Two days before Valentine’s Day. The moaning has hit full tilt.

Everyone hates Valentine’s Day. I don’t hate it; I just don’t celebrate it, and I really never have. The Donor and I, I don’t think, have ever once really ‘celebrated’ it. I mean, he’ll run out on Sunday morning and buy me the obligatory Bunch of Asparagus, and I’ll give him the obligatory Redacted.  But we’d do that because it’s Sunday. We’d do that because we are wasted. These things work for us.

Besides, I think mothers day is way more fun.

But a few weeks ago, my friend Earnest Girl wrote a post about Valentine’s Day, and I left her a little comment, and this morning while I was asking Twitter to decide for me whether to bitch about getting kicked out of Canada 90 days before the reason we moved there in the first place, or bitch about explain Google Buzz, my other friend Deb Rox asked me to post about that old comment instead.

*ahem*

Why I Love Valentine’s Day; A Tale of Love in the Time of Awkward Adolescence

Do you remember that kid in school? You know who I’m talking about…the one that always smelled bad, or the one who has some weird gastroenterological disorder that made them poop 8 times every day, or the one who’s parents forced them to dress like Puritans, or the one who always wore clothes that were 4 years out of style, or the one who got free breakfast and lunch at school, and never once had a dime to their name? You remember that kid. I was that kid.

For the record, I always smelled good.

But I wore my brother’s hand-me-down underwear, and the girl at church’s hand me down clothes, and school breakfast and lunch were, on most days, the only food we saw, and I was being raised as a good little subservient cult member, and I was either getting the shit beat out of me mentally or physically, depending on the amount of coffee brewed on any given day, at home, or watching it happen to my brother. I had the self-esteem of your common household ant-trap. And I had, like, one friend. Maybe.

I was not a popular child.  I was the elementary school’s class graduating class of 1985’s whipping post. I still have nightmares about elementary school, not kidding.

Part of the thing with being raised all culty is that we didn’t celebrate holidays. Any of them. Ever. So I got to spend an extra super fabulous day at home every time Christmas parties or Halloween parties or Valentine’s Day parties rolled around. And I didn’t really care so much. I was so thoroughly brainwashed that I pitied the fools who were damning themselves for eternity with their cotton ball Christmas trees and their Berry Berry Kix garland strings. But still, none of it helped my feeling that I was standing outside of my childhood, looking in. I could see what being a kid was, I just could never touch it. I was never a part of the world I lived in, and that is a hard way to be a kid.

My teachers were always respectful enough of my mother’s my beliefs that they never made me a Jack O’ Lantern for the wall, and I never had a picture on a construction paper bulb hanging on the foam core Christmas tree. They always excused me to the library with a smile and a nod when there were Evil Pagan Holiday things to be done in class. At least I had an out….Ash, the kid next to me who didn’t stop farting for 4 years straight, he just had to sit there and take it over glitter glue festivities.

It could have been worse, that’s all I’m saying.

Sometimes, my teachers would try. In 4th grade, my teacher bought me a Clifford the Big Red Dog book for my birthday, and held on to it for an extra week, and wrapped it in regular paper with a very birthdayish ribbon that could be easily disposed of before I got home, and told me as much. “I’m giving you this because I chose to celebrate your birthday, because I think you’re neat, but your mom doesn’t need to know. Tell her it’s for homework,” she said to me after the whole class was dismissed one day. I kept that book, hidden under a mattress, until high school.  It’s the little things.

But there is a difference between some Big Sneaky Adult Authority Figure acknowledging your presence on the planet and your peer group doing it. There was one of her and 30 of them, all day, every day. Thirty of them with rocks, thirty of them with new clothes and shoes every January, thirty of them to remind me that I would never, ever belong in their tribe. They were just kids; they didn’t know any better. In the days of 67.39% Tolerance, the runt of the litter took it hard, and me with my old clothes and stringy hair, and poor little Ash who always smelled like half-digested curried goat, we were the runts.

But for each of those 30 kids, there was at least one parent behind them with the legible handwriting and the purse strings. Enter Valentine’s Day.

