Clearly I should have had this idea sooner but I JUST DIDN’T, and I think this is a situation where it’s better late than never: if you have a crummy Valentine’s Day, you can at least be LOOKING FORWARD to something arriving soon (or, since I’m going to use Target, like eight separately-boxed somethings).

I don’t want to oversell this. When I write the care package posts, I list EVERYTHING I might CHOOSE FROM, and I think it gives the idea that I would send ALL those things! To manage your expectations (TM Texxie’s…former?…manager?…I think?), I would be planning to spend $25-35 of the Blog Ads Fund, and you know how easy that is to spend at Target. And it probably won’t be very hearts/valentines-y, since almost everything of that sort isn’t available for shipping, and I’m going to ship directly.

Well, I don’t want to UNDERsell it, either! I am going to have fun choosing things, and I don’t know yet what I’ll choose but probably one or two of the sorts of things I buy impulsively, along with a few of the things I’ve listed as care package ideas in the past (I will ask the winner about food allergies, scent sensitivities, etc.). Probably some soap and/or cleaning supplies because that’s apparently my love language now. I’ll go through my old Target orders and find things I ordered for myself and liked. Maybe a book! Maybe I’ll buy us matching note cards, or matching mugs! Maybe you are doing the keto diet too, so I will send you all keto treats, or maybe you are absolutely not doing the keto diet so I will send you all the things I eat on my days off! WHO KNOWS!

The entry rules are NOT THE TYPICAL, so pay attention. This is open to U.S. mailing addresses only, AND it has to be:

• people who are not going to have a good Valentine’s Day, for whatever reason. Telling the reason won’t improve your chances in MY drawing (THOUGH SEE NEXT BULLET POINT), but it makes for a good and interesting comments section full of commiseration and empathy [edited to add: there are some comments about feeling selfish to enter oneself when there is another option—please PERISH THE THOUGHT, this is the PRIMARY option, this is supposed to be a giveaway FOR YOU; the other option is so that people who are going to have a good Valentine’s Day, through no fault of their own, still get to enter if they want to!]

OR

• people who are going to have a perfectly nice Valentine’s Day, but want to win the package on someone else’s behalf. THIS CAN INCLUDE OTHER COMMENTERS. So for example, let’s say you are going to spend Valentine’s Day exactly how you like to (happily celebrating or ignoring), but you have a friend or family member you want me to send the package to instead, I can do that; OR if you want to win so that YOU can choose a commenter from the comments section for me to send it to, you can enter. You don’t have to choose ahead of time! You can enter, and then choose a friend/commenter AFTER you win!

Because I thought of this so late, we’re going to do this fast, and I will do the drawing tomorrow (Friday) morning sometime.

UPDATE: Commenter Jen has offered to sponsor an additional $25 Swistle-chosen Belated Galentine’s Day care package, so there will now be TWO winners!

UPDATE: Another commenter has offered to sponsor two additional $25 Swistle-chosen Belated Galentine’s Day care packages, so there will now be FOUR winners!

UPDATE: Another commenter has offered to sponsor another package, so there will now be FIVE winners!

UPDATE: Commenter Maggie has offered to sponsor another one, so now there will be SIX winners!

UPDATE: Another commenter!! SEVEN WINNERS!!

UPDATE: Kathleenicanrah has offered to sponsor another, so now there will be EIGHT winners!!

UPDATE: Commenter Julia is sponsoring two more packages, so now there will be TEN winners!!

UPDATE: Commenter Kristen is sponsoring another package, so now there will be ELEVEN winners!!

UPDATE: Another commenter sponsored A DOZEN packages, so now there will be TWENTY-THREE winners!!

UPDATE: Commenter Susan sponsored another package, so now there will be TWENTY-FOUR winners!!

UPDATE: Commenter Suzanne sponsored another package, so now we are at TWENTY-FIVE!!

UPDATE: Commenter Alyson makes number TWENTY-SIX!!

UPDATE: Another! TWENTY-SEVEN!!

UPDATE: THIRTY!!

