about the last decade while celebrating my tenth anniversary in the most time-honored profession known to man. And I will cry because my little angel is one more year closer to spreading her wings and soaring.

The truth is that the happier I am the more I want to write and the less I know what to say because to talk about the good things would likely jinx them. I just realized today that now really is the best time to jinx things though. Is the trick to see how long you can go before the other shoe drops or is it to let go of the shoe yourself and see what happens? As an experiment to see if shoes can float I’m dropping the shoe, jinxing myself and sharing my bliss.

I’m sitting on the train writing this out (wireless technology RAWKS) as I chug home through the chilly dark of this early winter evening toward the best human being that I have ever met. He is perfectly flawed. He’s sweet, kind, generous, and of all things! in love with me!!!

To try and keep a long story short (that’ll be a first ) I’ll just say that we met 5.5 years ago working at the root of all evil. He left shortly after I started to go to his current job but stayed in touch and asked me out a couple months later. I declined citing the current boyfriend’s potential disapproval of me getting involved in extracurricular activities and we settled into a safe little friendship. He became my best friend as I extracted myself from the root of all evil and continued in that position while I worked elsewhere. In October I found myself jobless again and he told me about a job at his company which I snagged post haste. Two days after starting there I realized that he was a totally cutie (although I had always known he was cute he was never cute in an inner melty kind of way to me until that moment) which I kept to myself for a month but finally blurted out in a burst of insipid babble. He reciprocated and now we’re together.

Things to note about him. He is a slob. I won’t go into details lest someone from the Health Department stumbles by but he was living the ultimate stereotypical bachelor life. ‘Nuff said about that.

He doesn’t know how to cook. He can make simple stuff like grilled cheese and basic pasta dishes but apparently scrambled eggs still escape him. If it can’t be thrown on the grill he’s borderline clueless. He used to eat a lot of frozen microwaveable dinners. ‘Nuff said about that.

He’s short. By short I mean shorter than me. Which is short. He says he’s 5′6″ but he lies. He’s 5′5 3/4″. Short. In addition to being short he’s also about as thick as a twig. He’s just recently gained enough weight that his size 30″ waist jeans no longer cling to his belt to avoid a perilous fall. ‘Nuff said about that.

He is impossibly patient with me. No matter how ridiculous or ludicrous I become he doesn’t seem to see it and loves me anyway. I’m the luckiest woman ever. ‘Nuff said about that.

Everyone thinks that the kitchen is the center of the household where are the family members meet and talk and catch up while making a snack or grabbing a drink. It’s where the cooking happens and since we eat approximately three times a day it seems to be the crossroad for everyone and everything. I propose that there is another place where important family interactions occur on a regular basis and that is in the bathroom. Don’t doubt me just because Norman Rockwell didn’t paint it.

Think about it. Where does everyone want to be in the morning? Where is the line before bed at night? Where’s the last place everyone visits before leaving the house and the first place they go when they get home? The bathroom. The center of the home.

I realized the importance of bathrooms long ago. Five years ago when I was still working at the root of all evil (ie the company that still owed me enough money to pay off my credit cards, car and mortgage for a year) I was at a show working in our booth when I conceived the perfect bathroom. It’s the size of a bedroom with two vanities below a wide mirror next to a full-length mirror. It has a separate alcove for the toilet, but not with a door because who wants to be shut up in a closet when you’re taking a big ole smelly you-know-what. The floor is carpeted by the toilet and sinks but is tiled in front of the double-wide shower with jets running floor to ceiling on two sides as well as at the foot of the steps leading to the whirlpool bathtub. Directly across from the bathtub is a fireplace because it takes forever to light enough candles to read by in the bathtub and I’m always worried I’ll knock one over and burn something plus it’s a fantastic mood setter in addition to being a wonderful way to warm up the bathroom without running up the water bill.

Bathrooms are so critical in my life that I based my decision on what home to buy on the difference in bathrooms. One place had two full baths, one master and one in the hall while the other had one large “super” bath that connected the two bedrooms. I chose the “super” bath house.

