The Bridal Shower Gift

Sometimes (and by "sometimes" I mean all the freaking time) I feel like I am pretending to be an adult and I'm in way over my head. Like severely sucking at it. Partly this is exacerbated by moving in with M, which feels like playing house. Or being on vacation. And I keep thinking I will be going back to my own apartment soon and I had better live it up in the meantime. By eating junk food and keeping everything clean. (I don't get it either. My brain has a path all its own.)

Anyway, I have succeeded in being an adult in a few ways recently, including impressively making the bed each morning. I have also managed to:
(note that I have been known to do the exact opposite of all of these on a regular basis)

• Buy flowers for the dining room

• Turn off all the lights at night and sleep in a bed (not a couch)

• Keep the coffee table clear of bills, dirty glasses, spoons and drawing pens

• Put almost all of my dirty clothes in the laundry basket (not the bed)

• Not leave the Brita picher empty in the fridge (To be fair, we don't actually use the Brita at all since we bought a Pur filter for the sink. This was a slight point of contention, solved when the filter-free faucet spat out a large bug. No more Bug Water, no more Brita.)

• Also, my gym bag is not residing in the middle of the living room

Unfortunately this has taken all of my adult capabilities, as this is how I have failed at being an adult recently:

• The flowers I bought died and they are still prominently displayed on the dining room table

• I forgot to change my address for 70% of my bills

• I left my comb, brush, razor, conditioner, and a pair of socks at the gym all on separate occasions and have had to buy another version of each of them again

• I am clearly incapable of unloading the dishwasher or taking out the trash

• I have not once watered or even looked at the two plants we have (To be fair, I did tell M that if he wanted to put the plants eight feet high in the kitchen, that I would most likely not remember that they are there as it is a good three feet above my sightline. I was right. Also, I killed a cactus once and have a decidedly red-for-danger thumb.)

• I am highly uncomfortable in adult situations, like bridal showers and graduation ceremonies.

I suppose this last one is not something I just "discovered" while trying to be a real person. This is just consistent with my personality. I don't really like sitting still and making small talk. I am severely crowd-averse and I don't remember names or identifying details very well. Also, I very much think the bridal shower tradition of making people watch you open presents is tedious and weird. Even though I'm pretty sure I did this at every one of my birthday parties until I was 17.

Is this a tradition because the tradition is to show as much extra attention on the bride as humanly possible or is it a tradition because old people go to bridal showers and this is what they expect? (I am picturing a panel of white-haired ladies waving knitting needles in the air and waging a protest against "new-fangled bridal showers" - refusing to attend or send presents if they can't see their own gifts opened to much fanfare and applause.)

If you take into consideration the fact that I have a well-documented inability to lie or otherwise control my facial expressions/compulsive eye-rolling, you can see this as one in a natural line of elements of "The Wedding" that I do not want any part of at my own hypothetical future nuptials. This list includes that damn Corinthians reading that makes me want to strangle people. (Yes, clearly my impatience and rage dictate that I am not in fact the essence of love.)

Anyway, when you are buying presents for a couple who have essentially told you what to buy them via a gift registry, opening these presents is like writing a list of demands to Santa, and then having to pretend you are surprised when you get what you asked for on Christmas morning. Why do we make brides pretend they are not only surprised that you did what they asked, but they are extraordinarily thrilled with how you did? Do we expect that people are innate fuck-ups? (Don't answer that.)

In keeping with my rebellious inclinations toward "The Wedding," I tend to either not buy off of the registry or I try to insert something that will make the gift more than just something to check off of a list. I apologize to any brides that I have annoyed in this process. 

The most recent bridal shower that I went to involved a registry in which almost all of the things I could afford had been purchased already, leaving me with a choice between a $700 rug or a collection of random materials. I determined these were not good enough choices. Especially given that faking your way through excitement becomes even harder when people buy you a box of random crap. My friend A, of the delicious pretzel hostess gifts, is extraordinarily talented at baking cookies and cupcakes. When our boyfriends were roommates, cookies were a running obsession. So, for her bridal shower I bought a baking sheet off of the registry and then found a mini spatula made just for cookies, and cookie cutters in the shape of cupcakes. Neither of which were on the registry.

At this point I was worrying slightly about breaking the rules, so I pimped out the Crate and Barrel box:

To break this down for you - A and J are the initials of the betrothed. That striped panel with the cookie peeking out the top is a library pocket stuffed with shopping cards for cookie recipes. And the green sheets are cookie recipes attached to the handle with a metal ring.

