Dear Valentine...

dear Valentine

you are my favriet boy in MISS Gambitsky’ s class ever. I love you so much I love when you are playing kickball and we were the winners and I love when you digged up the class pet lizard that died. It was fun to see what it looked like all dried up. You are a very cool boy and I love you. Do you love me to ? I hope so. Also even when your frend ate the paste you did not so that is good. Love love love love

your valentine

Dear Valentine!!

You make school FUN! Except when I got caught passing notes to you and Mrs Karr made me stay late and she talked to me about how I should not be passing notes in class. She is such a loser. Hope you have a GREAT day and I hope you like the gift I made you. I never have baked cupcakes by myself before but I did and they came out good! I made yours extra special because you are AWESOME!  LOVE LOVE LOVE,

Your valentine!

Deasr Vsalentine

Hope your day is full of fun

Hope that I’m the only one

who makes your heart feel happy and good

just like your only valentine should

love love love

your Valentine! (I wrote this myself )

Dear Valentine,

Wow! I can’t believe we have been together for so long already! Since Linda’s Halloween party!!! It is like we have been together for a million years and it just feels right, you know? And even though we are probably going to go to different colleges that is ok because we will be together 4 – EVER!! I think that is true, don’t you feel it? Like we are so good together and it all feels just so right. Even yesterday in the courtyard at lunch I was thinking about how we will be together even in college even if you do go to California and I stay here in New York and go to NY U! ! ! ( Best school ever, hahahaha!! You should still go there! There is still time to change your mind since you don’t even know anyone in California!) But I want to tell you how much I love you and I love hanging out with you and love going to the park and to the museum with you and also that I feel like we have so much fun and we can really be ourselves together and that is cool, because we just are so good together. Sometimes I think you are the only one who will ever get how I really really am. And I know that you feel the same way so I just want to tell you I am so incredibly glad you are my best ever boyfriend and I LOVE YOU!!!! Love love love love love, your Valentine!

Dear Valentine:

I want you to know how special you are to me. I thought I would never ever love anyone like I loved my high school boyfriend but after we parted ways and went to college, things just changed, and I thought I would never love anyone again. But how stupid, right? Because I found you. Or you found me, I guess, at Boss Tweed’s that night back in  November and even though I hate  ( HATE) beer I let you buy me one because a) you were so cute and b) your fake ID was way better than mine HA HA!! And we all know how things went after that!!!!!!!! Crazy times!

     So, anyway, I am glad we are together, and I hope we can last. I think we will, it just feels right to me! And we are older now, so we know how things feel, when they feel right. We are older and wiser but we are still YOUNG and IN LOVE! So I will be wearing your gift to me later tonight, you will have to see for yourself… Can’t wait for you to unwrap it! (and me, ha ha xoxoxo)

Love love love, your Valentine

Dear Valentine:

Just a quick email to let you know I am thinking of you, even during this dull day at the office. Thank you for the flowers! No card but of course, I knew it was you.  Cannot believe we have managed to keep our romance secret for this long, since it seems so obvious to me, but then, I guess we are just both really good at keeping secrets. Sometimes I wish we could just be more open about our love, office policy be damned. But that is ok. We will persevere. Do you want to have lunch together, or do you just want to wait til tonight and go to dinner? I think we should probably wait since Bill just came in waving some stupid report and I have a feeling I am going to have to work through lunch. Again. TTYL!

xoxo, your Valentine

Dear Valentine, or should I say, Dear Fiance!?

Can you believe it, this time next year, we will be husband and wife! I still can hardly believe it. Like, what? When did THAT happen? When did I grow up? Wow, I remember, four years ago I was still dating that jerk in my office. After that fiasco, I cannot believe I was fortunate enough to find someone as wonderful and thoughtful as you, my dearest. I am staring at the ring RIGHT NOW. I love it, did I mention that yet today? Oh, probably only about a million times. It is so fantastic to be engaged and in love and happy on Valentine’s day. I know there are lots of people who say that they would not even bother getting married since so many couples just get divorced, but that will never be the case with us. We are meant to be, I know it. I just know it. You are the only one for me, my love. I hope you like the gift. I never know exactly what to get you. After all, you already have my heart. Love love love, your Valentine ( and future wife!) 

Dear Valentine,

Want you to know, before I met you, I thought I would never find love again. Seriously, this is the first Valentine’s day since my divorce that I feel happy. And that is no mean trick, my dear. Cannot believe I found someone so great on a blind date! I hope, maybe, you are thinking the same thing. Who knows if we are meant to be, I mean, how can anyone know? Even when something feels right, it may not have staying power, but I think, maybe, if we are willing to work on it, we have a beautiful thing here. Here’s to possibilities!