For some families the bathroom is all about privacy but in my house it’s all about community so we go for size over quantity. There may be locks on the doors but they’re really more of a formality than anything else. Even a locked door doesn’t stay that way for long. It’s impossible to ignore incessant screaming, pounding, kicking and thumping for more than a few seconds so as a general rule, unless you’re a guy, it’s best to not lock the bathroom door. That’s why size matters because in a matter of minutes the whole family is crowded into the bathroom.

Spy Baby will sit on the floor coloring while her sister relieves herself and I do the morning dance between all my hair products and styling implements. I’m sure we all look quite ridiculous as Boyfriend can undoubtedly attest to. Then we switch. SB gets her teeth brushed while mommy checks the size of her ghetto booty and Princess Know-it-all cries over the tangles in her hair. The bathroom in the morning is more complicated that a Broadway production.

But we’re all in it and that’s what counts. I can’t imagine getting ready in the morning without the hustle and bustle of my girls twirling around me. It’s unfathomable and I haven’t even mentioned the evening bath routine! In our house the kitchen is important but it’s not central. In the kitchen we cook and do dishes and we have the occasional knock-down drag-out fight-to-the-death screaming tantrum argument but that’s not what makes a room special. It was in the bathroom that I explained the facts of life to PK. It’s in the bathroom that SB greets me with a morning hug and kiss. Those are the moments I remember and cherish.

Someday I may have my luxurious dream master bathroom but even if I do it’s likely that the bathtub will be full of pillows and blankets so we can curl up together in front of the fire. And that will be just fine.

I was kind of looking forward to taking the train because I imagined that it would give me time to myself for thoughtful introspection and all that blahdy-blah-blah stuff. I figured I’d have almost 3 hours for reading each day which would make me a calmer and possibly saner person. Plus, no road rage! And those things have happened, but what I didn’t figure in what the anxiety that would replace all the other stuff.

I’m one of those habitually late people. I have no solid grasp on the concept of time and its inevitable passing. I often get lost in a thought or activity and lose track. This has always been a minor nuisance but not a major problem because I could easily make up for tardiness by driving faster or staying later. No longer. I am now a slave to the train schedule. So far nothing disastrous has happened and I’m hoping that inflicting this on myself will help me to become a better person and all, but I’m doubtful. Thus the anxiety. I think that after the first time I miss my morning train and the sky doesn’t fall I’ll end up not worrying quite so much, it’s just the unknown. Because no one can convince me that the sky doesn’t care about me messing up the morning routine until the heavens prove their disinterest by being disinterested at the appropriate time.

Once I’m on the train it’s not so bad. The morning is easier on me because I get on and sit there until we hit the end of the line, then everyone gets up and that’s my cue to close the book and start walking. In the evening it’s a little trickier. I listen to my music and read my book and try to keep track of where we are along the line but today I the car I was in didn’t have good speakers so I had trouble hearing them announce the stops. I was so engrossed in my book that I didn’t notice the passage of time and it’s dark out so I couldn’t glance out the window to see where we were. Fortunately I was able to make out the announcement when we stopped at the station right before mine and I was able to scoot my tush to the back to deboard when we hit my stop.

Then there’s the last annoyance of the train. The people. In general I like people and I don’t have a problem with sharing a seat with a stranger. If I keep my headphones on or my nose buried in the pages I seem to attract like-minded traveling companions who don’t wish to chat but will pull out their own iPods or newspapers or whatnot and leave me alone. Yesterday, however, I had my first brush with a not so considerate person. Since I’m one of the first stops on the route I am able to grab and empty seat and I scoot over to the window to make room for other passengers. I’m just polite like that. So this guy gets on yesterday and I saw him out of the corner of my eye and thought “not this one!” but he sat down anyway. He was a very tall gentleman and rather portly. He looked at me and I avoided eye contact. He then tipped his head straight back and went to sleep. You all know what’s coming next right? As he slept he began to slump over in my direction. Long story short, by the time we hit the city I was getting overly friendly with the window and couldn’t even reach in my pocket to adjust the volume of my iPod when it started blaring in my ears. The dude woke up and didn’t even apologize for taking up 4/5 of the seat. BLECH!

So that’s that.