Bryce Gruber’s Thoughts of the Day (VD edition)

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.  -Mother Teresa

1. I Miss the 90’s. Not all of the 90’s- just the parts where everything was big and clunky. The hair was big and clunky, the video games were big and clunky, so were the mini vans, pasta dinners at Macaroni Grill, your mom’s Southwest-inspired jewelry, Skechers, and even the music seemed a little bigger and clunkier. I just miss it.

2. Ugh, Valentine’s Day. Always Screwing Stuff Up. I should make it clear before you think I’m insane that it’s been a long while since I’ve had a “normal” Valentine’s Day. Last year I was entirely single. The year before I had just broken up with my son’s father only about a week before. The year before that I was in Miami with Baby Daddy on a trip that sort of sucked because he was cranky  and wanted all sorts of weird sex that I had no interest in supplying (btw, I seriously hope he’s out there finding all the weird sex his heart desires). Anyway, I could keep going back a few more years but the point is I think the last NICE Valentine’s Day I had was senior year of high school when my boyfriend at the time, Craig, was a sweet high school boy that brought me a dozen roses from the local grocery store, took me to dinner somewhere in Miami (we lived close by), and bought me a kind of ugly watch that I thought was absolutely beautiful at the time. Mostly because I thought he was pretty super duper… he had facial hair. Anyway, this Valentine’s Day ended up being nice last minute, but started out on a totally bad note because of my stupid insecurities.

3. Insecurities. Are normal I think. Everyone’s got some. Some people obsess about their weight, intelligence, clothes, career, money… whatever. Not me. I don’t give a damn about anything so long as I fit into my clothes, can more or less communicate, and pay my bills. I do, however, feel really insecure when it comes to expressing affection. I’ve had a string of pretty shitty relationships (I’ll take responsibility for them, I have no one else to blame), so now I find myself in some weird battle of expectations. I expect the man I’m dating to be good to me. He is. I expect him to show me with his actions. He does. But I also expect him to be verbally affectionate. He’s not. And I think that’s probably unfair of me. Men use words differently than women, and their pace is usually different too. Unfortunately, my expectations come from some weird insecure place and tend to boil over when they’re not being met. Note to self: work on that ASAP before I seriously screw things up.

4. Foot In Mouth. So, just after I got off the phone with boyfriend today explaining that I think I need more affection and verbal cues (ie, “I care about you”) the doorbell rang. FML, it was a delivery boy with an arm full of roses. Boyfriend had ordered the roses well before I made my “I need more affection” plea and I looked like a total ass in the meantime. He took it like a champ. And he told me he cares about me. Tremendously. And my ego and pride burst into flames… That’s probably a good thing. These are the actual roses:

5. Speaking of VD… do you ever wonder how many people in the world contract VD on Valentine’s Day? I do. I mean, tons of people are out there on Match.com or OKCupid right now searching for someone to share too many drinks with and end up in the backseat of their 2004 Acura. I wish some independent research firm could get on this and publish hard numbers.