The Big "V.D."

I was dreading Valentine's Day this year, but now that's it's arrived, I find that I've come to a tentative peace with it. It's never fun to spend alone, but I can work past that. Today is supposed to be about celebrating the love you have with your significant other. Well, I don't have an S.O., but I have something even better. I have myself.

The thing is, we have to spend our whole lives with ourselves. If I had a dollar for every time I saw a person that hated him- or herself, I'd be a rich woman. Who cares about romance when the feelings you have towards yourself are fractured and tainted?

I have a healthy love for who I am, and that's what I'll be celebrating today. I bought myself a card, flowers, and a box of assorted chocolates; I'll be spending the evening eating pizza and watching bad TV; and I'll love every minute of it.

I hope that you have a very happy Valentine's Day.

Wham, Bam, Thank You Ma'am!

Dear Ginger,

You wanna know something awesome? You. You are a total and complete manifestation of awesome.

You're beautiful, you're smart, and you're funny--really, truly.

The way you handled that pushy asshat at the union office: awesome. The way you handled that bimbo who ruined your lab assignment: awesome. Did you lose your cool? No, you did not. Remember that. You are poised and self-possessed, and no one can take that away from you.

I know this morning you woke up and you weren't feeling so hot. You were tired, anxious, and in the throes of a major cramp attack. But you know what, you powered through. You pulled out that makeup bag, popped that Rockstar gum, and faced the world head-on. You know what that is? Awesome. You are strong and determined. Those are intrinsic values of yours. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

You felt jealous today, didn't you, looking at all those couples? I know you try to avoid that vice as much as possible, but remember what they say: even the best of us, my darling. You didn't let yourself get sucked in, though. I'm really proud of you for that. You pulled yourself out of that pit and moved right along. You know what I'm going to say next, because I've said it a thousand times. You're awesome, and there's someone out there for you. There is someone made just for you, your perfect complement. All these lonely nights will be forgotten in the light of the love you will find. I promise.

You don't always believe these things about yourself. Sometimes, more often than you would like to admit, you look into the mirror with loathing. You feel so painfully not enough. You feel like you fall short of everything you need to be. Or worse, you feel that you're not even close, completely out of orbit. You feel ugly, and stupid, and overemotional, and slimy, and sick. You just want to crawl into bed and cry yourself to sleep.

The next time you feel that way, I want you to come back and look at this. I want you to read it slowly and carefully. I want you to absorb every word and accept it. I want you to remember the way you're feeling now, and believe that you will feel that way again.

Babe, you're awesome, and I love you.

xo Ginger

I'm a Watered-Down Grinch

I feel obliged to write something on Christmas, 'cause that's sorta the thing to do, innit?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say there are a lot of Christmas traditions I find aggravating -- like Christmas trees. Really, Germany? Was this necessary to bring with you? I get the symbolism and how it's all happy happy fun time to decorate it with your family and whatever, but I find it a waste of time, space, and energy. When I move into my own place, I'm going to replace a tree with a bowl of red and green jelly beans.

Not to mention, haven't any environment people come out against this?

. . .

Apparently, they have not, but when I searched "christmas tree cruel" I did find the darkly entertaining "Monkey 'kills cruel owner with coconut thrown from tree'" article, so I guess it wasn't a total waste of time.

I'm not one to get outraged over the commercialization of holidays, because I figure if you can trick millions of people into spending hundreds on your merchandise for no viable reason then props to you. I like giving and receiving as much as the next guy, but let's not pretend there's something magical about the season itself that is conducive to charity and good will. Well, people do drink more around Christmas, so I guess there's that. Alcohol does make some people much nicer. Point being, if we cared that much, we wouldn't wait until Christmas to express how much love we have bottled up inside of us as a society -- but I guess that's just the Valentine's Day argument all over again.

My parents told me that (*SPOILER ALERT!*) Santa wasn't real at a pretty young age (i.e. the first time I asked if he was real), so that was never a big aspect of the holiday for me. That's why I have no great love for Santa. Not that I dislike him, but as I grow older I begin to realize how patronizing it is to present this idea to children as reality. I don't buy into the whole "Santa encourages overeating/makes an easier time of it for pedophiles/will give your child Swine Flu/ad nauseum/etc.," but I do believe it sets kids of more delicate mental dispositions up for more than a few debilitating complexes later in life. Like, "Mommy and Daddy lied to me and so they don't love me" stuff on the lucky end and maniacal rages of incredulity and sadness that morph into felonious actions on the hardcore end. Also, may we stop putting grown men in tights at the mall photo places? I have glam rock galleries bookmarked on Internet Explorer; I don't need to get my fill of inappropriate male exposure through Rick the pre-med dropout elf, thanks.