Maybe the teachers knew better, and maybe the kids knew better, but the moms and dads who bought the Valentine’s sure didn’t. You never really know beyond your kid in elementary school, especially in the 1980’s.  So every year, I would return to school on the 15th of February and be greeted by a desk overflowing with cards. Cards that had my name scribbled on them in dried-up marker or stubby crayon, cards with a piece of gum lovingly taped to Scooby Doo’s buttcrack or Jem’s Truly Outrageous Star, cards with sugar coated chalk hearts attached that said U R Cool or I <3 U, cards from every single kid I ever prayed would be my friend late at night, once the world slept and I was left with own, private black isolation.

On February 15th, I belonged where I was. I was a normal kid who got normal cheap cardboard inclusion in the world. I was a kid in a class and everyone knew my name, they’d all acknowledged that I existed. I stayed late every year on the day after Valentine’s; I ate every piece of candy and traced my name on every card with my fingers before I threw them all out so my mother wouldn’t see, and for one lousy day in my lousy school year, I smiled.

So maybe obligatory redacted is kind of lame, and maybe blowing $2.99 on stupid cards your kids will hand out at school and promptly forget about is wasteful, but every year my kids and I sit together and we carefully write every name on every card, and the names we don’t know so well get an extra heart scribbled in crayon on them, because maybe that’s the kid who needs a Valentine to show up in their desk just so they can remember that they exist. And if it takes one really annoyingly Pepto-pink day on my calender to make that happen for some kid, I’ll deal. And I’ll smile.

I do my grocery shopping for Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, and I have every year. Because I’m an idiot who cannot learn a lesson, but also because it’s the closest I ever come to getting in a little whips-and-chains style sadomasochism. Next Christmas, I’m resolving to shop early and ask Santa to give me Kristen’s book. Give it to me good, big boy….

Did I just say that out loud?

This year, her book isn’t out and my mother in law is here, so I had to settle for searching for a roll of frozen bread dough at 7pm on Christmas Eve. Which? Mission Impossible. So impossible, in fact, that this post may self destruct after you read it.

I took my daughter with me because she was driving everyone fucking nuts super duper excited that Santa was coming. She was so excited, in fact, that she decided to get to sleep early.

Except that I still had an entire shopping list to go and a veritable throng of people to beat my way through. And you know those bastards bought all the salmon before I could get back to the seafood counter.

So off to another store we went. And she stayed asleep. We found salmon, but not bread dough, and she still slept, this time in the seat of the buggy using my boobs as pillows.

We got home three hours after she fell asleep. I handed her to her father and we waited for her to wake up. She didn’t.

She slept through football, through getting passed to Gramma, getting changed into her jammies, through us giving up and making Santa’s cookies and the reindeer’s food without her.


She slept through all the last minute moving around and wrapping and digging out Christmas gifts and general asshole loudness Santa and his reindeer coming to our house. And at 3am, when the butter was made for the turkey and the wild rice stuffing was cooked and wrapped up, when I staggered off to bed bleary-eyed and drunk with exhaustion, I just knew that Little Miss I Fell Asleep At 6:30 on Christmas Eve would be waking up right about when I was laying down.

I was wrong. Her brothers woke up instead. At 3 in the morning, right when I’d pulled up my covers and closed my eyes, they came downstairs, turned all the lights on and did I don’t fucking know what until 6am when they came in to wake me up.

I did what any good mother trying to preserve the last little remnants of Christmas spirit in her children would do. I told them, “Fuck you, no” and went back to sleep until 8, when those sneaky little bastards woke up Sleeping Beauty and made Christmas begin.

And it was totally worth it.

{Thanks to Goon Squad Sarah for sharing this post on Kirtsy}

Mom, do you believe in Santa Claus?

I get this question more than I get any other one. June 8th, they’ll be asking me. I think it’s because they want to believe what I believe, whether or not they know it can’t be true. They want to believe in me, so they believe in Santa.

I tell them yes every time they ask. When they ask if I ever doubted, I tell them no, but that Santa didn’t come to my house when I was a kid, so I never really believed or didn’t. I tell them that when 1of3 was a tiny baby and I saw the magic of Christmas, the true meaning of it, for the very first time, I had to believe.

That is true. And I do believe in Santa. I believe that you are Santa and I am Santa and that guy in the grocery store who bumps into you and doesn’t even apologize? He’s Santa, too. We parents, we are magic personified. Everything we do is of fairy dust and pixie wishes in the eyes of our children, if we let it be. We are legends, we are gods, we are giants. We are myth and legends. We are earth and sky to these children who just want to believe in us.