FINAL update! Okay! It took me a little longer to choose winners than expected, BECAUSE THERE WERE SO MANY! I am going to put the list here, but keep in mind there are SEVERAL SETS OF DUPLICATE NAMES! So there is still potential for people to see what they first think is their own name, then realize isn’t. I was going to put the time/date of each comment so people could look to see if the name was theirs or not, but urrrrrrrrggggg. But I have EMAILED everyone on this list, EXCEPT FOR the people who specifically mentioned other commenters, in which case I emailed the-commenter-they-mentioned instead. So for example, I am emailing Bsharp on the list below, to get the info about her friend Laura; but since Simone mentioned giving her entry to Marcy, I am emailing Marcy and not Simone. I have a rather exhaustive spreadsheet, so I think I will find out fairly soon if I have messed any of this up, but it was a bit of a muddley process of counting comments and looking back and forth between comments section and spreadsheet, so please do let me know if you see something amiss! (There ARE supposed to be two Marys and two Sarahs and two Kathleens on the list!)

Bsharp, for her friend Laura
Simone, for commenter Marcy
Carolyn, for her friend Suz
Mary
Michelle
Nicole MacPherson, for commenter Melanie
Kat, who will choose someone
Heather
Sara L
Kerri
Another Sue
Bld424
Rose, for her friend Natalie
Linda
Kathleen
Rebecca C
Bitts, for commenter Lisa Ann
Vanessa
Melody
Sylvia
Naomi
Marion
Sarah
Kathy Potvin, for her daughter
Brittany, for commenter Kathleen
Anna, for a friend
Karen, for a friend
Mary
Sarah
Amanda

IT TURNS OUT THAT WAS NOT THE FINAL UPDATE, NOT BY A LONG SHOT. Here are the NEXT fourteen winners, and there will likely be more, but fourteen for now so I don’t get ahead of myself:

Christa Lamb, for her friend Suzy
Samantha
Melissa T
Chrissy, for her friend L
Jennifer in Canada, will choose a commenter
RubyTheBee
Stephanie, for her friend Jen
Alyce, for her mom
Clara
Beth (Feb 12 6:33p)
Anni
Kalendi, for a friend
Erin, for her mama
Bree

Okay NOW it is REALLY the final update! After sending to all the above, I tallied up how much had been spent so far, compared it to the amount of money that had been donated, and found I had $70.04 left over, which is PRETTY TIDY at $35ish per package. Then I scanned through my list of sent packages one more time to be sure, and found I had MISSED SOMEONE, which is like my bad dream, but at least I DID notice it, and maybe that is the only one, so that meant I only needed to choose ONE more winner rather than two. But also I still needed to do my ORIGINAL package that I was going to spend blog-ad money on, so that brought us back to two. And then I found one more donation I’d missed, so yet again we are accessing my stress dreams, but I had put it somewhere I WOULD remember it, and I DID find it, so that’s okay, and it brings us up to three. So here are the final three winners, and I love that all of them are sending to their sisters:

GG, for her sister
Elizabeth, for her sister
D in Texas, for her sister

Four things I impulsively added to a Target pick-up order:

(image from Target.com)

HighKey mini cookies. I should have noticed that even on the nice 20% off sale, this was still a TINY two-ounce bag of low-carb cookies for $3.20 (FOUR DOLLARS usually). I had pictured Famous-Amos-sized mini-cookies, but these are even teensier. And the serving is seven cookies, but seriously you could put all seven in your mouth at once, no problem. But they WERE rather tasty. I nibbled them delicately, like fancy little expensive mouse tea party cookies I will never buy again.

(image from Target.com)

Starbucks Spring Day Blend coffee. Isn’t that a pretty bag? And doesn’t it give you a tiny whiff of hope to see SPRING-themed things even though we know it is only February? Target was having their sale where the $7.99 bags of Starbucks are $5.99 each if you buy three or more, so I bought two of my usual kinds and added this impulsively as the third. Their special blends (Thanksgiving! Christmas!) always just taste like regular coffee to me, but I enjoy seeing the bag, and it isn’t as if it’s more expensive.

(image from Target.com)

Swiss Miss Lucky Charms hot chocolate. I am so…I was going to say “charmed by this.” I don’t drink hot chocolate very often, and I don’t have any special fondness for Lucky Charms marshmallows, but it’s just so CUTE. Each serving is two attached packs: one of hot cocoa mix, and a separate one of the special marshmallows. And I knew I could try one serving of it just for fun, and the kids would consume the rest.

