Dear Cupid...

I am in love with holidays. 

I feel like with a holiday,

the world is just giving us all an excuse to celebrate something.

To be extra happy. 

And I love an excuse to be silly, and over-the-top, and happy.

So naturally I love love the holiday of love.

But I didn't always.

In high school,

for the most part,

I was the girl who was nice to everyone,

good at sports, had a really awesome group of friends,

most people knew me, not because I was popular,

but because I did the announcements (cough cough nerd alert cough cough).

My junior year, I ended up dating a stud football player,

so my love life started looking up then,

but before that . . .

I just didn't quite have it.

It could have been the perm or the obnoxious bangs or the mouth full of braces,

I mean, really, the list could go on forever . . .

but as far as teenage girl catches were concerned,

I wasn't on the list.

So like most junior high and high school girls,

Valentine's Day sucked.

No one delivered a fifty-cent carnation to my homeroom class,

and I didn't get jewelry (that would later turn my skin green) or candy,

or some embarrassing bouquet of "I Love You" balloons.

I can only imagine that the Tiny Human will go through this phase of Valentine's Day disdain someday too . . .

because when you're young,

and your body is raging with hormones and the only thing your brain can focus on is some lusty locker encounter with a pimply-faced twerp of a boy,

Valentine's Day is only about romantic love.

Thank goodness I don't see it that way anymore . . .

To this day,

the most fulfilling love I have ever experienced hasn't been from a romantic partner.

Sometimes that makes me sad,

but it's not an overwhelming sad and it's so fleeting.

Because I am so genuinely grateful for the love stories I do have in my life,

and that I have experienced during my lifetime.

Without question,

the truest and greatest love of my life is my daughter.

She will always be the best thing my heart has ever known.

I've been loved 

and gotten to love back some amazing people . . .

my parents,

my birth mom,

some amazing friends . . .

and LakeGirl,

who will until the end of the world be my weirdo soul mate.

And then there are the people who I encounter, even briefly,

during the course of a day,

that emanate love.

A stranger who holds a door . . .

My Starbucks barista who greets me by name and makes my heart happy . . .

the person in line at Target who lets us cut in front because he can see the meltdown about to explode from the Tiny Human's little body . . .

Little reminders of love make me fall in love with being alive every day.

So if Cupid's listening,

I just wanted him to know you kinda got this whole thing wrong.

Valentine's Day is about so, so much more than two people falling in love.

It's about all of the beautiful reasons the world offers us to fall in love with ourselves,

with our friends, our family, with the world around us . . .

it's about all of the little things that should make us fall in love with life every single day.

Being alive.

Plain and simple.

That's the best love story there is.

It's the Little Things

Woof.

The last two weeks . . . 

Epic. Train wreck.

I had a legit mental breakdown earlier this week,

which involved an embarrassing display of neuroses and hyperventilation.

coupled with uncontrollable crying-

think Dawson-crying-on-the-pier-after-Joey-dumps-him-crying,

not cute-single-tear-glistening-on-your-cheek-crying.

But luckily I have a partner who could see the crazy about to pour out of me,

so he sneaked me into his office,

closed the door,

and let this all unfold there instead of in the hallway where I would have been subject to some sort of involuntarily commitment as a result . . .

In any event,

I've recovered . . . sometimes a good cry is just the best medicine, really.

And although I am still somewhat drowning with deadlines and not fully healthy and recovered from our most recent bout with the plague,

I am moving on.

One day at a time.

And I am taking stock of the awesomeness that does exist in the midst of this crazy ass storm that's festering in my world right now.

THIS. JUST. THIS.

My guardian angel rockstar of an assistant also noticed I was losing my mind,

and left this card on my desk,

along with flowers and copious amount of candy to cheer me up.

Rainbow glitter kitten-unicorn?!? Everything magical in one place.

She nailed it.

Other little things that make me happy...

1. I got a card in the mail from LG, who is fresh off a stint on jury duty.

It began,

Greetings + Salutations!

I am currently holed up in an armchair at Starbs on Wisconsin Ave, 

being cozy by the fireplace w/ a chai latte (not my usual bev, I know)

as I hide from jury duty (bane of my existence)

during our lunch break.

To pass the time, here is the list of positives I've come up w/ for jury duty.

One of the items on her awesomesauce list was this: 

The courthouse is pretty. Like really pretty.* Might have to instagram something.

* Not the jury room. That has paint peeling off in large chunks and is 10,000 degrees.

I love getting mail and mail that makes me smile and giggle even though I haven't done either of those things for a while is a total bonus.

2. Having my wonderful "friends" at Starbucks greet me by name in the morning.

This might not seem like much but I love little things like this that are instant sources of happiness. 

It makes me smile and I feel oddly giddy about it every time it happens.

Without fail.

3. Dr. Pepper. The end.

4. Jeans that trick others into thinking my butt is not in fact a 30-something year old mom butt. Shallow? Yes. But it's fun to feel cute.

There's more . . .  so much more. 

But now I'm smiling so mission accomplished.

Happy Friday. 

Hoping a whole lotta little things make you smile big today.