Why though? Because being a grown up sucks. No, seriously though. I'm a happy grown up. Justin is a happy grown up. But do you know what we did on a whim for the first project? One day, we drove up to Frankenmuth and went frozen chicken bowling. Another day, we wandered into a Moose Lodge in Hamtramck and bummed paczki (and paczki flavored shots) off the Mooses (Meese?). Being, you know, grown ups, makes that less possible than when we were in that semi-post-school-ish phase.
So, we're going to play full catch up on the writing. Don't worry if you get bored. There won't be a quiz or anything. And even if there were, what could we do? Flunk you at blog reading? So there you go. And here we go. And there we went.
February 24: Dragobete
Thank goodness we celebrated this holiday, thus undoing that asshole Groundhog's prediction and bringing the coming of spring! Wait, it's still cold? Perhaps that's because there is no snow in Houston so we weren't able to fulfill the key tradition of the holiday. In Romania, Dragobete is the coming of spring and is celebrated by a maiden (boom! score one for the ladies) melting snow and using it in potions.
Lacking snow, as we did, we instead opted to melt ice from the freezer outside and then drink the water. It was... time consuming. That said, learning about the custom was a lot of fun.
February 25: Pistol Patent Day
I, unfortunately, had to work and then get up early the next day. Like, insanely early. Like, 4am early to get to the airport. So Justin went a-shootin' without me during the day. We celebrated the patenting of the colt revolver by Justin going to a gun range. It was pretty on-the-nose. And he's a good shot, which in no way scares me cause I am too.
February 26: Tell a Fairy Tale Day
As I sat on the plane to Dallas for my first ever business trip, I briefly contemplated the view that this could qualify as a modern-day fairy tale. That's right. For a split second, I compared the experience of sardining myself onto a crack-of-dawn commuter flight with being a fairy tale princess. I'm not going to self-depricate here. It has obviously been handed to you on a silver platter. YOUR WELCOME.
When I got home in the evening (after my second god-forsaken commuter flight in one day), Justin and I talked about the key elements of fairy tales and then built one together:
Protagonist: A beautiful/charming/aloof damsel (probably a princess)
Antagonist: An ugly/mean/pushy older woman (probably a step-mother - its always the step-mother)
Savior: A handsome/charming/mildly-emotionally-damaged knight (possibly a secret prince)
Traditional Plot: The beautiful damsel awaited the day she could be rid of her ugly step-mother and marry the first man who came along and seemed nice enough for at least 48 hours. In a fit of desperation and possibly to seem independent, the aloof princess escaped her palace prison out into the streets of her kingdom and was somehow not IMMEDIATELY recognized. The handsome knight saw her, was captivated by her beauty and, of course, instantly smitten despite never having heard her opinion on anything. She too was smitten, but afraid, and then the charming knight price fought a dragon or some shit and murder-balled her step-mother and they have lots of babies cause neither of them really wanted to "talk" much anyway. The end.
Our Plot: The charming damsel was terribly mad her at evil step-mother for not allowing her to attend the kingdom's premier college and study particle physics so she paid a witch from the village to make her look like a regular villager so she could sneak out. Despite going from stunningly beautiful to normal and plain looking, she didn't care because she valued her intellectual pursuits and went to class religiously. Her evil step-mother was totally a narcissist and basically didn't even notice that the princess was gone. Then, the princess met a charming knight who was also taking particle physics. He pursued her in earnest, writing her love poetry about her beauty before even knowing her name. But she refused his advances, saying "sorry, but you seem mildly-emotionally-damaged and I'm not looking for a project right now". Then she got her degree, married a law student and sued her evil step-mother for control of the kingdom. And they lived actually happily ever after. The fucking end. **DROP THE MIC**
February 27: Polar Bear Day
We live in Houston, which, as you may be aware, is not the primary habitat for polar bears. I had previously done a polar bear swim and that was a hell of an experience. So, while I was at work, Justin jumped into our pool which is NOT warm enough to swim in. Then, because we're masochists, we turned off the heat in the house. I know that seems like no big because, hello, Houston - but it was only 45 degrees out so it actually got pretty cold. We also did the same thing we did with penguin day, but it was through a different charity. Either way, we helped polar bears. It was awesome and freezing.
February 28: Chocolate Souffle Day
It took forever to find a place that had chocolate souffle. We ended up settling for chocolate mousse from the grocery store and shaking it to see if it would expand. It did not. Nor, really should we have thought it would. But who cares - WE ATE SO MUCH CHOCOLATE.
March 1: Pig Day
There is some controversy about this holiday. It is meant to honor the majestic pig and its graceful roll roll rolls in the mud? Or is it meant to be an exaltation of the glorious gift that is bacon? There is some serious dissonance between the holiday's founder and the nature of its celebrations.
For our part, Justin and I continue to subscribe to the philosophy of the late, great(?) Otto von Bismarck: "Laws are like sausages. Better not to see them being made." So we dined on delicious, delicious bacon and legitimately refused to think about the nature of pigs. Because bacon is worth it.
