A person can both Not Really Want, At All sweeping romantic gestures and glittery jewelry and giant bouquets of flowers and fancy heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, while still feeling a little disappointed to then not get those things. It is illogical, but such is the human heart. This past Valentine’s Day, I managed to override whatever part of my system feels sad and melancholy over not having the Hallmark Version of the holiday, and instead feel pleased about a) sending Valentines (although they ALL seemed to reach their recipients MUCH TOO LATE; note to self, start MUCH EARLIER) and b) making cookies and c) delivering said cookies to a few dear local friends and d) buying flowers for myself and e) supporting Carla in her desire to paper the house with hearts. It worked, truly, and I felt pleased and cheerful rather than resentful and pouty. 

Today: I bought myself some yellow tulips that I am hoping will open up as the day goes on. I do love a cheery yellow tulip. I am making vanilla cupcakes with lemon curd filling and cream cheese frosting because, as Engie noted, why would I pass up a perfectly good opportunity for a baked good?! Also, I am using boxed cake mix because the cupcakes always turn out better than homemade, PLUS they are easier. I am also making tacos for dinner and I am going to have a GIANT MARGARITA, maybe two! with the tacos. Probably not three, because I do need to wake up tomorrow to take Carla to school, but we’ll see where the night takes us. I don’t plan on doing a single dish, although that means I may have extra dishes tomorrow, but that’s okay! It is worth it! (We’ll see if I can truly go to bed with dirty dishes piled in the dishwasher.) 

Today is supposed to be both sunny and warm, so I plan to take a long, leisurely walk. Maybe I will even start a new audiobook instead of forcing myself to continue listening to the book I am reading with a couple of friends. (I am nearly 70% of the way through it, and it’s just not my favorite. Although it is improving with time. I suppose for a five-book series, I should give the author a little time to solidify the world around me before throwing in the towel.) 

ANYWAY, despite all these happy things to look forward to, my husband is at the hospital and I am sort of feeling sorry for myself anyway so let’s skip right into some Sunday randomosity!!!!!!!!!! Aggressive exclamation marks!!!!!!!!

Edited to add: Turns out all I needed was to chat with you and pull a couple of fragrant pans of cupcakes out of the oven and my mood is considerably brighter. Onto the less aggressive and self-pitying randomosity!

1. My dreams have been highly stressful lately. Uncomfortably explicit dreams about people from my past. Not-finishing-the-assignment dreams. Last night, I dreamed that I worked at my old company, and got paid every month, but wasn’t actually doing any work. And there was an assignment due that I hadn’t yet begun, and I was kind of hoping everyone at the company had forgotten about me completely. But I was also feeling super guilty about getting paid for doing nothing. In the same dream, there’d been an Unknown Incident that resulted in needing to build a special room for my oven, but the room was in a tiny nook up several flights of stairs and it was 90 degrees in that space at all times. I think this last dream at least has some easily identifiable sources: a) I get hot to the point of needing to step outside every time I turn on the oven and b) my to-do list keeps growing and I keep not doing any of the things.

2. There are so many unappealing things on my to-do list. I think I’m going to try the thing where I list them out here, and the embarrassment of stating them publicly will spur me to do them. Come on, internet magic! 

• Call the electrician. How many times am I going to mention this particular pressing task before I DO IT? The reason I have not taken care of it yet is because the electrician has both a weirdly specific estimate process and a weirdly complicated scheduling process. My husband suggested I find a new electrician; that would be WORSE, because these people have already done a whole-house evaluation and I cannot stomach the idea of researching a new electrician and having them come out and give us an estimate and then schedule a real appointment. I CAN’T DO IT. Also, we get a discount with this particular electrician which has to count for something, no? 
• Figure out how to fix the doorbell????? Perhaps the electrician could give us some thoughts, if I ever get him back out here? I am seriously considering becoming an electrician myself because it seems like it would be easier. 
• Email or call the landscaper. The reason I am balking at this one is because I ignored the landscaper’s calls and emails for MONTHS before we were finally ready to sign a contract for next summer. Apparently, all you need to do to get me to spend money with your company is to badger me, politely but at regular intervals, for several months???? Anyway, now I feel like I can’t suddenly Be Available to talk about new things we want to do with our yard. Also, while I DO want to do new things with our yard, I don’t know what they ARE and I am not ready for that conversation (or the price).
• Schedule a work call. This should be the easiest on my list, I think. The only thing holding me back is that I already reached out to this person and they didn’t respond, which always makes me feel like I am pestering. 
• Figure out who will take care of our pool this summer. Talk about a Champagne problem!!!!!!! But getting a person whose purported livelihood is pool care/maintenance to call me back and then agree to have me pay them to do the work they purport to do is extremely difficult for reasons I don’t understand and I am avoiding it like whoa.
• Put last year’s earnings into my retirement account. (Another Champagne problem. I am so lucky that 99% of my problems are this variety.) WHY is this hard? It should not be. And yet. 
• Schedule Carla’s next dental appointment. The hygienist wanted to schedule it for me, but I didn’t know when Carla’s first day of school was, so I said I would call back once I knew… but then I looked it up while the hygienist was finishing up, and so I could have easily made the appointment, but didn’t because I didn’t want to bother her?????? So now I have to make a phone call. Yay. 
• Put a check in the mail to the orthodontist. We get a small discount on the price of braces if we pay in full in cash. I did not have my checkbook (why?????) when I signed the braces paperwork, but the office manager kindly told me she would give me the discount anyway, if I just sent in the check by the end of the month. She even gave me a self-addressed envelope. Why have I not simply WRITTEN THE CHECK and put it in the mail? THIS is the easiest item on my list. Just do it, Suzanne! 
• Figure out what kind of person addresses what looks like rot in the wood siding of my house. Probably I just need to google this. And then I will need to begin the rigamarole of calling people and having them come over and give estimates. Why did we buy a new house again? Who thought that would be a good idea?