(image from Target.com)

Peeps cereal. I can’t explain myself. Well, I can try: I recently bought Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie cereal on impulse because I found its existence funny. And I have eaten a little bowl of it on each of my most recent Keto Days Off, and I have enjoyed it and have not regretted the purchase. So when I saw ANOTHER funny cereal, I bought it. It says it is “marshmallow-flavored cereal, with marshmallows.” HOW can that be good. I cannot WAIT for my next Day Off so I can try it!!

Apparently there is no way to avoid Valentine’s Day Angst every year, just as there is apparently no way to adequately aforehandle Mother’s Day. I thought Paul and I had finally settled into our solution: I no longer expect anything from him; I buy my own heart-shaped box of chocolates; and we go out to dinner (on a nearby day, to avoid the crowds) and get cocktails AND we split the fun overpriced dessert sampler. I bought heart-shaped plates (last year Target had red ones, this year they have pink ones) to put the kids’ dinner on, and I give each kid a giant Hershey Kiss. I have a cute heart mug to drink my coffee/tea out of. In recent years I’ve had a Galentine’s Day party with my local girlfriends. Some years I send valentines in the mail.

I’ve tried to make the Valentine’s Day holiday be about all kinds of love, and about the cheeriness of pink/red/hearts/candy in the middle of winter, and not about how disappointing heterosexual men can be, and what very low bars so many of them fail to cross. (I have NEVER had a relationship with a guy who could handle what I consider the absolute straightforward simplicity of Valentine’s Day. I am not a TRICKY woman with a series of SECRET PUZZLES that need to be solved or else the man FAILS. I like all The Usual Things. I like a heart-shaped box of chocolates, especially if it is extra pretty ((ribbon, flower)). I like flowers from the grocery store. I like doughnuts and pastries and other bakery things. I like wine, I like jewelry, and neither of them have to be expensive for me to like them. I like meals out or in. I am willing to say all these things I like, rather than making the poor man wrack his own brain to think of something himself, and I am perfectly happy to get the same thing every year, no creativity required; I am ALSO perfectly happy if the guy LIKES to come up with his own ideas! So why is all this apparently TOO TOO DIFFICULT?? GAH. Anyway, apparently it WAS too difficult, so I GAVE UP and released BOTH OF US from the entire annual issue so that we would NEVER HAVE TO DEAL WITH IT AGAIN.)

Anyway, yesterday, one week before Valentine’s Day, Paul heaved a huge sad sigh and said he just didn’t know what to DO about Valentine’s Day. I said I thought we’d already released ourselves this entire thing and no longer had to go through this each year; I reminded him that our plan this year was to get Valentine’s Day take-out and eat it in front of the children, who could make their own sandwiches. He sighed again and said that just didn’t seem like enough. Then he listed all the things that he sadly just could not get for me, either because of pandemic or because he put it off too long or because I already bought my own chocolate or because he didn’t think I’d like the earrings he’d pick out. So here is another thing I realized I needed to add to my Making Valentine’s Day Work For Me list: I am not comforting men about it anymore.

(cc’d to baby name blog)

One of you mentioned the other day that you wished you could “like” someone’s comment, and I thought yes, that would be so fun, too bad it isn’t an option. Then someone else said it, and I thought, well, maybe I should just make sure that wasn’t a possibility, and I poked around behind the scenes in the commenting options area but there was no option for “likes”—too bad. Then someone said it VERY VEHEMENTLY and I thought “OKAY FINE I WILL CHECK FOR SURE” and I searched online and…found something. And I THINK, I THINK I have enabled “likes” on comments.

However. Beta testing by a helpful friend indicates you may need to be logged into WordPress in order to like a comment. Do any of you happen to know any way around that, and/or are you good at researching such things? (It took my maximum tech research effort to get as far as I have.) I don’t want it to be a feature available for WordPress Members Only, and may remove the “like” option if that’s the only way it can be.

(A note: I hope it is intuitively clear that I can never, ever, ever hit “like” on ANYONE’S comment, or else I will need to hit “like” on EVERY SINGLE comment, and one of those strategies is less work and less likely to go amiss than the other, so that is the one I will be doing. It will be UNDERSTOOD that Swistle automatically MENTALLY hits “like” on every comment.)

Follow-up: It looks like the comment-likes system is a WordPress Members Only club, so I am turning it back off.

