I CAN FEEL THE LOVE

I love my friends.

We get away with calling each other such lovely things as Bitcherella and Cuntessa, and we totally own it.  We wear crowns at work.  We fix a waiter's ripped pants with a stapler.  We wear helmets to hide our identities when doing drive-by reconnaissance missions.  We get on tour buses and go to Montreal for no better reason than because we can.  We laugh until we suddenly remember how old we are (and how many children we've birthed) and worry about wetting our pants.

Some would call this absolute idiocy.  I prefer to call it living . . . damn good living, at that.

My circle of female friends is my mental lifeline.  I'd take my life and my job and myself far too seriously without them.  Today is a bevy of such warm sentiments as, "Happy Valentine's Day, Bitch.  I love you."  We are kind of like that strange man on YouTube who pretends to have (or perhaps does have) Tourette's Syndrome and aptly names himself Tourettes Guy.  He says out loud and in public the kinds of things my friends and I say to each other on the sly.


This idiocy isn't limited to my female pals.  I have a gaggle of male pals who are as close to me as any of my female friends.  One of them sends me a Valentine's message via text.  Correcting both of our fingers' bad grammar, the conversation goes something like this:

HE: "Hey, Happy Valentines, Ducky."

ME:  "Lord knows if I had a Valentine, it would probably be you."

HE:  "Dumpster diving, for sure."

ME:  "We deserve each other.  Okay, I'm driving. Leave me alone."

HE:  "Leave me the fuck alone.  I'm working."

I can feel the love.  For me, Valentine's Day is a gender-neutral festival of warm but distant hugs (because I'm really not a hugger) and a steady stream of expletive-laden, homegrown Valentine sentiments.  Hallmark should be jealous.