V-Day Conclusion

So Valentine’s Day is finally over!!! I am not a fan of Valentine’s Day, I think it’s sooo stupid. And not b/c I’m single, but because it’s soo cheesy and over the top, it’s just not for me. If my make-believe boyfriend showed up with flowers and chocolates I would throw them in his face and tell him to turn around and come back when he actually knew me. And when did V-Day become such a large holiday, practically a National holiday. If it was on a weekday, I’m pretty sure we would’ve had the day off.

Valentine’s Day was bombarding me, everywhere I looked there it was. First off, practically all my friends are in serious, monogamous, blah blah relationships, so they all had plans for Saturday night.

“30 Rock,” “90210” “Scrubs” and even “CSI” had stupid Valentine’s themes. Cupcakes and cookies were passed around at work on Friday, my mom sent me a V-Day package, my Dad and step mom called to wish me happy V-day, I got two emails from relatives and a vendor sent me a V-day card (don’t even get me started on how weird that was). Couples were walking down the street holding hands with grins from ear to ear; it was as if the sky was full of sunshine and skittles. My roommate is in Australia with her BF and the other received a ginormous bouquet of red roses that are sitting on our counter.

Yet with all this mushiness thrown in my face, I have to say it was one of the best V-days ever. You want to know why? Around 11:30 pm on Saturday night, heels drunk dialed me. Yes, that’s right, you heard me, heels drunk dialed me. I wish I could’ve taped it and played it for you all, because it was hands down the best 20-minute stream of consciousness I’ve ever heard. During the conversation she yelled at me for not going out, told me she missed me (even though she had just seen me at work the day before) then proceeded to tell me how much she loved me, had the dog talk to me and finally asked to be my flower girl in my wedding. Keep in mind I’m painfully single with no BF or wedding in sight, yet she just wanted to make sure she secured some place in the special day. I believe this was her exact quote, “I know I won’t be a bridesmaid or MOH (haha) but I think after everything we’ve been through I think I deserve to have a special role, maybe an usher, or I know YOUR FLOWER GIRL.” Never mind how weird it would be to have a flower girl past the age of seven, I couldn’t even talk I was laughing so hard. I assured her she could be my flower girl, for I was terrified for the reaction if I said no. She then tried to come pick me up in a cab so we could take shots and go to the bars.

I hadn't showered in 24 hours, had not had a sip of alcohol and it was already midnight, how on earth was I going to get out of this one. I finally convinced her that I was actually in a cab on my way to meet her at Kincaid’s, (so that I could get off the phone and go to bed) and she finally let me go!

Although, I have to admit, while I drifted off to sleep, I felt grateful for all my besties out there.

Attraction is not a choice,
flats

The Griswold's storm the north shore.

My family is incapable of celebrating a holiday in any sort of normal fashion. Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, hell, Boxing Day, there is some sort of major dramz that is bound to happen. On the up side, it provides countless hours of material and laughter, on the down side, there's no amount of Xanax or red wine to keep my nerves steady through what can be 72+ hours of what seems like a bad scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, although we can make Jack Nicholson look like Doug Funny compared to some of the stuff that goes down at my house. This Christmas was no exception.

Because of some things that have been going on, my family hasn't had the easiest 2008. In light of this, we were all looking forward to having a great Christmas because it was going to be a time for us to all be together, it meant the end of the year was close, yada, yada, yada.

In preparation for this family get together, my faux step dad aka FSD (trust me, this is the only term that works for him, my mom and him have been dating since I was 9, I'm 23, you do the math, he's no longer the "boyfriend," that's just awkward for everyone), anyways, he and I were running around trying to prepare appetizers for ourselves, my mom, my sister and my brother.

We all planned to have a nice sit down in front of the tree on Christmas Eve with hors d'oeuvres and drinks. FSD and I decided to pull things together for everyone, mainly because my mom's idea of getting food together is throwing on her military garb and channeling Kim Jong-Il to bark orders at her unsuspecting children, needless to say, we decided to take things into our own hands.

We had quite the spread: crabcakes, shrimp, gourmet cheeses and bread, dips galore and enough wine to make a large village in Moldova party like it's 1992 and being accepted into the UN was as easy as becoming the Republic of Moldova in the first place.

FSD loves to give speeches so we all settled in, drinks in hand, to listen to his wrap up of 2008. Not more than fifteen words rolled off his tongue when I see my 80 year old cat - who literally is probably 112, weighs about 6.2 ounces, my mom talks to like a human and threatens to put a bonnet on and start calling him baby- jumps out of the base of our Christmas tree like Cujo was snapping at him from below my mom's red velour tree skirt and lands with a thud. As I'm watching my cat put Kristie Yamaguchi to shame as he lands a triple axle with grace, out of the corner of my eye I see our tree start to waver. Now granted I'm a few glasses of wine in, but this would have had to have been a straight hallucination because I swore I saw the thing move side to side. Not quick enough could my synapses fire to each another to tell me to get up and position my body in front of the tree to prevent what was about to happen in t-minus, 3.....2......1.....CRASH.

My mom's tree - which only contains Christopher Radko ornaments that usually go for $40-100 a pop - comes crashing to the ground. My mom says that she didn't even hear the tree fall, but that my face scrunched into a Lord of the Rings Gollum-esque mask and she knew something horrible had happened.

See my mom doesn't deal well with stress or unexpected events, coupled with the year she's had, this was the last thing that we needed to happen to us. Granted, I was literally dying inside of laughter because, truly, this would only happen to my family on Christmas Eve, but my mom was bawling on the outside. I literally had to spend the next two hours talking her off the ledge because she was so upset by what had happened. To her credit we did lose about 65% of the ornaments, and they really are beautiful, but I mean come on people.... we can't all fall apart, on Christmas Eve of all nights, because the tree fell!

Instead we should rejoice in the fact that we are one step closer in our apparent life long quest to have more f-ed up things happen to our family then the Griswold's. If only my cat had electrocuted itself would we have truly surpassed Clark, Ellen, Rusty and Audrey to become the Griswold's of the North Shore.

But, hey, a girl can dream and......

there's always next year.

No one's getting out alive,

heels