With love, your valentine

Dear Valentine:

So. Another Valentine’s day is upon us. Time goes so quickly, you know? It feels like just a few years ago we were sitting in grade school depositing those stupid cards in the “class mailbox” and getting boxes of conversation hearts for our best friends. And now here we are, a million years later, all of us still wondering when we are really going to feel “grown up”, when the real adult thing kicks in. As for me, I’m still that kid delivering heart postcards to her classmates, despite all the personal emotional baggage.  I have said before, I am just so over it. I decided to just quit trying. It seems like every time I think I have found love, it slips away into the night and leaves me with  an empty, hollow feeling that takes years to fill again. But then I think better of it. I think, well, maybe this time, it will be different. Maybe this time it will be real, and forever. I think it is just human nature to want to love and be loved. It is the great, connecting force that has lifted us up through the ages and made us who and how we are.  Or maybe it is just our fear of being alone. We are social creatures, after all.  Whatever it is, I can’t just give up, it seems. So, wherever you are, whoever you turn out to be, Happy Valentine’s day!

Love, love, love,  your Valentine….

( please note, this is, for the most part, a fictional account of a life through letters. I have never been married or divorced. I have had workplace romances, and I have definitely met guys over a beer in a bar at college. Also, I love beer.  But I plead the fifth in regards to the matter of digging up the class lizard with my 2nd grade crush. That is all I'm gonna say.)

10 of 10

      Been a while since I posted. It's been about ten months, to be exact. I thought it had been about eight months, but nope, ten it is. Well, I'm back. Got a problem with that? No? I didn't think  so. Now, let's get on with it. Not sure how to go about this, you know, getting my blogging mojo back and all, so I will turn to the tried and true format writers have been using for ages to waste time and fill space when they are trying to think of something to actually write: I will make some random lists. Writers have been making lists since writing began. Famous lists include the Ten Commandments, the Bill of Rights, and Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors. So I will go ahead and make some lists. Ten, to be exact. Ten lists of ten things each, and away we go:

10 things I did in the past ten months instead of writing this blog


Went to coastal North Carolina. Last April. We got there about an hour before the tornadoes did. We were fine, but some very nearby areas were devastated. We were very, very lucky.

Grew a garden. My first. It was great, I grew tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers aplenty. Tried to grow zucchini but for some reason that crop failed. However, thanks to the very mild weather this year, I had fresh salad fixings all the way through October. Can't wait to try again next Spring!

Had surgery. It was supposed to be just simple arthroscopic surgery to fix a torn meniscus in my left knee, but it turned into an invasive procedure to remove a piece of bone that was  wedged under a veil of connective tissue, between my patella and my femur, I believe. Two scars, knee still numb in parts, and puffy. Fun times. But I can bend it without problem now, and that's what counts! Thanks, Doc!

!6 weeks of intense physical therapy, three times a week, about an hour and a quarter each session. I did it all gladly. My physical/sports therapist was awesome. I am forever in his debt. I walk without even a limp. There was a time not so long ago when I thought I would need a cane forever. My advice to you all: don't injure yourselves if you can help it. It blows.

Met some new and interesting people, which is always a good thing in my book.

Watched an entire season of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills". Hey, do NOT judge me.

Played online Facebook games, most especially, "Glory of Rome". This actually merits a whole blog entry of its own. Talk about your odd little cyber-microcosms! ( Go on, talk about them!)

Sudoku, baby!

Got a really really bad case of food poisoning. The kind where you go to the doctor and then the hospital. The kind where the Board of Health is notified. The kind where they take more blood out of you than a vampire would, and run all sorts of tests. The kind where you think you feel ok and eat half a saltine, and then you wind up in agony like that guy in the movie, "Alien", when the creature burst through his abdominal cavity, and it keeps on bursting through it, again and again, for weeks. The kind where the doctor says,"Your system probably won't be normal for several months", before she runs even more invasive tests. ( I can vouch that the doctor was right, too).  Yeah, that kind.