Just now I was in the kitchen updating the list of chores the kids are supposed to work on today. As an aside: I’d started out letting the kids choose their own daily chores, since that would have appealed to me as a child. Only Rob and Elizabeth responded well to that system—which is interesting because they are both the Little Grown-Ups type of child, the kind who from infancy seems embarrassed to be considered a child, and would prefer to sit with the grown-ups, and so on. My other three are all the Babies type of children: didn’t mind being considered babies or treated as babies when they were in fact babies, don’t particularly seem to mind being considered and treated as children while they still are children, content to be told what to do and how to do it. The clear diagnostic line for me between Little Grown-Ups children and Babies children is this: Do I HATE to have to correct them and do I cringe at the idea of telling them no—the way I might if the other person were a peer? Or do I feel perfectly and automatically comfortable with both correcting and naying? With Rob and Elizabeth, I HAAAAAATE telling them no or bringing a mistake to their attention (LITTLE GROWN-UPS); with William and Edward and Henry, I don’t think twice about it, it’s super easy (BABIES).

Where was I? Oh, yes: so Rob and Elizabeth choose their own chores and do them without being told, and I write chores on the dry-erase board for the others, and I am still not tired of choosing which color markers to write with each time. After I wrote the chores, I stood there a minute, uncertain of my previous trajectory: how did I come to be in the kitchen, writing chores, when I remembered recently making tea and bringing it to my desk? After a moment, I gave up trying to figure it out and went to my desk/tea—where I saw an email confirming an orthodontist appointment. Ah ha! I’d gone to the kitchen to look at the calendar to make sure we had that appointment, and then I’d seen the dishes on the counter and put them in the dishwasher, and that had reminded me of the chores I wanted the kids to work on so I’d written those on the board. Then I’d stood there, wondering what had happened to my tea. I find this happens increasingly with age, as prophesied by our elders.

Yesterday I took a day off from keto and it was a glorious day. I ate one of the chocolate-chip cookies Elizabeth had made the night before, and some leftover Christmas cookies/bars from the freezer, and a grilled cheese sandwich, and ramen soup, and chicken nuggets, and garlic bread, and buttered toast with cherry jam, and the new Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie cereal which I was impatient to try and which did not disappoint, and some white cheddar popcorn chips, and quite of a few of the freeze-dried Skittles my sister-in-law sent for everyone’s stockings this year, and some fruit cups, and oh it was just great. But then I woke up at 2:00 in the morning with esophagus pains/spasms, and I took Tums and I went downstairs and took a few peppermint oil drops and made peppermint tea, and gradually I felt well enough to doze off in a recliner, though I kept waking up, giving myself plenty of time to wonder was it the FOODS THEMSELVES? or the overeating of those foods? or maybe the food COMBINED WITH my recently-renewed ability to drink coffee? I feel like my body is getting well into the long slow-but-escalating process of disintegration, and my first two prizes from the Aging Lottery appear to be Knee Pain and Assorted Heartburn/Esophagus Issues. And, like Nora Ephron, I am starting to feel bad about my neck.

Oh, and near Christmas I used a bunch of Advent calendar beauty samples on my eye region (sparkle eye shadow, eye creams, face creams), so I don’t know which if any of them DISPLEASED MY EYE LIDS, but it was apparently SOMETHING, and they’ve been intermittently unhappy since then: they’ll be fine for awhile, and then there is a little recurrence of itching/pinkness, and the skin continues to look a little rougher than I remember it looking before—though perhaps that too is an Aging thing, and I just didn’t notice it until there was some itching to make me look closely. I am having another little recurrence now, so I am putting some Eucerin (the kind that’s like Crisco) around the area, because the roughness of the skin reminds me of eczema, and because I remember the pediatrician telling me Eucerin was the best thing to use on a newborn’s eczema, and eyelids seem about that delicate, and the Eucerin does make them feel better; and I’ve also been using some allergy eye drops when the itching gets worse. WHY SO MUCH FALLING APART, BODY. I am feeling like everything’s so SENSITIVE now: have to be careful how I move, have to be careful what I eat, have to be careful what I put on my skin.

Would you like to make some Physical Ailment complaints, particularly the age-related kind? My friends and I have noticed that, as we get older, we need to set aside a nice chunk of time during each get-together for that particular topic.

