It Is Always My Intention to Make You Laugh

My body and brain are still doing weird shit. Both my sciatic nerves feel inflamed, but in a surface, neuralgia-type of way, so stretching doesn't really help and it hurts to sit down. I had this happen once before, but it was when Matt had come home from a week away, when it's not unusual for my body to engage in some weird-ass immune-response bullshit. Matt is away now, but I've been having a lovely long week-end with Matt and Eve and girlfriends, so I'm not sure what the deal is, but it's less than ideal.

Valentine's Day, right? What a fraught minefield. There were years when I had a boyfriend and everything was deliriously romantic. There were years when I had a husband and everything was deliriously romantic. There were years when I had a husband and we did nothing and I was angry, not that we did nothing but that we didn't discuss doing nothing first. There were years when we did nothing and I was fine with it. The year Angus was two, we got an amazing catered dinner from Tulips & Maple, with many small containers of delicious courses and tiny containers of adorable garnishes. Angus was watching cartoons upstairs but he kept coming down to check that we didn't need his help, because the whole thing was a little weird to him and he was sure that it couldn't be that much fun if he wasn't involved. 

Friday I had lunch with Eve's friend's mom who has become a very close friend on multiple drives to Montreal with a van full of girls and Jackson. Friday night Eve and Matt and I got Vietnamese and watched Toy Story 4 (I'm still a bit dehydrated from the whole experience), and then Matt and I watched the new episode of Picard. I got cupcakes with heart garnishes. It was perfect.

Saturday I had a Galentine's Day dinner a couple days late (I know, I hate the name and yet it's kind of dead on) with five friends from ... blogging, I guess, it's been so long I've kind of forgotton the genesis. They are wise, wonderful women and I love them, and we get together every six months or so at the same restaurant because it's mid-way for all of us, and we often get the same smart-ass older man for a waiter and he's used a couple of his jokes twice, but that's okay, it's a really hard job, whatever gets you through. 

Then I went late to our friend group's Valentine's Day Guys Cook dinner - I was sorry to miss the first part, but I see these friends way more than I see the other friends, so it was an acceptable trade-off. Matt went home earlyish because he had an early flight to Florida Sunday to spend the week watching Angus's team play baseball for the start of their season. I stayed later for a couple more rhubarb-ginger gin and tonics. I think I made the right call.

Yesterday Eve had a hipster Sunday with two friends and one's boyfriend - they went to a cat café and a restaurant called El Furniture Warehouse (is that not just deliciously conventionally unconventional, or something?). I watched scary movies while she was out, then she came home and we watched a Veronica Mars, then she had to go to bed because she hadn't slept the night before. 

My friend Dani drove me to the restaurant Saturday night and we were there a few minutes alone. She said she was really happy right now and apologized if that was annoying to me. This fits in with Suz saying that I made her laugh with my last post, which she thought was probably not my intention. I realize it might not be obvious, but I think of myself as a happy person. A happy person with a tendency to depression, anxiety and nuclear levels of snark, but a happy person nonetheless. It is never, never offensive to me if someone I love is happy - even someone I don't love, unless they're happy because they just passed a bill to restrict women's reproductive freedom or whatever. It's true that it can be comforting to know that I'm not the only one who struggles, but the expression "misery loves company" isn't really true. Misery needs acknowledgement might be closer. 

How could I not be happy? I have a wonderful husband. I have two children who are constantly amazing me with how funny, creative, kind and weird they are - I MADE two new whole people and they are out there in the world fucking shit up in ways I could never have conceived ( ha ha, get it, conceived?) I have people who consider me a friend that, growing up as a disaffected adolescent I could never have imagined would even talk to me. I have a job I love that I can do part time. I started a blog that introduced me to people I never would have crossed paths with otherwise. And I am funny! That sounds immodest, but I think it's true. Not in this post specifically, which I think I just wrote in case some day I'm thinking "what the hell DID we do for Valentine's Day in 2020?" But generally. And I am endlessly entertained and entranced with the exquisite ridiculousness of things. 

So I'm going to take my burny sciatic nerves out for a drive with my daughter because we have been lax at driving practice lately. If we don't crash the car, I'm going to limp around the block with Lucy, because we have also been lax at dog-walking lately. And then I'm going to watch another episode of Veronica Mars with Eve and go to bed with a book. 

Happy Valentine's Day a few days late. I choo-choo-choose all of you.