Today is my wife and my 3rd anniversary, which is pretty amazing.  I can feel myself entering that chunk of life that older people constantly tell you flies by. Like college. Or childhood.

"Nowadays, I can hardly remember my 30's," my made up senior citizen says to no one and everyone. "Those days just flew by like the breeze across a meadow."

Poetic old man.

It's a metaphor

In true "us" fashion, my wife and I have a night together both planned and unplanned at the same time.  Wednesday is not a great date night.  We've already learned that often your anniversary doesn't get celebrated on time.  And that's ok. But regardless of tonights festivities, I am taking a chunk of today to just revel in the small but important accomplishment of our anniversary.

Tomorrow, another concept that both arrives to soon and seemingly never arrives, will be here in the morning, and E and I will never have another 3rd anniversary.  So I'm purposefully concentrating on being in the specialness of the moment.

Today I'm honored to offer you my second guest blog.  Rachel Rosenthal is a professional comedian/improviser/instructor living in New York City.  She's also an unbelievably compassionate human who held the chuppah at my wedding. If you want to know more about her (or take one of her classes) go to www.Theraeroshow.com!  Without further ado
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I’d like to talk a little bit about faith. I’m not talking about religious faith or faith in God. I’m talking about faith in humanity. The kind of faith that I have had since I was a little girl: the faith in the goodness of others. My belief has always been that people are inherently good. Why do I have this faith? Good question. I think I’m going to thank my parents for that - because truth be told, I have had some pretty strong life experiences that should’ve steered my beliefs otherwise. But my faith has remained - and I’ve held strong that at the root of most humans is goodness; that if given the choice, we would choose to treat others well.

Well, people of New York. You have killed that faith. Dating, specifically has killed that faith.

One of the most common responses I get when someone hears that my graduate research concerned romantic relationships and marriage is, "So, it's like, 'Happy wife, Happy life.' AmIRight?" Most of the time it's a guy who's faux-asking the question whilst simultaneously patting himself on the back prematurely.

Generally speaking, I no longer want to be a part of the conversation at this point so I nod and smile and agree and walk away with a, "Oh totally! You nailed it, man. You've got marriage figured."  It makes em feel good and gets me that hell out of there.  The truth, as always, is a bit more complicated.

It's at this point that I have to jump in quickly to say that there is a heteronormative assumption being made when we talk about marriage as a negotiation between a man and a woman.  I want to say explicitly that homosexual couples, not having well-worn societal gender stereotypes to lazily fall into, generally do better in dividing the labor of housework equitably in a manner that makes both partners happy.  Without stereotypes to rely on, each partner gravitates towards what they enjoy more/have more competency in.  For the rest of this blog post, we'll be dealing with heterosexual couples when talking about marital couples. But, this doesn't mean to devalue all other forms of love because, frankly, heteros ain't all that.

Taken at face value, "Happy Wife, Happy Life" tends to hold up. The truth of the statement, however, isn't half as important as understanding the mechanism of action at work behind the scenes. Women, both historically and still today, doing more than half the domestic work.  This includes cooking, cleaning, laundry, yard work, trash takeout, etc.  Women, even and especially working women, demolish their male counterparts on time spent doing housework.  By how much?  I'm glad you asked.

FarmersOnly.com: Cause City Folks Just Don't Get It

That's a lot of eyebrow plucking for a farmer.

I wish I had thought of both the website and tagline, just so I could have written a satirical tale of farmer on farmer action.  Alas, reality beat me to it and now I get to shit all over someone else's grand idea.  Six of one, half dozen of another.

The basics.  I love farmers. As individuals, as a group, as an idea . . . farmers feed us and make this country better.  More farmers, less GMO's.  Living in the relative country myself, I have the pleasure of knowing a few handful of farmers in and around New England.  I can't recall any of them lamenting about farmer-specific love problems, but I appreciate that there may different issues facing farmers in the more wide open spaces of the Midwest.

What I do know is that farmers, on the whole, are White.  According to a recent PBS special, today there are only 18,000 Black farmers -- representing less than 1% of all farmers.  Personally, I can understand why, as a Black person, one might find it difficult to see working the land as a viable career choice.  At the same time, the love of farming extends beyond the injustice of slavery, and losing a minority voice in American food culture is a net loss for everyone.  But I digress.

I wish everyday were my birthday, and not just for the cake.  Though the cake is nice.  I mean, who doesn't like cake.   Of course, when your birthday falls on Halloween, as mine does, there is already a cavalcade of candy coursing through your system, rendering the cake a smidge less essential.  Just a smudge.


Today I'm writing in a tea shop.  Old school.  Hundreds of shiny sliver tubes, all labelled with their worldly dry tea leaves, sit on shelves built to house the canisters. There is a shamisen playing on the hidden speakers up in the exposed wooden rafters. It's a mellow place.  On not my birthday, I type as much as I can before getting distracted, and then fiddle around online for a few minutes until I can get myself back on track.  This is not the most productive way to be productive.  It is MC Scat Cat productivity: three steps forward, two steps back.