For the shopping cards, I drew a picture of each type of cookie and then listed the ingredients needed for the recipe, directing A to Bon Appétit's website for the full recipe instructions:

The idea is that when you want to make one of the cookies, you pick up the card and bring it to the store instead of copying down the whole recipe. But also I hand-wrote them the night before the shower and did not have time, patience or enough index cards to write out the whole recipe.

Faking it at being an adult is helping me feel like I am sucking at it less.

The Totally Inappropriate Gift

I am no stranger to totally inappropriate behavior. I talk to myself. In public. In French. I also have allergies that compel me to wipe my nose with restaurant napkins. And sometimes I forget that sunglasses do not make me invisible and end up blatantly staring at people for too long. But I do not chase people down the street to ask them out in the following way:

Crazy Man in Range Rover: "Hey beautiful, take a copy of my book!"

Me: (Ignoring crazy man completely.)

Crazy: (Following me in Range Rover, parking car on the street and running after me, waving a crazy arm in the air.) "Hey, I just want to get your number! I just flew in from filming a movie in New York and I have a fashion show coming up I want to give you the dates for."

Me: (Ignoring crazy man completely.)

Crazy: "Here's my card. Can I get your number or give you mine? Wow, you sure walk fast."

Me: "Your number's on the card, right? Then I have yours."

Crazy: "Well, that not my real cell phone number, so take my new one."

Me: (Pretending to type Crazy's number in my phone while actually stabbing at random buttons. This entry is now "Zz8r47Wa" in my phone.)

At this point Crazy has returned to his Range Rover and I am still zig-zagging my way through downtown to teach at the museum. It is 8:40 am. Crazy continues to follow me in his car and is now waving something out the window.

Crazy: "I want you to take a copy of my book. I'm gonna be on Oprah in two weeks."

Me: (Thinking I either have to take this copy or call the police, I take the book.)

Crazy: "You'll see on the back that I have seven kids. But I'll be divorced in three years."

WTF.

Crazy: "I know God brought me to you for a reason."

I hope God doesn't tell him I put a fake number in my phone.

As pointed out by my best friend K, I do seem to attract a certain level of crazy. (She said "hilarity" but if you knew all the stories, you would know that "crazy" is more apt.)

I'm not sure what kind of woman thinks a man with seven kids, a pending divorce and a really terrible book is a catch, but I would guess that chasing even that woman down the street doesn't do you any favors. I did read part of the hardcover autobiography I now reluctantly own. And if "With five kids by the age of 26, [Crazy] didn't think it could get any worse, but had two more kids in the next three years" doesn't just pull at your heartstrings and make you fall in love with Crazy, I don't know what will. He goes on to talk about how when women "get scared, they get possessive of their man" and that at this point "the man doesn't respect the woman at all and the woman makes it worse by clinging to him."

If Crazy goes on Oprah I hope she eats him.

Anyway, as I said, I am no stranger to totally inappropriate behavior. And sometimes this behavior actually makes totally appropriate gifts. As long as it doesn't involve chasing.

Last summer I went to France for a couple of weeks. I did an exchange program in high school in which I lived with a family for a month in a small town two hours southwest of Paris. The girl I was paired with has become one of my closest friends and when I received her wedding invitation in the mail, I decided that even if I put the whole trip on my credit card, I would be at her July 2009 wedding in the town where I had lived for a short time ten years ago. So, last summer I went to her wedding. And maxed out my credit card.

Anyway, what do you get someone as a wedding present when you don't know the wedding customs of their country? If you are me, apparently you draw a sketch-portrait on the plane, tear it out of your sketchbook at the airport and then visit a French Pier One at the train station to buy a frame and frantically scratch off the price sticker while riding the TGV.

Totally inappropriate. Yet, this made a lovely gift. Why? My friend is a dancer and the picture I drew was of them dancing. Also, the frame covered the torn-off edge of the paper.

The moral of the story is, if your inappropriate behavior is behind-the-scenes, or a clumsy means to a tidy end, then the behavior is a non-issue. Or that chasing people down the street is never a good plan for woo-age. Or inappropriate pick-up lines are funnier when invoking the name of Oprah. Whatever. I win.

The Oops Factor Gift

I am a horrible person. Well, not person, but horrible blogger. And friend. Horrible blogger for obvious reasons, such as going missing for weeks at a time. Horrible friend for the same reasons.

