Last night I was looking at vintage valentines online and I could not stop myself from grabbling this one and giving it creepy new captions. Sorry! If you’re looking for the single girl valentines I did a few years back, you can see them here, and I also just dug up and uploaded a couple more that I did way back in 2002. As you can see, my Photoshop skills have not improved one bit over the years.

In other news, I did a Q & A with Anne over at Elastic Waist the other day, because they’re doing I’m Not the New Me for their book club.  I’m so glad I got to do it, because back when the book came out I don’t think I quite knew how to talk about it yet, or say why I did certain things. Plus half the time I was being interviewed by people who’d barely had time to read the book, if they’d even gotten to read it at all. But Anne is super smart and she asked me supersmarty things that nobody ever thought to ask me before. Thank you, Elastic Waist ladies, for paying attention to a book that came out 27 years ago!  In publishing world years, that is.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all you freaky foxes out there, and have fun. If all goes well tonight, we will be playing bingo. Not the hipster bar bingo, but bingo the way Bingo God intended, with old people in a big ugly room smelling of ink daubers and superstition. We can’t wait.

1. “Delurking” is not a real word. And as a fake word, it’s horrible. It sounds like acid reflux.

2. Okay, so why do we need this week again? Because people are too shy… to post a comment on a blog? Are we maybe overthinking this shit just a little? How socially stunted have we become if we have to devise quasi-official special occasions just to defreak ourselves out? Do we need that much reassurance that our brief, indirect little public interactions are perfectly acceptable and decreepy?

I’ll admit that maybe I just don’t understand, because I started writing online back when journals and weblogs didn’t have the feedback feature—you’d post your stuff and except for the emails that would trickle in from readers, there’d always be that silence, so I guess I never minded. Now that I have comments on the site, I deeply appreciate that practically everyone who posts here is funny and cool, and I don’t think I’ve ever even had a real troll, or a flamewar, or anything like that. But, like I’ve said, I’ve never been inspired to have fuzzy feelings about these Preordained High Holy Delurking Days, where people post apropos of nothing at all; nothing but “delurking.” And look, if you’ve never felt like saying anything before, I really don’t mind.

3. Here’s where I just wrote—and deleted—a long passage about something that happened a year ago, when I had to post an entry telling readers my mother was dying and that I was flying to New Mexico to be with her during her final days. And how so many of you responded with kind words, and gave your condolences, and said you were thinking of me and my family, which was such a comfort during the subsequent week. Some of you said you were posting for the first time ever, and even if you used that d-word, I definitely understood that you were breaking the silence to express your sympathies, and not because some stupid made-up internet holiday encouraged you to do so.

But then (and here’s where I’ll try not to go into it too much) last year someone actually thought that saying just, “it’s Delurking Week and I love this blog!” was an appropriate comment in response to the news about my mom. Which made me crazy, for reasons that I hope are obvious, because to go into detail otherwise would be really pointless and ugly and no doubt full of all kinds of displaced anger about my mom’s death. Just suffice it to say I have some stunningly awful associations with you-know-what-week. I felt compelled to explain just in case someone was planning on spreading delurking cheer around here anytime soon, and I hope this has spared us all some horrible awkwardness. Which, ironically, is probably what the spirit of Delurking Week was supposed to about in the first place.

4. But you know, if you’ve never commented before, please don’t let any of this stop you. I know, it’s weird, but it’s always weird one way or another, isn’t it? But I’m sure we’ll get past it somehow.

This entry is a placeholder for the much better holiday entry that I may (or may not) get to write this evening or tomorrow or whenever I do (or do not) get a chance to write something before Christmas, on account of the fact that my dad and brother are visiting us, and then Chris and I are driving to Michigan for the holiday proper, and so I’ve been shopping and cleaning and decorating and cooking (for instance, I’m just about to make a pie) and wrapping (for instance, hey, did you know that it’s really hard to gift wrap a present with raffia without it turning out looking like something the Blair Witch made? well it is), and then also there’s been work and life and I had to hook up this new computer I got (should I install Leopard yet? Will Leopard maul me?) and anyway my December has been like one big cornflake-marshmallow cluster cookie wreath of delight, sweet but also sticky and demented, and I sure hope I can get back on here between now and the Big X Day and drink a smart eggnog with all of you wonderful people and discuss about how the Eurythmics cover of “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” bothers me and makes me oddly embarassed for the Eurythmics, and also wish you all a very Merry Christmas, but in case I don’t I’ll say it right now MERRY CHRISTMAS YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. Okay, now for the pie.