But on my birthday, I waste much less time.  I get distracted, click over to Facebook, read eight messages of good tidings from long lost friends from high school, Israel, Japan, Australia, even New Jersey -- and that love focuses me back to the task at hand. Apparently getting a constant barrage of online loving for 36 hours (time zones!!!) is an affective counterbalance to the solitary nature of writing.

Which means the only logical conclusion is to find a way to make it my birthday everyday.  If I parcel out each date to my Facebook friends, I should be able to get at least 2 or three good threads going by midday, everyday.  I'll have start working with the volume turned off on my computer to avoid the noise pollution of my Facebook indicator chiming endlessly at the commentary rolling in.  Oh what a life it would be, if everyday were my birthday.

Who wants to take November 1st?

I would argue that The Newlywed Game, when it debuted in 1966 with Bob Eubanks at the helm, was the first great reality show.  While The Dating Game may have pre-dated the production, dating is, by definition, and series of lies and half truths.  That thirty minutes was a just a litany of sexual innuendoes and bad choices -- more akin to a 1960's The Office than The Real World.   The Newlywed Game, by contrast, revealed a brief glimpse behind the curtain of hundreds of ostensibly happy couples' lives.

YouTube.com is still rife with clips from old shows, the contestants' clothing immediately transporting you back to an era before the Game Show Network, where husbands and wives inadvertently let intimate private information about how they "make whoopee"slip to a syndicated audience.  (At the time it was the closest our still somewhat moral culture came to a nud3 c3l3brity pic dump.)

I have one remaining grandparent. I say that now facing down the fact that it is a truth about to be erased.  My incomparable Grandma Rita is in the waning moments of her raging river of a life, and while it will be cathartic, in time, to tell tales of her deeds and accomplishments.  I'm gonna take this moment to do it one more time, in life:

Grandma Rita was the only person in my immediate family growing up that smoked.  For those people that grew up in a time where smoking made you look "healthy" and "strong," it was a very gradual transition into stigmatization.  First there were pro-smoking billboards.  Then no smoking ads on TV.  Next, smoking may cause cancer.  It may be related to lung specific cancers.  Later, much later, those became facts.  And then, much later after that, they became facts that were accepted by the population and media as truths.  And like a frog put in a pot of lukewarm water that is slowly brought to a boil, until the bitter end, the stigma was never stronger than the addiction . . . until they were "hopelessly" addicted and had spent multiple decades inside that boiling pot.  Then they got the news it was killing them all along.

My Grandma Rita got the news it was killing her one day about 20 years ago.  All those cigarettes, which to me growing up i associated as part of her identity, had caused some damage to one of her lungs. Eventually, it would require surgery.

Dear Clark,

I don't have one specific memory of your father.  This is partially because our time spent over Martin Luther King weekends in DC were awash with such torrents of laughter, picking one guffaw from the bunch doesn't do justice to the magic of those weekends.   Yes, I saw your father dressed up as a French maid.  And yes, it was a very confusing moment for me, because when your father put his mind to it, he could be a gorgeous looking woman.  Stunning really.

What I do remember about Scotty, over and above everything else, was his open-mouthed smile.  When you father laughed, it could not be contained inside his body.  Every little chuckle moved him thoroughly enough to cause his head to fly back, allowing safe passage for the musicality of his forthcoming laughter.  And he laughed.  He laughed so much.  With everyone.

Clark, I want you to know that your father was special.  Not only because he is your father who saw you as his moon and stars (your mother is his sun, btw), but because of how he chose to live.  Your father saw the potential for both greatness and great fun inside everyone he met.  And he went after it.   Instead of poking and prodding in the darkness, looking for the soft and broken pieces inside us all, you father cheered and supported whatever nugget of pride he could pan from his soon to be new friend's emotional river.  Before you knew it, the two of you would be upstairs together, sorting through theatrical presentations of second-hand clothes, dreamscapes of ultimate frisbee on bicycles, and laughter-mobiles hung with hugs and cuddling.  Your father was special because in a world filled with darkness and hate, he needed sunglasses to keep all the positivity he perceived from burning his eyes.

Clark, Scotty cut a path through this life armed only with his openness to joy.  Where others find comfort in the cul-de-sac of what they already know, your father raced forward on the idea that there might be something so unbelievably beautiful and new and previously undiscovered just over in the next town; so we better get a move on cause there isnt time to wait.  It was inspiring to watch. His unmistakable lust for life influenced others, myself included.  Watching the ease with which your father negotiated the commonplace anxieties that I so often allow to ruin my otherwise perfectly good days, made me rethink the immense power of positivity.  I worry less because I knew your dad.  I can't think of a higher compliment.