I have had multiple concurrent jobs for several years and there is no way I could do this without some decent multitasking skills. However, it seems I have a saturation point and have been functioning at said saturation point for several weeks. Here is what I have neglected in the past few weeks:

Doing my taxes

Birthday-calling one lovely friend in Seattle

Return-calling to one lovely friend in Ohio

Sending a birthday present to one lovely friend in Pennsylvania

Sending a card to one lovely friend in Maine

Replying to emails of several friends in Chicago

This is exactly five states worth of relationships that I have jeopardized. Plus my own good standing with the US government. Not that this is an excuse, but here is what I have been busy doing in the past few weeks:

Turning 29

Spending a week in Florida (minus the 33 hours spent in the car getting there and back)

Getting a new writing job for Examiner.com

Searching for a new apartment

Writing threatening letters to current apartment company to possibly screw up insure safe return of security deposit

So you can see that I have been extremely busy and important and therefore reached code red multi-task-saturation point. And for that I would like to apologize to all of my lovely, multi-stated friends. I hope you are more forgiving than the IRS.

Also, you should probably gear up for some more forgiveness, because this gift is not one given by my AND showcases another of my less-pleasant sides. Just know that aside from my low-saturation-threshold, I am a much better person now than I was in 1995. For my fourteenth birthday, my dad gave me a CD. I had gotten a CD player for Christmas that year, along with my first CD, Ace of Base's "Sign."

Go ahead, I will give you a minute to fully embrace the awesomeness that was Ace of Base.

Anyway, once I had a taste of the greatness of CDs as clearly illustrated by this seminal mid-90s band, I was hungry for more. Particularly Counting Crows and their debut "August and Everything After." (This you may not make fun of, however, as I still love Counting Crows with a reverence that smacks of angst I shouldn't have.)

As I made no secret of how much I wanted this CD, I assumed my dad had bought this exact CD for my birthday. In fact, he had bought Hootie and the Blowfish's "Cracked Rear View." Given the expectations I had set up for myself, I was incapable of hiding my disappointment or otherwise acting like a nice person not filled with brat-tastic hormones. I may have even cried. My dad, sure that this CD was going to be a hit, recovered seamlessly. He bought the Counting Crows CD I made such a stink over, plus an extra CD of my choosing. An Oops Factor gift. This is his term - a gift in addition to the make-up gift to completely erase all mistakes on the part of the giver. I think of this all the time. Not just when I hear Hootie and the Blowfish (and cringe) but when I misjudge the awesomeness of a gift or miss a birthday. I owe lots of people Oops Factors right now. (Way more so than my dad ever did for my Hootie blunder.) I just hope that when you all cash in you make a wiser choice than the Celine Dion CD I picked out in 1995. It didn't stand the test of time like I thought it would.

The Workout Gift

Sometimes I like to think I am training to climb Mt. Everest. Even though I have no desire to actually climb Mt. Everest, and only if by climbing it, I would be carrying a giant bag on one shoulder that contains necessities like Advil, ear muffs and hand sanitizer. (I mean, mountain goats are probably full of germs, right?) 

Clearly I do not need to be trekking all over town with a bag full of "things you rarely use," especially on a day like today when I might as well be climbing Mt. Everest since I've been knocked over twice by the gale force winds. You might think I am joking, but you would be wrong. Literally - off the sidewalk and into the street. I can't walk without bowing forward and plunging head-first into my intended direction. So maybe it's a good thing I have a bag stocked with snacks, an umbrella and gum. You never know when you might be swept into a gutter and need to survive for days. Just like on Everest. 

Of all of the things I stuff into my mountain climbing apprenticeship bags, I somehow did not bring a pair of gym socks today. To the gym. Which means I was forced to work out in giant giraffe socks. And in case the clarity of the pictures of giraffes on the sides of my mid-calf socks is not up to par, in total nerdtastic fashion, my socks say "GIRAFFE" in big block letters along the tops. 

I can't say that I am totally embarrassed by this. These are my seventh pair of giraffe socks and I wear all seven pairs with impressive regularity. As an extension of the inside joke about giraffes that I have with my dad, every Christmas I find a new pair of socks in my stocking adorned with the gangly African animals. My dad gets everyone a pair of goofy or cool or crazy socks every year in their stocking. The first time my mom received a pair of socks covered in horses, she cried. She has gotten horse socks ever since. 

My brother usually gets sports-related socks, and I have gotten two pairs of Colts socks. But usually it's giraffes for me. And I love them. They are like little foot surprises, brown speckled heads peeking out atop my shoes and into the world. My giraffes keep me grounded as they clomp along under my work clothes. They make me a little taller, a little more interesting, a little less serious. A little like I am porting tiny foot Muppets.