We Santas aren’t just the fat guy in the red suit how drops gifts off…we are the symbol of hope and of faith to our children. We are what teaches them that their actions matter, even when no one is looking. We are what allows them to realize that, even though they maybe totally fucked up, there is always the chance for redemption, that no one actually ever leaves coal, that there is always forgiveness and love waiting for you, dry and toasty over the fire.

I believe in Santa Claus, yes I do. I believe in me, I believe in you, I believe in all of us. My son believes that the beams of light that cut through the clouds after a storm and slice the sky in yellow shards are the fingers of god, and he believes that his mother has faith in something purely good and loving and generous and beautiful, and so he knows that he can believe in those things, too.

And that is the greatest gift Santa could ever give a child. Or his jaded old broken grown up mom.

Children hate Santa. It’s true.

Never once has a child under four sat in his lap of their own volition. Never has a child over the age of 8 sat in his lap and been completely sold on the idea. Santa has a very small margin for error in his job.

Children like Santa the way Tiger Woods likes being married….in theory. The idea is nice, but the practical application is just creepy. He smells like dusty beer and cheese and dirty diapers. He takes your order and then makes you wait forever to bring it to you. Santa is the all-night-breakfast diner in the skanky part of town with the 5 hour wait for stale pancakes that you, and every other under-dressed drunk person in your metropolitan area, only go to after 17 shots of Jager at some club you’re entirely too old to be at anyway.

I took my kids to that diner last night.

I had to carefully negotiate this event with my oldest. He doesn’t want to believe, but after the events of last year, he’s pretty sure he has some solidly empirical proof. I had to show him every picture we’ve ever had with Santa, the ones I keep all in one frame, and point out that he is the only child in all 11 pictures. I had to puppy-dog eye him and remind him that this is the only picture I get every year with all of my babies, and that I realize he knows it isn’t the real Santa, but a big fat weird elf, like Buddy only not as awesome, but maybe he could just do me this one solid and I’d make sure the real Santa heard about his kindness and charitable actions towards his mother?

I also reminded him that his sister finally gets it, and it’s our job as a family to keep this going. To make her believe that the guy in his brother’s school right now is the real Santa, so that she can have the magic he and his brother had when they were her age.

Pulling the ‘magic of childhood’ card on that kid works Every. Fucking. Time. He even smiled for the picture. Kind of.

My 9 year old was ALL ABOUT IT, because he is ALL ABOUT EVERYTHING ALL OF THE GODDAMN TIME. Except homework. Fuck homework. He, of course, spent the better part of the evening repeatedly asking me if I believed in Santa, hoping to trip me up and get me to admit the truth. I know he knows. I also know that he’s entirely too smart to ever admit that he knows. I’m a cheap bastard, and he wants a iPod touch someday. He knows it’s Santa or bust around here.

He actually said to me, “I’m asking for DJ Hero and an iPod touch, and if I don’t get them, I’ll know that Santa isn’t real.” I guess I have 14 more days of him believing, then, because there’s no way in hell. NO WAY.

3of3 immediately shit rainbows and glitter when I told her Santa was at her brother’s school. “Santa is my fayborite! He’s my bestest fwiend in da whole woiald!” (That’s world. She’s an 80 year old jewish woman from Brooklyn.) She even let me brush her hair before we left.

We stood in line for 18 hours, and we weren’t even drunk so it wasn’t any fun. She kept peeking around the corner, “Dayr he is, momma! Dayr’s Santa!” We practiced talking to him. “What do you say to Santa first?”, I asked them. “Hi Santa, how was your day?” they all replied. “And what are you asking him for?” “Dora skates and flagnard!” “What about that pink DS you’ve wanted? You can ask for that, too, you know.” “No, I only ask for one fing, momma. I ask for DORA SKATES AND FLAGNARD.” So, she can’t count, enunciate or negotiate. Good thing she’s got looks to ride through life on.

Also, what the fuck is flagnard? Anyone?

We watched bazillions of babies sit on his lap and cry. We giggle at the silliness of them all. And then it was her turn. Oh, how fickle the heart of a young girl can be.

