I think just about the only thing more annoying than card and gift companies insisting I should want cheap stuffed animals, chalky candy, and trashy lingerie today are other women insisting I should be somehow upset or disgruntled in some way because I'm not getting them. I must have read half a dozen times today on various blogs/journals/columns how today is a special day to tell that special someone in your life how you feel about them and they are, in return, supposed to blow overpriced flowers up your badunkadunk, too. Not so much.

"Love" one day is a year is as invalid to me as people who attend church on Christmas and Easter. If Mike could only tell me he cared about me by telling me today because the entire country is telling him he's less of a man if he doesn't, it just wouldn't mean anything to me. I define how he cares based on how he treats me the other 364 days a year. The only things I've ever seen come out of Valentine's Day are a wad of people feeling absolutely miserable because they're alone and a bunch of people measuring their worth compared to everyone else they know based on the commercialistic "devotion" offered up by someone they love. And I guess it guarentees someone will get laid tonight because they spend those other 364 days not putting out or something?

Meh, I dunno.

Thank you for the 6am wakeup call. I appreciate your willingness to think and operate outside the box but unfortunately our house is aluminium. I don't know if you lost a bar fight or were drunk on wood alcohols, but please refrain from future alarm clock service.

x-posted.

For some reason, the neighborhood kids have decided the most possible fun to be had on the street is by playing at the end of our driveway and in a group of shrubs and plants where our yard meets the driveway. By "kids" I mean three kids from one family ages 3-7 and random other neighborhood kids 4-7. Some of the kids use push scooters, some ride bikes, and some drive those little battery operated Jeeps. And no, parents are nowhere to be seen.

They take their implements of transportation, stow them on our lawn, in our driveway, on the sidewalk, on the street, or whever they want, then proceed to tromp around like it's their property. And of course kids don't play quietly. There's screaming and yelling and toy gun sounds. None of our neighbors even HAVE kids, these kids live at the other end of the street. And don't get me started on why a 3 year old doesn't need to be driving a car down a sidewalk that connects with people's driveways without any adult supervision.

Our next door neighbors, with whom we share a driveway entrance, add another scare level to the mix: one's an alcoholic and the other is such a horrible driver she's hit the alcoholic's parked car one more than one occassion while backing out the driveway. Yes, the same driveway these kids leave their shit in and play on. It's a recipe for me looking out my office window and seeing something I'd much rather not see.

So how do I approach this situation? I'd rather not piss off the entire neighborhood because I do have to live here for a few more years. Do I just try asking the kids to stay away from our yard? Do I add some fire ant colonies to the garden area so next time they decide it makes a cool fort they get their legs chewed off? Hornet nests? Do I tell their mother she should monitor her children as ferociously as she does where her dog is, whom she keeps chained to their front steps all day long?

I keep having this image of me, just after waking up, with full-on bed head, surrounded by cats weaving past my ankles as I stand at the front door with a shotgun.

What I'd realllllly like to do is walk down to their house and, in front of the kids, tell their mother "there's a reason we don't have kids. it's because they're a huge responsibility. or at least, it should be. if we wanted to babysit and monitor kids all day long, we could have our own. howsabout you give it a shot with your lawn monkeys?"

But I'm guessing there's a level of social protocol to follow.....any hints?

I'm a little confused. So, you have to be 19 and a year out of high school to be eligble for the NBA draft. To ensure kids go to finish high school? To encourage them to enter college? Is the NBA also going to create a minimum college GPA requisite to ensure their new recruits and draftees actually GOT an education or are they just interested in knowing they jumped through the hoops?

Perhaps the goal is to make them risk injury in the college level trying to impress more scouts, live the life of a college student who really isn't in the school for education and degree so much as a stepping stone to the NBA while helping drive the NCAA market, making loads of money for.....whom?

I guess I'd feel differently about it if, oh, the US Government felt all enlistees to the military should meet a similar requirement. You know, to encourage them to go to college, give them a chance at seeing the world through more educated eyes? Maybe that year between 18 and 19 as an exploratory time where your future is limitless instead of pressuring kids their senior year of high school to join the military and escape their horrible lives so they can risk their lives for pretty miserable pay?

Why is it ok for the military to recruit IN the high schools for people willing to kill or be killed for such low wages but the NBA needs to wait an extra year or so in order for you to work for them and make millions at risk of just your knees blowing out or something?