3 Valentine's Day Tips ❤️
For Significant Others, Family Members, Friends, Officemates, Boon Fellows.
Here are a few things that will undoubtedly make you a better person. You will get rich.
1 . Plate Great
Are you making food for someone else? Do you know how tight a nice piece of lasagna or cake looks on the plate, like it was perfectly built by Frank Lloyd Wright or tamed for millennia by wind and water to look like the White Cliffs of Dover? Inevitably, in this case, more than one serving will be plated.
From a conversation with Bridget, it is the best advice to serve yourself the damaged, broken, and not-so-pretty-looking piece.
Not because you, yourself, are damaged and broken (as you are!) but because serving the nicest-looking one to someone else is a showing of love.
Also, feel free to lord it over them while you eat, “Wow, I mean, look at mine. It’s like totally falling apart and shit. Wow, yours looks great. Almost done, huh? Probably because it looked so good.” These are good (and appropriate) things to say!
2 . Space Race
I cherish every day with my partner. But I get the feeling she lives in an ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ headspace. We’re not rich, but even given if we were in Wayne Manor and I had the Batcave to hang out in and eat cucumber sandwiches, it would still likely bug her that I was only a firepole away and could interrupt her training sessions with Ra's al Ghul by looking around for my iPad or and stuffing pretzels in my face or whatever.
I get it because I have had more experience cohabiting with roommates than she does at my late age. I remember hearing a door open when I thought I had the house to myself, thinking, “Wow. This asshole is home again? It’s like they live here”. (they do live here)
I GET IT. I SOOOOOO GET IT.
She gets up early. I've been known to fall asleep for only a half-hour before she gets up to start her workday. It’s just that I’m still on nightclub time, years after having to be at a nightclub consistently until 2 AM.
Now that I work for myself and got myself a WeWork, and the pandemic even had me at the office (I was lucky to have a whole building to myself back then and even rented a room at Sal’s for a bit), I am doing the ‘hybrid’ work model.
And on Stacey’s days off, I am OUT of the house. Even before she comes home on other days, I might get out of the house. Maybe not as much as she’d like but I really do make an effort. Now that the weather is nicer and I have taken to walking a lot, I try to get out of the house. Again, maybe not as much as she’d like, but I’m aware and mindful of that.
I do have sleeping problems, aside from being a night owl.
I have my CPAP. I snore without it, fidget, toss, turn, and fight demons in my dreams. It’s a lot.
The New York Times talked about couples not sleeping in the same room, which is kinda sorta what we do here. We mostly switch who sleeps on the couch on any given night. I can be found fast asleep with late-night dip remnants and popcorn and shit, maybe a plate with a corn dog stick and some dried mustard in the living room with Hasan from 6 months ago auto-playing away on YouTube while she is getting her face on for work.
Does she do that? I don’t know, but yeah, probably.
I try not to open the door, wake her up, get in my bed, and put the CPAP on after she goes to "Bed Actual," not the passive falling asleep on the couch from TV and dinner. Not that I don’t sleep in my bedroom, I do! I’m allowed, I’m just careful about her getting rest. And I found out just the other day that she actively dislikes waking other people up. Who knows why? The body keeps the score. But it’s something to learn something about your partner after so long. I appreciate, in retrospect, that she has never woken me up on purpose! And now I know why she doesn’t wake me when I ask her. I may have an early call time I might ask, “Hey, will you wake me up when you leave?” and she never has. Now it all makes sense!
The point is, no, don’t model our weird sleep habits. The key is to give each other the space the other person is asking for. Physically. Emotionally. Mentally.
I can get caught in my head a lot, and I like it there! BUT I need a bit more social interaction with real people. I think I need to say hello to the strangers at WeWork and the nice desk people (even though the other WeWorkers probably don't want anything to do with me!). It’s nice to walk by people working and feel ‘not alone’ as we all tackle our task lists. I say hi to random Moms at CVS. I chit-chat like Alan Partridge on a ramble.
I’m certainly not going to start calling my friends to make plans, though. That’s not in the cards! Baby steps back to the New Normal! I will explore this in my next substack post, titled ‘we are the entertainers (not the entertained).’
One more co-habitation-related thing, and I am not great at this, but I never made my bed daily when we first moved in together. Why would you? You’ll mess it up the next day! I guess this is like that thing where people don’t wash their legs in the shower because the soap trickles down. But I have made my bed, done the dishes, and swept and mopped (new for 2023!) before she gets home. It’s a bit of that hack Jordan Peterson’s philosophy (boo), but doing those things and doing the laundry cement a familiar routine for me. I could clean better. I can always be better.
3 . Be Weird
You know you are a freak. Embrace it for yourself. You don’t need to be cuffed up to enjoy Valentine’s Day. Put on those headphones and rock the fuck out.
Do your habits annoy those around you? The answer is yes. Don’t be a DICK about it, but lean into it if you have a particular thing, a bit, a joke, or an all-over avocado shirt that everyone is tired of. It’s your fucking shirt. It ain’t harmin’ nobody!
If someone’s like, “hey, you look like an asshole in that shirt,” flip them with the ‘who are you, Steve Bannon?’ and pop your own collar. This will make the other person wonder if they have made an untoward collared shirt decision of their own earlier that day.
Then, hug it out (consensually). You both can stare out the window, make a broad “all this shit” gesture, and say, "This is what life is about the small things.”
In the past 48 hours, my long-suffering partner has asked me these rational questions, to which I had no answers except that I’m the problem. It’s me. And I fucking love me.
“Why do you have an entire orange at the bottom of your Non Alcoholic Beer?”
“Why are the fans running? It sounds like an airplane hangar in here.”
“Why is this cabinet open?
“Why did you wear your Batman hat in the shower?”
“Why is the sink still running?”
I don’t know. Sure, there are some serious issues I need to bring up in therapy (as if I could afford that!), but basically, this is me. I wear a hat in the shower if I feel like it.
Wear a hat in the shower like no one is watching.
Where’s the tip, you ask? How is this “3”?
3 is “The Magic Number" (RIP Trugoy!)
The lede is we all shower with hats on, refuse to put on extra layers when we are cold, need to finish a series before starting another, and YOU (yes, YOU) are the one that knows how to load the dishwasher correctly.
Our personalities are fingerprints. Granted, my thumbprint is half shorn off from pulling cast iron out of the oven with no mitt, but I promise to cut you the nicest piece of steak and pull the chicken off the bone for you.
This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Please consider donating to my half-off candy fun by buying me a coffee, subscribing as a paid member, or tipping at PayPal. To my new subscribers, I am so glad that you are here.
P.S. This is almost Number 4 but is more of an accessory to Number 1. Let the other person select their plate if you're serving two identical plates with equal prettiness and portion size. My ex-girlfriend told me that when they were kids, the person making the beans and rice offered the other person the choice of plate. This appears to have discouraged any sibling from "cheating" to get the better plate!
Laser has a new song out today, so give the video a view and share! Happy Valentine’s Day!
Ooooh, Clay...