And as such, they are not my first choice for workout wear. I like to feel like I am way awesome at working out, like I was just cast in an action movie and my workout is part of the movie’s video montage. Super warm socks that shout “GIRAFFE” from my ankles would not make a cameo in this sequence. What DOES fit in this sequence is an iPod. (Which I also forgot to bring today.)

For Christmas last year, my brother and I combined forces to buy my mom an iPod nano. We found one in her favorite color (purple) and told her it would make her long walks and exercises way more fun. My brother made her a mix CD and a certificate that promised to help her figure out how to use the iPod. (My brother is even broke-r than I am, so we split the cost unevenly, and then G took on these extras to make up the difference. Plus he’s really good at picking out music and I listen to anything that’s on the radio. G is embarrassed to even look at my iPod.)

My mom called a few weeks after Christmas last year to say that her new purple friend had revolutionized her workouts. She had successfully uploaded all of the Broadway musicals in her collection and was walking to work faster than usual. Her iPod was starting to become the soundtrack to her own action movie. It was becoming her own little foot Muppet. Only designed for workouts. Like an aerobic giraffe.

The Entrepreneurial Gift

Someone just asked me if I would buy her $25 Olive Garden gift card off of her for $15. This is after I heard her explain this plan to her friend on her cell phone. She loudly announced that she was desperate enough for money to do this, but also that "once the unemployment money comes in, that can be my spending money."

This is why everyone hates programs like unemployment and welfare services. Because people use them for the wrong reasons. Unemployment insurance is not spending money. It is not for new handbags and dinners out. It is not, (as funny as I think this would be,) for lottery tickets. It is to replace the money you were making at the job you lost so you can pay your bills. It is essentially paying you to search for the best job you can find.

I say this all preachy like I've been looking day and night for the best job I can find. Really I have been looking between other jobs for the best job ever. I am finding that I am qualified for nothing. Except teaching, but I tried that and I didn't like it. So now I can do something I hate or lots of things that are free.

While Olive Garden-of-crazy was hustling me, (that's not fair, she's probably not crazy - even if she had spectacularly sticky-uppy hair, lipstick on her teeth and asked me if there was "a dress code for this neighborhood,") I was trying to eavesdrop on the other table next to me. This is what I got out of my efforts:

"If you offer a group of people a bunch of candies and tell them to take as many as they want for free, they won't hoard them, they will most likely not take any. But, if you offer the same group of people the same candy and say it's inexpensive and that you can take as many as you want for a nickel, they will start buying them up."

His point was that whatever you have to offer, you have to show that it has value. He said to start thinking about what you do for free and start assigning a value to those services. I wanted to keep listening to this because it sounded really smart. Also because I think this is where I stopped paying attention in my college economics class and therefore I typically de-value my own worth in the work world. But then I also started thinking of all the things I do for free and I'm not exactly sure I can charge for any of these "services":

Cooking dinner

Reading

Playing Sudoku

Pretending I am famous and practicing my obviously imminent conversation with David Letterman

Watching TV

Searching for four leaf clovers

Making up stories in my head about strangers that I stare at during the day

Maybe it's just me, but parlaying any of these into a lucrative career choice could take more initiative than I am inclined to have. If someone offered me a salary to solve Sudoku puzzles or read the Classics one by one, I certainly wouldn't turn them down, but an empire built on talking to myself in the mirror does not seem to be on the horizon.

This idea of taking something you would do for free anyway and turn it into something valuable is intriguing to me. Partly because I do this already with gifts. I have mentioned before that I draw occasionally and this is something that crops up often in my gift giving. My first go at this was back in fourth grade when I discovered my own extraordinary talent at drawing flowers. At least according to my own ten-year old self. And my parents. Looking at these flowers now, I have the utmost respect for my parents and their ability to believe in an artistic talent that was clearly not awesome on any level.

Anyway, these flowers had vines flowing behind them and covered entire pages in my notebooks and drawing pads. Finally, one of my parents suggested drawing them on greeting cards and sending them to friends. (How many friends did I have to send cards to when everyone I knew lived in a four block radius? Not sure.) The flowers-of-epic-amazingness grew to include different colored backgrounds, done in colored pencil. As my mom was the ultimate fan of this series, my dad helped me color copy a selection of four flowers-of-epic-amazingness into a box set of greeting cards. We bought some envelopes and wrapped it all up for Mother's Day. (I say "we" like I had any income of my own at ten. Half the time I didn't even get my full allowance due to my aversion to doing the dishes.)