And because I'm sure I haven't taken enough potshots at Christmas' Most Loved, I'm gonna throw in that I find decorating the outside of your house with lights and any other sort of seasonal paraphernalia is a tacky eyesore 95% of the time. I can't remember the last time we did anything of consequence to our house, and that sliver of amnesia couldn't make me happier. It's so hard to do right, I'm annually impressed and aggravated at my neighbor's continued attempts to project Christmas cheer through sprucing up their garage door.

When it comes down to it, though, I do enjoy Christmas. I like family and hot chocolate and staying up ridiculously late for mass and the opening of the first present. I like pulling up YouTube videos of snow, throwing on a scarf, and remarking to my bemused brother that it doesn't look deep enough to warrant shoveling the driveway yet. I like watching those campy claymation videos with their jerky movements and old-fashioned, all-too-naive songs. (Santa, here's lookin' at you and your little "a kiss a toy is the price you'll pay" ditty.) I like the food, the fires (fireplaces, not forests), and the all-around joy and contentment it seems to bring.

So whatever you're doing, or however you celebrate this time of year, have a Merry Kwanzmaskkah, drive safe, and drink at least eight cups of water per day.

In Memoriam

I've tried, so far, to keep this blog generally light and funny -- to throw in humor among self-deprecation and deeper emotions. But I feel it would be irreverent not to remember in complete sincerity the events that occurred eight years ago today.

During the terrorist attacks of 9/11, innocent lives were lost: lives taken by force, and lives given in service. Lives destroyed by an act so horrific we can't begin to comprehend the strength of the hatred that fueled it. What could drive a man to forfeit his life just to end another's?

I don't think that, as a nation, we can ever allow this to be forgotten. I think it's something we need to pass down to our children, their children, and our children's children. More than just a terrifying episode in history, it represents the strength and courage of the American people. Our prayers will always be with the civilians who were killed in the attacks: our brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, comrades in arms and companions at play -- may their souls rest in peace. But our proud remembrance will be with the men and women who lay down their lives for our country, who died so that we may live in freedom and security -- greater love has no one than this.

Things happen in this world -- terrible things -- that we often can't understand, nor do we want to. Most of us don't like to think back to that day, and with good reason: We don't want to be confronted with the grief and sadness it brings, that sick feeling that worms its way into our hearts saying, "How could someone do this?" And yet, as we all know, it's necessary. It's necessary to stand up once a year and say, "We won't forget you." Necessary to let people know that we are strong. Necessary to cry, to scream, to grieve, even as we pick up the stones to rebuild what was ruined. Necessary to lay aside the humor, to rip down the veils, to bring every dark thing about that day into the light, and vow to protect what's been left in our care.

God bless America.

Willy "Cookie" Sutton

"Me not take cookies, me eat the cookies." -- Cookie Monster

Quite a few years ago my family was looking to move, so every Sunday after church we would hit as many open houses as we could. I was just a wee sprog then, with the attention span of an autistic goldfish, so I was often subject to about an hour and a half of unadulterated boredom on these excursions. After all, how many times can a kid carve her name into the master bedroom's north wall before she gets fidgety? It seems that at every house we went to there was a plate of free chocolate chip cookies -- this, of course, was the homemade bribe used to get people to make a down payment on a $750,000 home. My dad took to allowing me and my brother a cookie at every house we visited to keep us pacified while he and my mom looked around.

A few months passed and we bought a home, but the now-ritualistic open house-visiting hadn't faded. At this point, it was no longer about the homes, but the cookies that were inevitably there. My parents would give them to me as a treat for behaving in the service that morning. A little piece of me withered and died every time we waltzed through a doorway, nodded to the realtor, and stole four cookies before quickly making our exit.

"Go on, take one," my mom would say as Mr. Homeseller looked on with a confused smile and my ten-year-old self alternated between the beet red of embarrassment and the pallor of imminent death.

I have a feeling this is the sort of thing I'll be bringing up in therapy forty years down the road -- "You have no idea what it was like. My family was like the Willy Sutton of real estate cookies: hitting up houses with a smile, in 'n out in forty-five seconds."