Read a few good books and lots of mediocre ones. Which leads me to:

10 books I've read at least twice

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

2. The World According to Garp by John Irving

3. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

4. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

5. The Complete Short Stories of Saki by Saki ( H H Munro)

6. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

7. The Long Afternoon of Earth by Brian Aldiss

8. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

9. Madeleine's Ghost by Robert Girardi

10. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maude Montgomery



10 celebrities who shouldn't be famous


Justin Bieber
Paris Hilton
Kim ( or any) Kardashian
Katy Perry
Jennifer Lopez
Nicole Ritchie
Ashlee Simpson
La La Anthony ( seriously? that's her name?)
Anyone from "The Bachelor"
Pretty much anyone from "Saturday Night Live" past the early '90's, except Tina Fey


10 historical figures I'd go bowling with


George W. Bush   Come on, he would be a hoot. As long as he's not running the country, that is.
Oscar Wilde  Think of all the charmingly witty ball jokes he could make.
Dorothy Parker   See above.
Albert Einstein  Well, wouldn't you want to go bowling with him?
Gandhi   He would let me win.
Napoleon Bonaparte He wouldn't.
Elizabeth I  She would probably play a good game, unless the ruff got in the way.
George Washington  Didn't they play ten pins at Mount Vernon?
Leonardo DaVinci   Of course.
Mae West  Of course!




10 places I've never been but would love to visit

Italy
Spain
Vietnam
The Serengeti
Australia, especially the Outback
Japan
Chile
Sweden
French Polynesia
Turkey


10 fictional characters who would make lousy roommates, and why


Sherlock Holmes  His penchant for practicing violin at all hours is one thing, the opium kept in the toe of that Persian slipper is another...

Travis Bickle, ( Taxi Driver)  Do I really have to explain this one?

Patrick Bateman, ( American Psycho )  Again, do I really have to explain?

Captain Kirk,( Star Trek )  If the constant stream of Space Hoochies doesn't drive you crazy, the Star Fleet issue space girdle draped over the sofa will. Not to mention the bulky captain's chair does not fit with any decor, really.

Chewbacca,( Star Wars)  Two words: Liquid Plumber

Tarzan  not a good choice if your apartment has a "no pets" policy.

Captain Ahab, Moby Dick  OCD does not begin to describe it. Also, peg leg would ruin the finish on your wooden floors.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark ( Hamlet) Too moody!

Gollum ( Lord of the Rings) Hide your valuables...

Godot,(Waiting for Godot)  You'll never know when that guy is going to show up.




10 things I have never wanted to do


Climb Mount Everest
Get breast implants
Go on a cruise
Play anything at all on an Xbox or PlayStation
Go to the Superbowl
Have a baby
Drink champagne in the back of a limo
Watch the movie, "Rocky"
Be a contestant on "The Price is Right"
Get a body piercing ( other than my ears, that is)



10 episodes of television shows I could watch over and over, and they would still make me laugh


The episode of M*A*S*H where Frank Burns commandeers a tank and runs over pretty much the entire camp.

The episode of All in the Family where Archie is going to be on Walter Cronkite, but the TV conks out

The episode of The Office where Dwight thinks the newly launched Dunder-Mifflin website has become cognizant and is in direct competition with him for sales

The Monorail episode of The Simpsons. "Donuts. Is there anything they can't  do?"

The episode of Frasier where Frasier's boss thinks he is gay, and they are on a date

The chocolate factory episode of I Love Lucy

The episode of 30 Rock where Carrie Fisher plays a crazy writer ( almost any episode of 30 Rock, really)

The episode of The Odd Couple where Oscar takes out his aggression towards Felix while walking in his sleep

The episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus where they go to visit Jean Paul and Mrs. Sartre

The episode of Chapelle's Show with "I'm Wayne Brady, Bitch!"

10 statements culled from contemporary music lyrics that not so neatly sum up my outlook on life on any given day

"Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage" -Smashing Pumpkins

"Where is my mind?" -Pixies

"Don't wanna be an American Idiot"  -Green Day

"It's better to burn out than it is to rust" -Neil Young

"Turn and face the strange changes, pretty soon now you're gonna get older" -David Bowie

"Dance to the Music" -Sly & the Family Stone

"I'll keep this world from draggin' me down gonna stand my ground, and I won't back down" -Tom Petty

"Let it be" -The Beatles

"Ev'ry little thing gonna be all right" -Bob Marley

"I will get by, I will survive" -The Grateful Dead

10 dark thoughts that creep into my head in the bleak hours before dawn as I lay silently awake, trying desperately to get back to the oblivion of sleep


My life is in ruins

I will never succeed

I am alone now, and no one else will ever love me, so I will be alone for the rest of my life

I have made all the wrong choices

I am such a loser

I am good at absolutely nothing. I have no talent and no skills

I am so hideously ugly

I will never reach my goals

I will never be happy again

I am a failure


Now, I know I said ten lists of ten, but there is just one more I have to add:


One thing I say, in the bright light of day, to counteract the dark thoughts


"That's not true!"

Not much of a list, that last one, but it's to the point.