I'm pretty sure my mom still uses these cards. Probably because I made like 700 of them. I really thought this would launch my career as a greeting card designer. Let's be serious here - flowers-of-epic-amazingness never go out of style and can be used for any occasion. Too bad Etsy didn't exist in 1991. Even if the flowers never *ahem* bloomed into anything professionally, they made a great gift for the person who appreciated them the most. Sometimes the things you do for free can be coached into something that furthers your career. And something the things you do for free make excellent gestures of love and friendship. So, friends, watch out for transcripts of my pretend conversations with Letterman. They will be epic.

The Tournament Gift

Two days ago, M woke me up in the middle of the night:

M: "WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?"

Me: "Wha-huh?"

M: "We can't keep staying here in this bed!"

Me: (Starting to take offense because we are in MY bed.) "What are you talking about?"

M: "We can't keep paying to stay in this bed. At $7 a night."

Me: "Um, where do you think we are?"

M: "Your parents' house?"

Obviously he was dreaming, but the combination of those thoughts is HI-larious to me. What scenario would necessitate a lengthy stay at my parents' house that would also cause us to pay the equivalent of half a breakfast per day? M doesn't remember the scenario, or the fact that he was genuinely worried about our future bed placement. I think it has something to do with the impending move-in-together date and our increasingly intense apartment search.

Luckily, both of us know exactly what we want in a place to live in sin. We are very picky, in exactly the same way. Which is great for us, not so great for our quest for the perfect place. Also, we don't have any money. Which makes apartment hunting a little harder.

When we see potential apartments, they always ask if we have pets. To which M always responds, "Well, I want a dog but I've been told this is not happening anytime soon." He thinks this is HI-larious - in the same way I thought his crazy dream about us daily renting a bed was. The truth is that we both want a dog, but he thinks that since I have less work, that I will be able to just take care of it. And this is not the kind of dog situation I want. Plus, I know how I am with change, (not good in case you're wondering - picture a crazy person, give them some caffeine and show them a sad movie and you have an idea of "me plus change") and moving in together on top of moving in general and all of the other potential new that I might have if I ever get hired to be something cool does not bode well for a new dog. Or M.

I did, however promise one thing as a gift for our anniversary this year. We have been planning the big move for a while and have finally gotten our leases on the same cycle so we can move in without any subleasing or breaking leases or any other lease trouble. With this idea on the horizon, for our three year anniversary, part of my gift to M was to renew my Sports Illustrated subscription that I had let lapse for our new address, whatever it may be.

This is the first year in almost ten years that I have not had my SI for March Madness. This means I am sans paper bracket. I know there are like 47 million online brackets you can fill out, or print out or bet against. Whatever. I want my glossy-page SI bracket that I fill out in gel ink with pretty font. As I am not a gambling type by nature, and as I started reading SI before I realized that betting was involved with the NCAA tournament, I have always done with my bracket what I originally believed you are supposed to do: I fill it out as it happens, recording the results in permanent pen. I do NOT predict on paper. You might be shaking your head at me right now, and that's OK. I am fine with my gambling naivete. I still fill out my bracket the same way. This is also why I do not participate in fantasy sports. I do not enjoy having to root for a team I don't like just because it gets me points, or even money. I want to be a fan for the teams and the players whom I want to win, and fantasy just messes it all up for me. You could say that I am a pure fan. Or a puritan fan. Or a pain in the ass.

Anyway, even with all my fan loyalties and my long-term relationship with SI, I cancelled my subscription earlier this year. Actually, it was cancelled for me. As example number 642 of why I hate the USPS, they did not deliver my magazines for a full two months. I called so many times to complain that I now have the best USPS supervisor on speed dial. She eventually fixed this problem, (at least until December's Bon Appétit went missing,) but since two months' worth of SI magazines came back to the magazine, they figured I went delinquent on them and cancelled my subscription. This is when the renewal offers started coming through the mail. (THESE get through. The actual magazines, not so much.) And I realized that I had been paying exactly $67 MORE than a first-time subscriber. Come on, SI, ten years?! You can't cut a sports fan a break?

I know that magazines have to hook new readers in, especially as more content moves to the Internet. But there has to be some incentive to long-term subscribers as well, or magazines will lose their majority readership every year. I don't have a clear way to fix this, but something along the lines of discounts to partner businesses or free special issues twice a year. Even access to online video or streaming coverage of games for customers who have been with the program for at least two years. Doesn't this make more sense? Maybe most people sign up and let their renewals happen automatically. At least with Bon Appétit, the difference between initial and renewed subscriptions is only $4. But for SI, I would rather cancel each year, miss a couple of months and sign up anew to save that $67 a year.