March 2: Texas Independence Day
Did you know Texas used to be its own country? We do. Because Texas doesn't let you forget it. Ever. We celebrated by declaring our backyard its own autonomous territory, but ceded the territory back to the state before things got weird. We also read up on the history of Texas, which I will begrudgingly admit is legitimately interesting. I highly recommend it if you're a history nerd like I am.
March 3: Fun Facts about Names Day
We asked our various friends and family (not aggressively, but we were curious) about where their names came from. We figured there are two ways of looking at this holiday. First, you could argue that the fact has to be about the name itself OR you could argue that the fact should be able the named person. We decided on the latter. And there was definitely a winner.
Our friend Allison, who is a delight, was so named after the top quality transmission that shares her name. That just instantly wins in every way. The end.
March 4: Paczki Day/Mardi Gras
If you don't know what Paczki is - FIX IT. I didn't know what it was until I went to Michigan. Serious aside - it is pronounced "poonch-key", not "pack-zee". I made that mistake and was drummed out of the state of Michigan in the dead of winter and left to wander back from the Ohio border without shoes. That is the official state punishment. At least it wasn't as bad as the punishment for mispronouncing Gratiot. You're on your own for that one.
Paczki day is the same day as Mardi Gras and we were hoping to get paczki, but Houston does Mardi Gras a bit differently. The big thing down here is King Cake. So we got a King Cake instead. Not unlike the celebration we did early in January, you're supposed to look for the little baby figurine in the King Cake and (I believe) this time it means good luck. So we ate slice after slice and then realized that the baby was sitting outside the cake in a neat little plastic bag.
OUR KING CAKE WAS ASSEMBLY REQUIRED. I just want to put that out there.
March 5: National Absinthe Day
Absinthe is the nectar with which I will smite my enemies.
That shit it gross, is what I'm saying. It is black licorice flavored liquid bullshit. It burned like six shots at once, even when cut with sugar. But if anyone I don't like asks: IT'S DELICIOUS.
March 6: Day of the Dude
White Russians. Rugs that tie rooms together. Expending as little effort as possible. WE ARE GOING TO CELEBRATE THIS HOLIDAY FOREVER.
March 7: National Dress in Blue Day
And on the heels of back to back drinking holidays, we have something serious. Many causes have a color or an event - we chose to raise awareness about colon cancer. It is a personal issue for me because I lost my grandmother to colon cancer in 2010. I would also recommend/love if people would take the time to read some of the information on the Colon Cancer Alliance's official website and possibly even donate. No snark here - this was one of the more somber, but important days we chose to observe.
March 8: National Day of Unplugging
We knew immediately this would not be an easy holiday for us, so we decided to just unplug from the internet. We watched some comedies and avoided human contact for the day, but in the end there was one thing that really became clear -- unplugging can be nice, but on a normal day, our nature is to connect and the internet allows us to do that.
I do think, more and more, we should stop being a passive observer of each other's lives and jump in and celebrate our friendships more openly, but I won't say we're not offenders as well. Forcibly losing our ability to politely stalk our buddies for the day made the basic separation of living across the country from one another more poignant. So, you know, talk more and stuff.
March 9: Panic Day
Holy shit. A holiday for my inner monologue. Honestly? We ran around the house in circles and collapsed in a laughing heap and then rinsed and repeated. ALL DAY.
Except for the long and serious conversation about our next 5-10 years in the middle of the afternoon. See, the point of the holiday is to release your inner panic, whatever that is. As a couple of hardcore planners, we took the opportunity to talk about all of our irrationals. Originally, we figured it would be silly, but the truth is, we avoided some panicking a year from now by going through the talk-it-out exercise this last weekend. It worked out really well.
March 10: US Paper Money Day
Neither of us had any real concept how hard it was to subsist without debit cards in recent months. We both generally carry a small, but reasonable amount of cash, but the nice thing about the debit card is that it leaves a record of the transactions without having to carry receipts around.
We found it difficult, mostly because we didn't want to take out too much so it was an extra trip to the bank and then almost a second trip back because we lost the freedom to buy an extra thing if we wanted to do that. We both love taking a full lap around the grocery store (because our childhoods' have long since died and been buried) and sometimes we find neat things and with only cash on us, we didn't have the option to buy. It was deeply distressing. Let's never do it again.
March 11: Worship of Tools Day
Like many of the holidays we've chosen to celebrate, there are two ways to look at this one. We could take the traditional and probably correct view that this is a holiday in celebration of the advancements of mankind and the use of tools to that end. The other, almost certainly wrong, view is that this is a holiday to celebrate the almighty douchiness of dudebros (also known as tools) everywhere. Guess which one we picked?
All praise to Juan Pablo: the great and powerful Dudebro.
AND WE'RE FINALLY CAUGHT UP. Until tomorrow. When we totally drop the ball again. Stay tuned. We plan to have a picture bonanza this weekend so you can see the hilariousness that we've been blessed enough to experience.
Until then, let me leave you with the traditional goodbye of my people: PEACE OUT, BITCHES.
