What a week! Starting with Valentine's day, which we don't really celebrate around here. I mean, what's the point? Give your sweetie flowers and chocolate, cook her a nice dinner, dance her around the kitchen, whispering sweet nothings in her ear? That sounds like a typical Tuesday around here.
The ads for Valentine's day drive me crazy. If you had just landed on Planet Earth in the two weeks before VDay, you'd think women were carnivorous tyrants who had to be appeased with useless gifts or human sacrifice. I'm sure there are plenty of very sad men who think that's about right. I got news for those guys; their women ain't happy, either.
Two ads I found particularly hilarious. One was for a pajama gram. I sleep nekkid. If my hubby gave me pjs, how would I be expected to take that? The other was for a company that makes teddy bears. I'm a grown woman. Anyone who gives me a teddy bear can expect it to be pitched right back at him at maximum velocity.
The jewelry stores all outdo themselves at Valentine's Day, each one trying to come up with the ugliest, most ostentatious piece of crap....how do they keep coming up with designs so sappy they make diamonds look sticky.
If I ever get myself into a snit because he didn't buy me a piece of card stock when Hallmark says he should, he can pitch a teddy bear at
me at maximum velocity.
Then, right on the heels of Valentine's Day came Fat Tuesday.
Now
that's a Holiday!
I've been giving up chocolate for lent for almost thirty years. It gets a little easier every year. After all these years it's only as hard as quitting heroin cold turkey. So Fat Tuesday I eat all the chocolate I can hold because it's a long forty days, baby!
Okay, it's a long four days til Sunday but still....I
love Fat Tuesday.
This year I made a batch of crinkle cookies and tried to eat the whole thing. Even with Josie helping, we weren't able to finish off the last four cookies. We gave them to her friends after school on Ash Wednesday, when we couldn't even eat between meals, much less eat chocolate cookies. You can have your drunken crowds at Mardi Gras, just give me a plate full of crinkle cookies and the Olympics!
The Olympics!!
I love the Olympics. I always have. When we were growing up in the olden days before cable tv, movies on demand and youtube, the Olympics were the most glamorous, exciting, important event
ever!! We were a sports loving bunch. I remember when color tv was the cutting edge of technology. The very first thing we watched was a Twin's game.
Look at that green field! My God, it's like being there! The screen was only 13 inches across and the picture was far from hi def, but it was the most amazing thing we'd ever seen. Wilma Rudolph was one of my earliest heroes. I was born the year she became the first woman to win three golds. I was a fast little kid and my Dad used to tell me I was like her. When I finally saw what she looked like, I remembered thinking "And she's
pretty, too!" It never crossed my mind that I couldn't be just like her because I was white. Years later, when I was finally on a track team, I realized I'd never be Wilma Rudolph because I'm
lazy.
I watched every minute of Mark Spitz's amazing accomplishment in Munich, where he won 7--that's SEVEN --gold medals. Those games were also the first inkling I had that the world could be an ugly and dangerous place. It was watching the Munich games that I first heard the word "terrorist".
I cut my hair to look like
Dorothy Hamill's in 1976. I saw Nadia Comaneci perform the first perfect gymnastics routine. My life long disgust of Jimmy Carter began when he forbade our athletes from going to Moscow in 1980. Later that same year, I sat silent in our kitchen, surrounded by all my brothers and sisters, carefully listening to a Canadian radio broadcast we'd managed to tune in, hearing it live as our USA Hockey team beat the Russians.
It's impossible for our kids to understand the magnitude of that event. I tried to explain it to Josie the other night.
"Imagine your Dad's team at MCTC beating the LA Lakers..." I said.
"Woah!" her eyes grew round at the thought of that unlikelihood.
"...and the Lakers were all Al Queda.
That's what it was like."
I also told her that Apollo Ono was fun to watch, but he's no Eric Heiden. Five medals in the same Olympics, I told her. And those five medals? ALL GOLD. Heiden was the Babe Ruth of speed skating, and I watched every event.
So yes, it's been a big week and I've enjoyed every minute of it.
There was one other thing, too....what was it?
Oh yeah; MY SON ASKED HIS ADORABLE GIRL TO MARRY HIM AND SHE SAID YES!!!!!
It's definitely been a gold medal week.
