Love Actually

 

Exactly.

Also the title of one of my favorite movies, this is a good title for my post.  Some people say Valentine's Day is the Hallmark Holiday.  So many people I know dislike Valentine's Day because they say it was created to put pressure on people to spend money.  You're certainly the asshole in the relationship if you ignore it.  Every year people buy crappy presents such as balloons and teddy bears and drop loads of cash on short-lived items like flowers or dinner. They fret over the card or whether or not the gift might be misconstrued to mean something different like "you're fat" or "the house is filthy".   But if your significant other is especially sensitive, he or she will purchase a thoughtful gift like the butt/face towel.  Nothing means I love you more than saying, "I don't want you to wipe your face where your stinky butt was."  Certainly this would surely guarantee some V-day nookie.  But I like Valentine's Day.  I like it a lot.  For me to be a tom-boy you'd think I'd get nauseous at the site of all the pink and hearts, flowers and balloons, but I don't.  You see, Valentine's Day means something different for me.  I've always looked forward to it.  My parents also always chose to give my sister and me a little something for Valentine's Day.  Sometimes it would be a little box of chocolates and sometimes it'd be a necklace.  And there's always the elementary joy of exchanging very cool Scooby Doo Valentines with your classmates.  Regardless, Valentine's Day to me is about taking the time out from everyday life to stop and say, "I love you."  My husband will not be so stupid that he picks February 14th to work late.  There will be no "Weekday Wagon" (we attempt to save money by trying not to deplete our booze supply on

"Awww, so thoughtful!  You shouldn't have."

 weekdays) and it won't be a regular old night.  He may or may not purchase flowers (if he did I'd love it as I always do) and we won't rush into the restaurant scene to blow tons of money on prix fixe menus and a sitter.   What we will do is have dinner together as a family, have wine together after the kids are asleep, possibly go to bed early, and hopefully have sex.  That, my dear people, is romance in a can these days and I LOVE IT.  Yes, that occurs on days that aren't Valentine's Day and No, we don't have to have Valentine's Day to make it happen, but February 14th is a holiday that we treat like a holiday and for that I am grateful.

Am I crazy? We may not know for sure until April of 2015.

I have been through a roller coaster of emotions over the last four and half years.  Sometimes I'm indignant about my rants being justified and other times I look back and am thrilled my husband has stuck by my side (because God knows lots of men would have run for the hills).

Starting around September 2007 I've been all out crazy.  It started with work and boss woes.  I went through the ups and downs of job responsibilities changing and dealt with a performance improvement plan (PIP) that I completed successfully (sarcastic 'yay.'), but the entire time I was doing it I felt it was complete and utter bullshit.  Don't get me wrong, I learned a lot about politics and diplomacy in the corporate world during this process, but still how can a company redefine an entire department and its qualifications without a percentage of the people failing miserably?  So in April of 2008 when I was four months pregnant and my company was going through yet another down-sizing, my husband and I made the decision for me to take a severance package.  You see, I was at-risk of being laid-off with my history of a PIP and all and a voluntary departure would benefit us so much better than an involuntary situation.  It was an incredibly hard thing to go through; dealing with the emotions of pregnancy and the fear of unemployment.  I worked my last day during my sixth month of pregnancy.  Friends encouraged me to apply for work with this enormous belly hanging off the front of me telling me stories of different people they knew who'd gotten job offers at eight months pregnant, but I was a realist and knew that was improbable.   Regardless, I applied to jobs and got called for interviews.  There is likely NOTHING more humbling than walking into a job interview to see the realization on the faces of those doing the hiring that they'd wasted their time on me.  The eyes went straight to my stomach and then the forced smile and eye contact began.  I'd walk out every time with less confidence and pride as I'd walked in with.  Thus begins my life as a "kept woman" a.k.a. a SAHM a.k.a. mommy.  The timeline went like this: 

Whoah!

• January 2008 - Found out I was pregnant
• March 2008 - Chose to leave job I'd spent eight and a half years at
• June 2008 - Worked my last day at that company
• June-July 2008 - Applied and interviewed for jobs
• August 2008 - Ate bonbons and watched my stories
• September 2008 - Accepted God's blessing and became a mom.  Wow!

By the time our precious bundle arrived, Clay and I had decided I was going to stay home for at least a year.  Staying home one year would allow me to breastfeed for 12 months without having to pump at my place of work.  Fast forward one year and Clay and I had decided to expand our family one last time.  I had no loyalty established with an employer so this made the most sense to us.  We were incredibly fortunate and our little man came to be very easily.  I spent our tenth wedding anniversary pregnant instead of taking some exciting couples trip, but that was okay.  In June of 2010 we welcomed baby number two.  So if you think about it, when I weaned in August of 2010 I'd been pregnant or breast feeding for just under four years.  Now here it is February of 2012 and I'm more neurotic than ever.  So what's my excuse?  It certainly can't be hormones at this point. Or does it take three and three quarters years to undo this mess?  (Oh God, I hope not.)  If that's true then I should be good ol' Shelly by June 2015.  Wow.

Facebook is not where it's at.

What a sweet, dear friend I lost.

I recently lost a good friend.  It was sudden and unexpected.  It has been hard.  But what made me most displeased about the situation (besides losing said friend) was that someone with good intentions made the comment that I was "putting it out there" that I was grieving.  I say good intentions because I think this person was trying to check on me and see how severely upset and/or depressed I was, but what exactly does "putting it out there" mean?  Does it mean that I'm wrong for saying "Lost a dear friend today and am heartsick I didn't make more time to spend with him. Please keep the love of his life in your prayers." the same day he passed away or "Having a rough time of it. Little prayers, please, friends."  48 hours later?  I really didn't consider myself being too transparent or public about one of the moments when I hurt the deepest.  I simply thought it was what one could expect from a Facebook friend that is suffering the loss of a close friend.    That being said, I found myself unintenionally filtering any pain, grief, anger, frustration, annoyance and misery I might have experienced.  It has now been over two months and I'm still feeling down and out, stressed, mentally fatigued, and sad.  But I no longer feel comfortable placing my true feelings online.  At least not on Facebook.  So I started this blog.  This blog will be me unfiltered.  I will not care about voicing my political feelings, my personal feelings, my religious feelings, and certainly not my human feelings.  This blog may be a good recipe or it could be a good rant.  Regardless, I plan on making this my complete and total outlet for sanity preservation.  Here goes.