Not-Quite-Surly Not-Quite-Thursday

February, man. It's almost worse than January, because January is this big suckhole after December, which is exhausting but also fun and rewarding, and then you get out of January and you lift up your head and look around hopefully, just to get smacked in the head with Fucking February. The whole stupid WORD February doesn't even make any goddamned sense. Almost everyone says Feb-you-ary. I really try to say words correctly (it's NUCLEAR, people, NOT NUCULAR), but I feel like a douche saying Feb-roo-ary. Okay, I just tested it, never mind, I never say it correctly. 

You know how sometimes you have to just be okay not being okay for a while? I was feeling pretty good about seeing January out without too much emotional drama, and then my uterus caught fire and I was unable to sleep or walk or find a position that didn't hurt for a couple of days, and then it went away, but at this time of year it's way too easy for something physically bad to tip me over into something mentally bad, and here we are. And last week I was busy Monday to Wednesday with work, and then Thursday and Friday I was going to work out for the first time in forever and start getting my shit together, and geez, it's hard to feel like my own body isn't sabotaging me semi-on-purpose sometimes, which is not a fair or helpful way to look at things, so I'm trying not to. I'm not on a deadline. I'm never going to make progress in a constant upward-trending line - most people don't. So for now I'm just going to be okay not quite being okay.

We did have a really lovely time on Saturday night - one of the coaches from our Little League World Series team invited all the other coaches over for dinner, so four couples, three old like us and one young because our head coach was a dude in his twenties who inexplicable decided to give up a huge chunk of his life to whipping a bunch of ten-year-olds into a really fine team over a few years, ending up in a once-in-a-decade upset of Canada's B.C. team at Nationals  his equally awesome fiancé gave up her holidays to hang out in Glace Bay Nova Scotia and Williamsport Pennsylvania in 2013). We were really close with these people for a number of years, and we've kept in touch but not to the same level, so it was really nice to reconnect. We have plans for a ten-year trip back to the LLWS - less pressure this time. Did I tell you about the really nice article someone at Elmira wrote about Angus last year? The only problem is, now somehow that picture of him, thirteen years old with braces at the Little League World Series, now keeps getting attached to his current profile at the university, which he hates and which Matt finds inexpressibly amusing.

Coach Mark, Coach Mark, Coach Matt and Coach Brian

Eve turned seventeen. Of all the birthdays - two, five, ten, thirteen, sixteen - this one seems the most impossible. I don't know what else to say about that. 

With the cake I knocked together at the last minute because we had technically already celebrated her birthday and I really wasn't feeling well

We took an Uber to the party on Saturday. This violates my principles, because I really don't like the way Uber gets around the licensing laws and the way it screws taxi drivers who have to pay thousands of dollars for a license and who are more heavily regulated. I also don't like the way Uber has responded to sexual assault allegations by its drivers and in its corporate culture, but the same could be said for taxi companies. Also, I believe I have demonstrated on several occasions that some of my principles are less iron-like than noodly. And the Uber drivers on Saturday and their vehicles were really nice. And technically it was Matt doing it and I was just along for the ride (just following orders, sir). 

We have used Skip the Dishes on several occasions also - we got tired of only ordering pizza, Eve is more and more lactose intolerant, we really like Vietnamese, and once I'm home for the day I hate going out again. This seemed like the perfect solution. Then I found out that Skip the Dishes is kind of a poisonous business model that tends to screw both the participating restaurants and the drivers, who end up not getting paid enough to make up for the inevitable wear and tear on their vehicles. So when Matt and I got home from Thunder Bay at four in the afternoon having not eaten at all because of various circumstances, we were going to go home and order something but then decided to just stop and pick it up on the way home. And a couple of times I have forced my lazy ass to get in the car and go pick something up instead of ordering on a Friday night. 

I cannot stop giggling at the thought that I used to feel virtuous if I cooked instead of ordering something. Now I feel a freaking saint if I go pick it up myself instead of having someone else deliver it. 

I was stopping for groceries after work today, and as I turned into the parking lot there was another car coming towards me in my lane, and he seemed to be taking his sweet damned time moving over. I was a little annoyed until we got closer together and I saw that the reason was apparently that he was steering with one hand and eating a giant ice cream cone with the other.

In February. What a weird-ass month.