Clark.  A lot of people are going to tell you your dad was goofy.  And he was.  What I want you to know is that goofy is one of those words we use to describe people who have unburdened themselves of unreasonable expectations.  Someone who is not merely content, but ecstatically enthusiastic at the prospect of having today, no matter what that reality may be.  Clark, your father was thankful every day I knew him, just for the opportunity to be there, with you or me or whomever -- for that moment in time.

Clark.  When I heard your father passed away, it was a profoundly sad moment.  There were, and still are, a good deal of tears to be shed.  I'm sure you're seeing this a lot at the moment.  From me, I want you to know that I am not sad for your father.  I am so endlessly proud of him.  He lived a life electric. He projected every atom of that existence outward, and in doing so gained the love of the universe.

Clark, your dad was a superhero.  No cape, no X-ray vision, but an unparalleled ability to love.  And while my tears attempt to form both the flowing river and the raft on which you could spend endless summers floating serenely with your father, I take some measure of solace knowing that he gave you his greatest gift of all.  Cause when I see you in those pictures, smile so wide your mouth just has to  open, I know that Scotty poured all of that ultra-condensed super-powered love into you big guy.  He gave you the smile he knew the world still needs.

I have a rule.  Once you have been writing a blog for 3 years, you can beginning reposting relevant old posts on occasion.  Since I will be working at the bar on Valentine's Day, I will most likely be "fakin it til I'm makin it" in terms of Valentine's cheer.  Therefore, I am reposting my true feelings regarding this "holiday".
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Originally posted 2.10.10

I should start by saying that I have never had a bad Valentine's Day.

Ok, that's not true.  One year my then girlfriend's dog died on Valentine's Day and her mom decided to go ahead and call her up at college and tell her that evening (ingenius mother's birth control tactic?). . . which i happened to be visiting her for.  It was a mess.  But even still, consoling someone you love on the death of their pet certainly isn't what I was expecting on that day, but it's also definitely part of the job description of being a significant other.  So i sucked it up.  But that's the worst of it.  Really.  In college i would use Valentine's Day as an excuse to ask beautiful women that were a bit intimidating out on dates.  Both times I had a wonderful evening.

But here is the thing.  I hate Valentine's Day.  I really really really hate hate hate it, and I think it's a bad thing.  I don't feel this strongly about most subjects, but on this i will take a stand.  One of the excitements of getting my PhD as a "relationship expert" is so that I can say, I'm an expert on romantic relationships, and Valentine's Day is fucked up and should be done away with.


Let me explain.

If you are in a relationship, I have no doubt that it is possible, and possibly even wonderful, to set aside some time for you and your significant to do something, just the two of you (or three of you or four of you, I don't judge).  Putting aside the fact that part of a healthy relationship is letting your partner know that they are loved and cared for all the time, I understand that we all lose sight of that from time to time and take those we love the most for granted.  But lets understand something.  This paragraph so far, is talking about the VAST minority of people in America.

For most people in relationships (still focusing on them to start), Valentine's Day creates an amazing artificial pressure to do something particularly special for your loved one.  Putting pressure on most relationships is akin to farting in your relationship's face: you may survive it, but you're not going to enjoy it.  Pressure creates two separate sets of expectations (from each partner) and therefore creates the possibility for an incredible amount of unnecessary let down and disappointment.  The irony being that Valentine's Day creates tension, fights, and conflict for couples that otherwise probably wouldn't be fighting.  So even for the subsection of the population that presumably should benefit from this "holiday," you see negative returns.

And now the single people.  Let's be real folks, the majority of people who are single out there are not socially adept enough to just "make sure they have a date" for Valentine's day.  That's just the truth.  Even many of those who can get dates don't always have people around they WANT to date at any particular time.  And what could make those people feel more jump-off-a-bridge awful than a day (and month leading up to it) where the media/society/restaurants/stores all tell you that the only way to have value is through your love with another (actualized through a credit card).  That is some utter bullshit right there folks.  And people DO get sad.  Depressed.  Forlorn.  And if they don't, they still can end up internalizing that negativity and the message that their lives are incomplete without a relationship.  And then Valentine's day goes and announces this message from its candy heart, chocolate-rose covered megaphone that there is something wrong with you if you're single.  And it's like revving your Lamborghini's engine in front of a homeless guy driving his shopping cart.  It's like driving a Hummer when the world is slowly burning.  It's just so utterly douchey that I can't be a part of it.

If you're in a relationship, you lose.
If you're not in a relationship, you lose.
That's called a lose-lose.  (Even Michael Scott knows that that's not what you want)
This is so not a good holiday.

The only real winners on Valentine's Day are card companies, chocolate makers, flower sales (online flower prices are skyrocketing [for love]), and jewelry stores.  And frankly, I don't care if you throw that stuff off a bridge, it the lonely 14 year olds I'm more concerned about.

Just say no to the perpetuation of pressuring us to love on any particular day.  Love everyday.

And, for the record, buying the discounted Valentine's Day candy on the 15th is TOTALLY kosher.