She clawed my eyeballs out when I tried to sit her on his lap. She hyperventilated when I walked away. She buried her face into her brother’s shoulder and refused to smile for a picture. I made a complete ass of myself and embarrassed the shit out of her, so in a few days, I’ll be getting my $7 5X7 stale pancake with one very eager face smiling back at me and two faces full of abject humiliation and disgust at their fool of a mother and the fact that she made them do this ridiculous shit.

But Santa gave her a candy cane, so they were all good by the end. She even told him what she wanted. He looked at me and said, “Flagnard?” and I shrugged. He said, “iPod?” and I said, “You can expect a call from his father telling you he can’t have one of those until he’s gainfully employed.” And then we hugged him goodbye, even the 11 year old whom Santa managed to get, not just a smile but a full on belly laugh out of, and there’s your Christmas magic, folks, and with that we were off.

I tucked her into bed later and she said, “Momma, I can’t wike Santa” and I asked her why. She said, “Dat’s not the weawl Santa, mawwwm” and I asked her how she knew. She said, “He has cwouds all over his face.” I tried to explain what a beard is, that daddy has a little brown one and Santa has a big white one, but she said no. “No, momma, day were cwouds, and I don’t wike cwouds on faces.”

And I don’t like trying to figure out what Flagnard is, so I guess we’re even.

We spent Thanksgiving with my realtor, which is only slightly less depressing than spending it with no one. But I like my realtor. She’s kind of nuts.

I mean, she’s got penises peni penis’ thank god at least I don’t know what the plural for penis is all over her house, and two of her dogs have been dead for at least 3 months, and yet they keep on walking around. It’s like hanging with half of the Rolling Stones at her place. The third dog is young, virile, a little fat, and no friend to the small children.

She told me as much. Her husband told me as much. The dog told me as much. My husband told me as much. My 4 year old told me as much. And still, I insisted they become friends. The Yorkie and the toddler should be friends, right? And so I showed her how to give him treats and I showed her how to offer her hand for a sniff and I showed her how to scratch him right *there* under his chin where no dog can resist being all loved up and he showed all of us how sharp his little teeth are. Also, what the insides of my kid’s lip look like.

So I spent Thanksgiving in the ER with my realtor who was pretty sure I was going to sue her pants off for something that was my fault. My husband spent Thanksgiving at her house with her husband who was sure we were going to sue his pants of for something that was completely my fault. My daughter got a needle the size of one of those penile ornaments straight in her face for something that was completely and in every way my fault. And I got re-introduced to the US Healthcare system as a non-card carrying member.

The cost for this asshatery? A low low $311.99. A bargain, really, for ruining a strangers holiday and scarring my child’s face for life.

I’ll admit that I was a little peeved at the $500 bill they handed me, and only slightly relieved when they cut it in half since I paid up front. $250 for 20 minutes and 2 stitches? That’s a damn steep salary. But then I looked in the mirror and remembered all those cuts and colors that ran me exactly the same, back in the day when I gave a rat’s ass, and I figured that, if I’m going to pay a someone who went to night school that kind of money to make dead cells growing out of my head look decent, I can’t really argue with paying someone who spent 10 years in university the same to save my child from having to wear a Frankensteinish scar in the center of her face for the rest of her life.

Also, 20 minutes. TWENTY MINUTES. My husband showed up at a Canadian ER the day before we moved with more of the flesh on his forearm than is decent to discuss in public no longer attached to his forearm and enough blood spewing out of that hole to fill a blood bank, or all those Twilight freaks, and he walked out after four hours without so much as being acknowledged. And now he has a very sexy scar all the way up his arm, and a nice reminder that caveman mechanics and Ikea kids beds and national health care Do. Not. Mix.

The $60 the charged me at the pharmacy for Amoxicillin is an entirely different story. I kind of wanted to kill America at that point. Or at least fuck it in the eye.

But, as they say, all’s well that ends well. At fucking late o’clock, we sat around my realtor’s dining room table and all gave thanks for something. The kids were thankful for the pool in her backyard, she and her husband for the company, me for barely having permanently scarred my child on any level, and my husband? He was thankful to be sitting in a room eating turkey with a mannequin wearing black lace panties and miniature Santa hats as pasties over her nips.