If there’s something out there that you feel like you’re supposed to be doing, if you have a passion for it, then stop wishing and do it!
Wanda Sykes
Okay Wanda, I’m passionate about chocolate and there’s a tray of chocolate cupcakes in my kitchen that I feel like I should be eating. Does that mean I can stop wishing and do it…because I’m passionate?
Probably not!
Instead, I went in a different direction and steeped a bag of Passion tea by Tazo. This bag was gifted to me by a friend who shares my passion for tea. We exchange a tea bag or two in our annual Christmas card. I’m shouting out a BIG thank you for this one!
This caffeine-free “plunge into paradise” (promised on the sachet) really was a plunge into flavour! It contains hibiscus, licorice root, orange peel, cinnamon, rose hips, lemongrass, and hibiscus and elderberry extract (for colour). It seems like an odd pairing (licorice and flowers?) especially considering it describes itself as “passion fruit flavoured”. There was no passion fruit listed.
But here’s what I discovered! First, since the sachet was a white and purple combination, I expected a rich colour, like David’s Just Beet It. Instead, it was a charming peachy-pink tisane, which was very inviting. Second, it smelled floral, almost like roses with a whisper of fruit.
My first impressions deceived me. This tea was bold and vibrant! It was slightly tart and mouthwateringly delicious with a fruity intensity and warmth from the cinnamon. Yes, there were floral undertones and a zing from the licorice root, but the fruitiness was a bright star. One sachet made a medium-sized pot and my tongue sang all the way to the last drop.
Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love… the clarity of hatred… the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we’d know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we’d be truly dead.”
Dear Diary – I declared last Friday a pajama day! (but just so I wasn’t completely disgusting, I did shower and put on clean pajamas). I was so excited to have family and friends join in or comment on our “Adult Spirit Day”! I think we should plan something for next month. Anyone?
Cheers!
Dear Diary – I am a Valentine’s Day survivor. It’s that one holiday between Christmas chocolate and Easter chocolate, that I tend to despise. Too many bad experiences that make me want to cry out “Bah…humbug!” As always, I wore my traditional black to honour my friend (my little black dress stayed in the closet where it continues to shrink), and we ordered in pizza.
On Sunday morning, I received a cryptic text from Big Guy. I had my suspicions but I played dumb (which I’m really good at doing). Sure enough, within 10 minutes I heard snow crunching outside the front door. I opened to a stranger hightailing it away from my house and a large brown paper bag on my doorstep. Even though it was obviously too small for Big Guy to hide in, I brought it inside gingerly. It contained Tim Horton’s: 1 large coffee, 1 large steeped tea (Mine!), 1 large chocolate milk, and 3 chocolate chip cookies. It was the best breakfast from the sweetest kid!
I miss him.
Hubby also cooked us eggs and hash browns (yum!) and helped with dishes. Little Guy played Halo with me in the evening. 🙂
So it was my turn to treat. I spent the afternoon making pastitio, a layered Greek pasta dish similar to lasagna, with a thick bechamel sauce on top, and loads of gooey cheese. Very low cal. For dessert, homemade shortbread cookies. I experimented with flavouring the icing with tea: purple was earl grey, pink was cherry lucuma, and brown was s’mores chai. If you knew to look for the flavours, I mean really concentate, you could taste them.
I also made a cardboard template and cut out what were supposed to be tea bag shaped cookies. It took forever. Little Guy thought they were price tags. Obviously the baker on The British Baking Show did a much better job!
Sadly, my kid didn’t get to spend Valentine’s Day with his new sweetheart, who I have yet to meet. Of course, with Covid, they rarely get to meet!! Long distance relationships can be hard at the beginning, however, it also means you have time to get to know each other. That’s how Hubby and I started. Instead of texting, we wrote long letters, and occasionally talked on the phone after 11 p.m. when the long distance rates were lower. There were no phone plans back in the dark ages. Hubby and I also spent our first Valentine’s Day apart and it sucked for other reasons, but we’re still an item, celebrating 25 years in June. Maybe this couple will have quite a story to tell one day: “Love in the Time of Covid”.
Dear Diary – I ordered and picked up groceries on the only day this week that it snowed. Murphy’s law! With the windchill, it was dipping close to -20C, which made for a long, cold wait. I was the only one cued for a pick up and it took forever for them to come. I know why now: I’m feeding an army!
