Diann: your letter is "J".
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And here are a couple of "Wednesday 'Whaaat?'" items:

First:



Regia yarn is "dimensionally stable." Which is great, because I know I hate it when my projects go blipping off to the 8th dimension or somewhere.

(What do they really mean? Is this some kind of "It won't stretch out of shape" statement?)

And second:



When stickers get stuck in the 1970s! It's a pig! With a heart! With a rainbow! And a sweater made out of rainbows! ("Imagi-NATION!" says SpongeBob)

This was on a valentine's box (fig cookies) from my mom. I'm not sure if she intended the sticker ironically or not.

Which actually, that provides me with a little bit of a segue (and that is the correct spelling. It is not, dear goodness, "segway," as I have seen some type it.)

Valentine's Day. I think I pinpointed some of my frustration with what the holiday has become.

One of the local news-bunnies, this morning, said in a very pettish childish voice, "I'm still WAITING on my flowers!" You silly old trout - for one thing, it's six freaking thirty in the morning. I realize you were trying to be funny, but taking that kind of tone - which I would consider childish coming from a six year old - just set my teeth on edge.

And it made me realize: the whole day has turned into a minefield. There's tremendous pressure to find the 'right' gift, and the implication is that it's PERFECTLY OKAY to be ungrateful and even offended if your "beloved" doesn't pick out the exact thing your heart desires. Women are allowed - and even encouraged - to behave like six year olds if they don't get flowers or jewelry or who knows what.

(And I will leave it to others to draw the feminist implications of women being encouraged to act like spoiled children.)

And that's just not fair. Especially because the other implication seems to be "If he REALLY loved you, he'd be able to read your mind and get exactly what you want."

And there's really no attention given to the other side of the equation - it's not at all clear to me if it's understood you will buy a gift for your man (provided you have one), or if there's some other kind of, ahem, return that's expected.

There's also the issue that there seems to be an escalation in money spent - while I haven't seen car ads suggesting you buy your love a car for V-Day, I'm sure they are coming.

And it all makes me want to do the headdesk thing. How did we get from, say, third grade in 1978, where we made shoeboxes and got little paper cards with Mickey Mouse or Superman on them, and drank red Hi-C punch, and ate cupcakes with pink frosting, to "I'm still WAITING on my flowers!" and "She'll think you spent weeks planning it, when it's really just a mouseclick away."

I don't know. We seem to be awfully good at screwing up gift-giving occasions in this society, in either allowing Madison Avenue to take over and ramp up the expectations to the "unrealistic" level, or to expect whatever sorry little gift* to make up for a world of inattention, missed communication, and lack of loving behavior the rest of the year.

(*And I maintain: if you have not love, a $25,000 diamond necklace is NOT compensation. If you are rude or dismissive or take the person you love for granted, there is no thing you could buy that will compensate for that. And on the flip side: if you do have love, if you make an effort to be kind and to listen and to thank the person when they go above-and-beyond, no gift is really necessary, I think, other than more of the same.)

But what do I know? I'm always on the outside looking in on these things. Maybe everyone's perfectly happy playing a part in what looks to me like a big mash-up of deception and quid pro quo. If that's the truth, then I don't feel so bad about not being part of a couple.

Still - it would be kind of nice to have a cupcake with pink frosting on it. And maybe even a silly card with Pooh Bear on it that said something like "Bee my Honey."

****

And it is still my birthday month. In less than two weeks, I am considered a year older.

And I found this on another site. Usually I kind of roll my eyes at Ogden Nash - he's too flip, his verse seems tossed off in a lot of cases - but this one very nearly had me crying at the end:

A Lady Who Thinks She is Thirty

Unwillingly Miranda wakes,
Feels the sun with terror,
One unwilling step she takes,
Shuddering to the mirror.

Miranda in Miranda’s sight
Is old and gray and dirty;
Twenty-nine she was last night;
This morning she is thirty.

Shining like the morning star,
Like the twilight shining,
Haunted by a calendar,
Miranda is a-pining.

Silly girl, silver girl,
Draw the mirror toward you;
Time who makes the years to whirl
Adorned as he adored you.

Time is timelessness for you;
Calendars for the human;
What’s a year, or thirty, to
Loveliness made woman?

Oh, Night will not see thirty again,
Yet soft her wing, Miranda;
Pick up your glass and tell me, then—
How old is Spring, Miranda?

--Ogden Nash