• Fulfill the giveaway I offered on my blog. Wait a second. THIS is the easiest task on my list to fulfill! Guess what?! J is the winner of the paperback giveaway! Congrats, J! I will reach out to you for your address and send you a copy of the second book in Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend series. 

3. You know how, in TV shows and movies, someone will cough ominously and then three scenes later they die of consumption? Carla is upstairs and I can hear her coughing and it is filling me with foreboding. We went to a school event the other day; I volunteered while Carla ran around in a howling pack of other children. Already one friend has texted me with the unsettling news that her kid just woke up with a fever. We have so far avoided the bulk of the Winter Illnesses that have felled nearly everyone else on the planet… but based on the frequency of the coughing, I suspect our time has come. 

4. There’s no way to correct someone’s misimpression about your birth date without making them feel bad and/or stupid, right? There is a person in my life who very sweetly wishes me happy birthday every year… the day before my birthday. And now their spouse is doing it, too. And it’s very thoughtful and getting it on the actual date really does not matter – TRULY – I am now forty-three years old and it’s unexpectedly lovely when people remember your birthday at all, let alone get the date right. This is just a charming quirk I should love for as long as it lasts, right?

5. The best article I’ve read in awhile is this profile of Jodie Foster. I love Foster – most recently in True Detective. What resonated with me most is the idea of simultaneously craving privacy and connection. I wonder if it resonates with you, too, if you have a blog. The idea of having someone I KNOW – even though that’s a silly categorization, because I know YOU so much better than so many people I see out in the three-dimensional world day-to-day – read my blog gives me hives. And yet I thrive on the connections I find here, in bloglandia, via our (in most cases) text-only relationships. It was validating and comforting to read about Foster, who seems to have a similar personality and a similar struggle with finding the balance between being known and being understood.

6. Instead of doing literally ANY of the things I need to do (which also include larger, longer-term projects that I did not list in bullet #1), I decided I would put together an old-school blogroll. And I DID, based on the very haphazard and unreliable methods I use to check blogs regularly. But then I could not figure out how to create a new page in WordPress. I mean. I think I *DID* create a new page in WordPress, but I don’t know where said page LIVES on my blog. So then I tried to add the new page to the menu, and got very confused, and this is all to say that I did not accomplish anything except a Word document listing many (but probably not all) of the blogs I read. SIGH.

7. In addition to cupcakes, I am contemplating another baked good. I recently enjoyed one of these muffins at a friend’s house. Subsequently, I found myself thinking about the muffin with such longing that I asked my friend for the recipe. But I have yet to break down and BAKE the muffins. So far. 

8. Swimsuit season is creeping ever closer. I will be spring breaking in a place that requires a swimsuit, so I am fretting abstractedly about swimsuits. I own a swimsuit, a black two piece that includes a top and a skirted bottom. To be honest, that is probably the swimsuit I will continue to wear. But I always find myself pining for a NEW swimsuit. It’s tough to find a suitable suit, or at least a suit I find remotely flattering, when I am self-conscious of my rather lumpy lower half. It’s not just that I’m a pear shape, although the top part of the pear grows ever wider with the passing years; it’s that my hips are not a nice pleasing curve from hipbone to thigh: there’s a divot in there. I believe the young people call it a “hip dip.” I have become convinced over the years by body positive Instagrammers that this is not, as some might say, my fault; this is how my body is shaped, and I cannot control it no matter how many squats I might do or how little I weigh. (The latter, I know for sure; I remember being a 100-pound active high school student and worrying about my “saddle bags.”) But my body shape still doesn’t lend itself to a lot of the more pleasing bathing suit styles. ANYWAY, we all have our Things, and this is (one of) mine. I guess I am just wondering, what does YOUR swimsuit look like? And what swimsuit are you ogling, in case the one you own suddenly bursts into spontaneous flame? 

9. My parents took me out to lunch for my birthday! It was SO DELIGHTFUL. I cannot remember the last time I celebrated my birthday with them?!? (Okay, yes I can; it was before Carla was born.) It was just the three of us and I felt very spoiled and loved and I cannot believe how lucky I am that they LIVE NEARBY. What a gift. I think we have settled into a good rhythm of seeing each other while allowing one another to Live Our Lives (although I would like to spend more one-on-one time with my mom). I hope I never take our time together for granted. 

10. My holiday cards are still up. I don’t want to remove them, although my husband is making gentle noises indicating he is growing tired of them. I had enough this year to line the entire kitchen. I affixed them to the wall above the windows/doors and they make me so happy! We also still have hearts on all the walls, which also make me happy. Seeing as it’s still February, I don’t really feel a lot of pressure to remove the hearts. Perhaps I will take everything down right before Spring Break.

11. I have never really been a big Branded Handbag type of person. I don’t even really USE a handbag that much anymore. But I have recently found myself coveting a high-end handbag for myself. I blame this new desire on my choice to follow Class of Palm Beach on Instagram. Are you a handbag person? If you could get any fancy bag in the world, what would it be? A Birkin bag seems like the obvious choice, especially because they are considered a better investment than gold (!!!!), but it also sounds difficult to get your hands on one. (Please also keep in mind that there is no way I would ever buy a Birkin bag. This is pure idle fantasy.) 

Okay Internet. Tell me your favorite type of cupcakes and/or muffins. And please share all your magical body altering swimsuit choices with me as well.