Is it as funny to other people as it is to me that I easily wasted at least forty minutes of my day dancing to this song?
Seriously. I have a secret affinity for gospel music. It’d been dormant for awhile, but Whitney Houston’s funeral woke it up.
Red is for blood.
Despite the post I wrote last night (not to mention today’s date), it didn’t dawn on me until I arrived at work that today is Valentine’s Day.
Which is why I was horrified to realize I am wearing a red sweater.
Realize that the red and the pink and the chocolate and the “Hi, significant other! I’ll treat you like you’re special today because Hallmark says I should.” of the Valentine’s Day in which the Americans who celebrate it partake have this much to do with Saint Valentine, whose feast day is today: ZERO PERCENT.
Sorry to disappoint.
But my day was saved by friend and fellow blogger SVB:
Me: I’m so ashamed. I accidentally wore a red sweater today and I did not intend to look festive.
SVB: If people ask about your sweater, you can just tell them you are celebrating St. Valentine’s imprisonment and eventual bloody ending.
Martyrdom > consumerism.
Just sayin’. Thanks, SVB!
Valentine’s Day.
I traditionally don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. (That I’ve been single most Valentine’s Days as an adult is a coincidence.)
But one Valentine’s Day does go down in Arleen history as the best I ever had.
1999.
I was a seventh grader with braces and glasses, in denial that I had curly hair. One morning, a few weeks before our class’s Valentine’s Day party, my homeroom teacher — Mrs. Svendsen — passed out a sheet of paper. On it was a list of every student in our class. Our instructions were as follows:
Next to each student’s name except your own, write a good quality about him or her.
And without knowing why, we did.
Which is why on Valentine’s Day, when Mrs. Svendsen handed us each a sealed envelope, we were not expecting what we found inside it.
I wonder if Mrs. Svendsen expected it to mean as much to us as it did (at least, it meant so much to me).
Thumbs.
If you are wondering whether what my thumb is doing is a fluke in the photo with the essay of mine that appeared in today’s paper, wonder no more.
“I bet people will think my hand is deformed,” I said to my friend Ster about this yesterday.
Nah, she thought. Couldn’t be. But upon further exploration, she sent the following:
|
| “Now that you mention it, I am kind of concerned about your thumbs.” -Ster |
Best. Response. EVER.
The bee.
In the heat of Florida’s version of February, I leaned over my aging car’s engine to check the oil (Don’t be fooled — it is one of only two things I do to cars. The other is pump gas.). Afterward, I walked up the driveway toward the open garage. This is when I first encountered the bee.
Please note that since childhood, I’ve been averted to things that creep, crawl and fly, and more so if the things that creep, crawl and fly are covered in fuzz. The black and yellow bee flew past me, and into the garage.
Which is when I noticed the fuzz that covered it. Already, I didn’t like the bee, though he or she was tiny and in no way apparently interested in me. So I stood on the line between the driveway and the garage and watched. The bee, I learned, intended to land on every thing in the garage at least once.
“Frick,” I said. But I tried to be patient. I paced.
He or she spent a couple seconds on the treadmill. A couple more on the bike. A couple on the fridge. A couple on the bench. Then the bee flew toward the clothes line. This was a problem for me, in part because the laundry area of the garage is way back (it’s a big garage) and it’s way hard to coax a bee into flying from there to where I stood. This was also a problem, however, because of the dream I had a couple nights ago, in which — in my garage — I discovered a bee inside the dress I was wearing. In the dream, I naturally spent the entire ordeal standing completely still while thinking really hard about whether a way exists to get a bee out of your dress without ripping the dress off your body.
But back to the bee. I was able to brush off thoughts of the bee dream. Surely, the dream was not a premonition and certainly, I would not leave my driveway post until I saw the bee leave the garage, which, therefore, would prevent the bee from making a home out of any of the clothes drying on the line. And, in fact, the bee then flew from the laundry area to continue carrying out its M.O.
A couple seconds on a stack of books. A couple more on a Rubbermaid bin. A couple on the recyclables, which — if you haven’t seen my garage — are very close to the line between it and the driveway.
I got brave and walked past the bee, into the garage. I leaned toward the bee.
“Get. Out.”
He or she didn’t leave.
I said it louder.
“Get. Out! Get out of my garage!”
Still didn’t leave.
Bees, I thought. They never listen! I got frustrated.
“FRIIIIICK.” I said. While the bee dilly-dallied, I wandered to the laundry area. The tables had turned.
Come on, bee, I thought. This is my garage. I work out here. I do laundry here. I cannot have you here when I do these things. I probably stomped my feet. I may have shaken a fist.
“GET. OUT.”
The bee flew the line between the driveway and the garage. I watched until I no longer saw the bee.
Which is when I saw what I hadn’t once seen throughout the entire encounter with the bee:
My neighbor. I’m pretty sure she saw everything…
except for the bee.