Grocery shopping day! The last time I went was before Inauguration Day, and I could see/feel a LARGE CHANGE in my attitude from one trip to the next. Last time I was thinking, “What if the government collapses, and the violence and the pandemic continue on year after year? Should I be stocking up on more flour/yeast/beans? What is the right amount of canned goods for an Armed Insurrection?” This time I was relaxed: “This won’t go on forever! The end is in sight! I do not need another flour, because I have plenty! Soon there will be cleaning supplies again, so I will not worry about it!”

And, like a dove-fetched fresh-picked olive branch showing that the flood waters were indeed receding, there were small cans of Lysol disinfecting spray! and ABUNDANT paper towels filling not only the shelves but part of the aisle floor! and BRANDED HAND SOAP!

We still appear to be experiencing the national Grape-Nuts shortage, but I feel that’s survivable.

They had some little Hickory Farms sausage/cheese holiday gift sets marked from $10 down to $3, and I stood there frozen and indecisive until I gave myself a little shake and said “IT’S A MATTER OF THREE DOLLARS, JUST BUY ONE.” Ditto for NEW! Pretzel Pop-Tarts. Yes, it’s obviously a big lifestyle decision, but let’s not stand here breathing the air for any longer than necessary.

I had a mask panic on Twitter the other day, and several people advised wearing TWO masks: the disposable non-surgical kind first (I have a box of those left over from my days as an in-home elder caregiver), with a cloth mask over it. I tried that today, and it worked well: I didn’t notice a difference in how well I could breathe, I only noticed I felt a little more humid/itchy around the edges of the mask. Well worth it.

There was a guy wearing his mask fully on his neck in this The Year of Our Lord 2021, 11 months into a pandemic. I considered making a faux-panicked remark (“Sir!! Your mask!! It’s slipped!!!”)—but my assessment was that anyone blatantly not wearing a mask in January 2021 knows what they’re doing and is hoping to pick a fight.

I CRAVE YOUR GROCERY NEWS.

I was so worried that Something Bad Might Happen yesterday, I couldn’t write any posts, because I winced to think of us talking happily/optimistically, and then having Something Bad happen and those happy/optimistic things still posted, and anyway now that yesterday is over I feel like MomQueenBee stretching out in a comfy position that doesn’t hurt anymore, and also like Mimi Smartypants done throwing up but still shaky and weird and not able to do much. I’ve seen many other people remarking on the phenomenon of how all of us are MARVELING at things that ought to be normal: a non-combative, accurate-information-giving press secretary; a president who takes the actions available to keep the country’s citizens from dying unnecessarily; not having to wake up flinching about what latest terrible/revolting thing the president might have done/said while we were asleep.

I could hardly believe that the inauguration happened, and that no one died from it. And then the man who was president yesterday morning was suddenly No Longer President, and there was no longer any chance for any “Oh, whoops, actually he still is” to happen. He didn’t manage to collapse the government/country. And as many, many people are reminding us, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen (and in fact it’s MORE likely to happen, now that it’s been shown how close even a bungled/inept/unsophisticated attempt could come)—but it didn’t happen THIS time. (*gif of Moira Rose saying “Let us CELEBRATE that”*)

I appreciate our new president’s urge to have unity, even though I don’t think it’s possible/reasonable to unite us all; it’s just that I appreciate having a president who WANTS that, instead of a president who wants us to fight to the death in a gladiator ring for his entertainment. But we CAN’T unite with certain viewpoints, when those viewpoints are not just Different but Inherently Wrong/Bad. And so what I REALLY appreciated was the much-less-emphasized part where he mentioned the concept of Enough Of Us. That the reason the United States has pulled through other really bad situations was that ENOUGH OF US wanted to get through it. Not that we UNITED with those of us who thought slavery was great, actually—but that ENOUGH OF US thought it was wrong and we shouldn’t have it. Not that we UNITED with those of us who thought women shouldn’t be able to vote or own property or leave their abusive husbands—but that ENOUGH OF US thought women should be legally equal to men. Not that we UNITED with those of us who thought that God hates people who are gay or transgender, but that ENOUGH OF US thought that people are people, and love is love, and that that’s not an appropriate use of the concept of God, and so forth. And now: not that we UNITE with those of us who have shocked us over the last four years with their cruelty and bigotry and violence and selfishness, but that ENOUGH OF US want to live a different way. (IF enough of us DO.)