Be thankful for what you have. Your life, no matter how bad you think it is, is someone else’s fairytale.
Wale Ayeni
Dear Diary – Yesterday I supervised Little Guy’s 3 hour Computer Coding Competition. Even though he notified his teachers for the 2 periods he would miss, I still had to notify the school. But where to begin?
I began with the online attendance system used by the school board. It took me 20 minutes of searching and a 5 minute “video for dummy parents” only to discover that the Report Absence Button no longer exists.
So I called local school. She gave me 2 phone numbers for Virtual School. The first number was the correct number to report absences for Virtual School, but the voice mailbox was full, and then it started screaming “error, error” in my ear. So I called the other number and left a detailed voice message. I received a call back almost imediately from a very polite young man, chuckling from his toes. He was a Rogers Communications employee and this was his personal cell phone. Freaking awesome!
Next I sent both schools an email, explaining why I was writing and what number I called to get the “full” mailbox. At least they couldn’t say I didn’t try! There went the first half of my morning.
About 4 p.m., an hour after Little Guy had completed the competition, I received a rather snotty and abrupt email from the local school, giving me the phone number for reporting absences to the Virtual School. Obviously she read my email very carefully. Sigh…
Sheldon: Why are you crying?
Penny: Because I’m stupid!
Sheldon: Well that’s no reason to cry; one cries because one is sad. For example, I cry because others are stupid and it makes me sad.
It’s Valentine’s Day. That holiday between Christmas chocolate and Easter chocolate. A day for lovers to espouse the traits that bind them together for eternity…yadda-yadda-yadda!
If you can’t tell, I’m not a fan. I could say it’s because we should show our love and appreciation to our sweethearts, family and friends every day of the week, not just once a year. But that wouldn’t be the whole truth. There’s a reason I wear black, and certainly I’ve had enough tragic childhood tales of unrequited love and crappy happenstances to make this a dark day on the calendar. I acknowledge that it’s been far worse for others.
I don’t deny the “lovers” their foolishness. They can spend their hard-earned money on rocks and red roses, and gush over each other like I will over my pizza tonight. I’m a hopeless romantic at heart (or just hopeless), but I prefer to poke fun. In fact, had I known this song existed, it would have been my theme song in high school:
Go ahead and call me a curmudgeon, a wet blanket or a cranky old lady. I’ll just smile sweetly. I’m not heartless. In fact, I prayed for a lot of people today – people who have recently lost love and people who are longing for love – because I love them. Some of them love me back! Hubby even brought me flowers and O Henry (Oh Henry!). It must be love!
We are Valentine’s Day survivors. It’s that one holiday between Christmas chocolate and Easter chocolate, that I tend to despise. Too many bad experiences that make me want to cry out “Bah…humbug!”
Yesterday I did the same things I do every year. I wore black to honour my funny valentine. I mocked the sappy songs on the radio with gusto. And I ate pizza…with extra cheese and bacon!
But I had decided, in a last ditch effort to not totally destroy my teenager’s faith in all things lovey-dovey, I would try to have a better attitude. Or at least, not make sarcastic comments and gagging sounds. Also, I baked cookies.
Pink, heart-shaped, fru-fru shortbread cookies. And then I showered him with effusive hugs and kisses, and melodramatic expression of affection, until he begged me to stop.
To all the lovers out there – good for you! To the rest of us…celebrate! It’s over for another year and it’s the weekend. Make it a good one! 😉
Valentine’s Day is just around the corner…that glorious holiday when we’re supposed to celebrate love…
It arrives exactly 52 days after Christmas (which means if you disappointed your partner with your Christmas gift, this is a great way to remind them of that disappointment, or to just disappoint them again!) It also arrives in the middle of frigid February…just weeks before the suicide rate starts to climb. We’re surrounded by cute matching couples with cute matching expressions, an Ikea-type of love. A heart-shaped minefield.
There have just been too many bad Valentine’s Days. For example:
February 14, 1980-something. My “best” friend, handed me a paper valentine and told me that she was only giving me one because her mother was making her.
February 14, 1980-something. S. asked me to be his girlfriend, and when I told my friends, they didn’t believe me. And then he denied he had asked me and said I made it all up.