So when my subscription was cancelled, this became the new plan. And moving to a new address seemed the perfect target date to re-establish my relationship with SI. (And M.) M used to have a subscription with them as well, but cancelled for similar reasons. Our new subscription is like I am taking care of our preferred sports publication the same way M wants me to take care of a dog. It's like a little compromise. With brackets.

The St. Patrick's Day Gift

You are dying to know what the number one question cocktail waitresses get asked while working, aren't you? I thought so. I'm sure recently there have been many "Has this job improved your golf score?" or other more crude Tiger references. But if you are me, the number one question you would receive while working in a bar is:

"What's your heritage?"

Usually this is followed by something lame like, "Whatever it is, it's working." Just so I don't feel like I am extraordinarily odd-looking. Which is what this question makes me feel like. If I were even just four inches braver, I would adopt an accent and pretend not to speak English. 

Anyway, my "heritage" is that my dad's side is Latvian/Lithuanian (I usually just say Russian because it's easier and that's the language they speak there,) and came to America by way of South Africa. My mom's side is a combination of French, English and Irish and came to America by way of Canada. Confusing, yes. (I distinctly remember my parents explaining this combination to me using post-its in the shape of oranges to display pie charts with fractions.) Conflicting, yes. My dad's side is Jewish and my mom's side is Catholic, which essentially means that no one other than my parents has ever gotten along, and that my knowledge of religious events is based on the holiday calendar. Hence the obsession with gift giving, I guess. 

You might notice that the holidays celebrated in this blog so far are heavy on the Christian side. And this is because there are very few true blowout holidays in the Jewish calendar. Give a kid the choice between a hard candy made of sesame seeds and honey or a Cadbury egg and the clear loser here is Passover. And this is before the seven hour dinner where you only eat in hour six, and the week of no bread. This is not to say that I don't appreciate the Jewish side of things, and I actually love that I was given total freedom to experience all the great parts of each. Just when it comes to holidays, I certainly lean a little more on Christmas, St. Patrick's Day and Easter. I am not ashamed to admit that this is for the presents. 

So, given that part of my "heritage" (and I say this in quotes because it now reminds me of drunk men betting on which country I herald from,) is Irish and that this Irishness comes from my mom, celebrating St. Patrick's Day has become a little ritual between my mom and I. This, however, was a long road. When I was little, my mom would make corned beef and cabbage for all of us and give us each a little token, like a sticker or a handkerchief. I loved that part, but hated The Chieftains record my parents would play and claimed it made me dizzy and nauseous. One time, we went to a parade or a St. Patty's festival or something with a crowd to celebrate. I was around six years old and clearly did not know what was going on. My mom gave me a "Kiss Me I'm Irish" button to wear and I burst out crying. My mom was insulted and thought I was rejecting my Irish decendency. But really I was just picturing hundreds of strangers rushing up to kiss me and it freaked me out. 

I'm not sure when this changed - maybe when I realized that wearing a button that says "Kiss Me I'm Irish" does not mean you are asking for sexual assault, or maybe when I realized that The Chieftains do not induce illness of their own accord, and that Dropkick Murphys are delightful. However it happened, I now fully embrace St. Patrick's Day flair. For the past four years, my mom has sent me a box of Thin Mints (green box, get it?) with a card. If I see her in person, I get a loaf of soda bread too. One time she sent me shamrock stickers but the postal service hijacked them and I never got them. This is one example in a long battle between me and the USPS. 

Anyway, this year, I found green amazingness in the dollar bins at Target and decided to send one of each to my mom and my best friend K, who is Irish in full. I found a sparkly green headband for K and some socks for my mom. I bought one of each for myself as well. Then I went to the post office and waited for 45 minutes to send my presents out and was greeted by the most unpleasant postal worker I have encountered yet. I tried to be nice. I tried to be assertive. I failed on both accounts and wound up asking which kind of delivery she had chosen for me too quickly for me to see. Obviously the slowest one. So I have no idea if these presents got there on time. 

Undaunted, today I sent K a multi-media text message that looked like this:

Twins!

And my mom a message that looked like this:

Kissy feet!

(If you can't tell, the socks say "Kiss Me I'm Irish." The pink blob is lips.) I have clearly come a long way in my road to embracing my "heritage." I have no fear of strangers tumbling forward to kiss my feet. Because that would be weird.