Photo courtesy of http://www.guy-sports.com
February 14, 1990 Friends brought me chocolate cake to help me get over a break up. Big Guy was 19 days old.
February 14, 1991 – my guy friend offered to call me on Valentine’s Day to cheer me up (and I had a huge crush on him), but I knew he was hanging out with his girlfriend that night, and while I appreciated his offer, I didn’t want to come between them. So I told him not to call. They are married now with 3 teenagers!
February 14, 1992 – my mother bribed me with a new red dress so I wouldn’t wear black…plus I had a date. And I was actually excited…until he cancelled because his parents had just moved and he had to drive to his hometown to find them.
February 14, 1994 – I called my new boyfriend after 11 p.m., cheap time, to wish him a Happy Valentine’s Day, and found out he had no intention of calling me or sending a card, because I would “expect that”. Huh?
February 1997 – I was fixing a special dinner to celebrate with new husband when I received a phone call that my best friend had died in a car accident. Ironically, she was on her way to a Bereavement Group meeting.
February 14, 2000 – Big Guy and I had the flu and Hubby was recovering from having his wisdom teeth removed.
If only I could have feasted “upon the unicorn enchilada” to “gain its enchilada power”. I could have saved myself so much grief…
Photo Courtesy of http://www.keengamer.com
I try not to let the hype get to me, nor do I let the pendulum swing so far that I’m completely cynical about love about romance. Afterall, it’s my favourite holiday – right between Christmas chocolate and Easter chocolate. It’s a holiday when I wear black and blast the song “Love Stinks” in my car. It’s that time of year when I roll my eyes at all sappy the diamond commercials and sweet “nothings” whispered publicly on Facebook. And I eat pizza…with extra cheese.
Celebrate your way…and I’ll celebrate mine! Happy Weekend!
I will be wearing black today because it’s a time honoured tradition. Valentine’s Day has sucked in the past – disappointments, break-ups, cancelled dates, lonely nights, harsh words, bitter tears…you get the picture! I’m certainly not alone here. But I have another “good” reason to dislike Valentine’s Day – I miss my best friend!
My dear friend, D.J., and I became inseparable BFFs in Grade 5. In Grade 6, we had to band together to survive our 6th grade teacher (she was a scary, menopausal mess!) In Grade 7 we sang “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” at the tops of our lungs, and danced “as if no one was watching”. In Grade 8, she told me why she wasn’t a virgin; she also told me that just before we became friends, she had planned her suicide, right down to the note…and it was only a matter of days. In Grade 10, she went with me to buy a pregnancy test. We shared everything (except boyfriends) and I could trust her to be honest with me, without being brutal.
Even when I went to college, and she moved away, even though we didn’t speak for months at a time, it was if no time had passed; we could pick up right where we left off! I mailed her fictitious stories of life in our “hick town” (complete with a cast of stereotypical “small town” characters), and she would mail back advice on surviving big city life (e.g., how to pick out the hooker in a crowd). We just got each other in all our weird and wonderful ways!
My wedding took place 2 months after D.J. lost her parents (their truck collided with 2 passenger trains), and although I hadn’t receive a reply from her, I included her in my guest list. The day before the wedding, I got a call from my Mom at the Reception Hall to say D.J. had just phoned and she was coming! I imagine it was difficult for her to come, but she was best wedding present!
My “Funny Valentine” died in a single car accident on Valentine’s Day, 1997. Her car slipped on the ice and went over the overpass. Ironically, she was on her way to a bereavement group meeting. She had spent the day at her parents’ house with her siblings, sorting through her stuff. Her brother told me at the funeral that she had talked about me that day, how we had met at a mall the previous Christmas and I had made her laugh…and how good it had felt to laugh! A few weeks later, he passed on some pictures and things she had set aside to take home with her – pictures of us being the goofy girls that we were.
D.J. and I agreed in high school many (many) years ago, that we would “rebel” every Valentine’s Day by wearing black, and with the exception of one year in college when my Mom bribed me with a gorgeous red dress (which was the same year my date stood me up), I have always worn black. Without a doubt, if my dear friend was still alive, she would be wearing black too…and we would laugh and laugh…and it would feel so good!
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To read more Funny Valentine Stories from participants of the Weekly Writing Challenge, click here!
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