So I’m in the middle of this self-guided study through the history of Christian scriptures and textual criticism and am finding out some really fascinating things about how Christianity almost came to be, before the Orthodox Christians won out and stamped out all the conflicting ideals.

Me: … and so there was this group called the Gnostics, who - are you snoring?

Him: Hmm??? …No…

Me: You were snoring.

Him: I was listening. You’re reading about the Gnostics who did something.

Me: You fell asleep while I was talking to you.

Him: …I love you…?

Me: But you could care less about my book.

Him: I’m interested. I was listening. And then…I was waking up. But I do want to hear about your book.

Me: Tomorrow.

Him: Tomorrow.

I’m pretty indifferent about Valentine’s Day.

I know there are a lot of people out there who really hate it with a vengeance and are so repulsed at the very mention of the occasion that you can actually see the skin on their face start to shrivel and peel away.

I don’t have that alien nuclear radiation effect. I just don’t really care much about it.

I’m not a romantic. Not by any stretch of the imagination. We usually don’t get presents for each other on Valentine’s and prefer to do dinner out the night before or after to avoid the crowds.

Two years ago I found out on Valentine’s that I was pregnant, so we did the whole dinner reservations thing and I bought J a pooper-scooper for the litter box to initiate the beginning of his 9 months of having sole litter box duty on account of my pregnancy.

See. Not a romantic.

But last night my parents offered to take Little Button for the night so we could have an evening out. I didn’t know what to do with that. I mean, it was VALENTINE’S DAY, oh dreaded Day of 5-Hour Restaurant Waiting Times and No Available Reservations.

I hate waiting at restaurants. HATE IT. Remember that alien nuclear radiation effect? Yeah, I get that about waiting.

But it was an opportunity for a NIGHT OUT - as in, just the two of us - that rare and sacred opportunity that I must hold to my bosom and pet and cherish, lest it disappear forever. That precious glimpse of our past lives, free of responsibility and diapers.

While we wouldn’t give up our current situation for anything, there’s a mystical and almost naughty quality about The Night Out - something that defies understanding makes it entirely irresistible.

Ergo, even I, the Reigning Supreme Hater of Restaurant Wait Times could not turn down The Night Out.

So we joined the rest of the world and went out to eat on Valentine’s Day.

J called a restaurant and was told the current wait time was only 15 minutes (gasp!). But by the time we packed up Little Button, took her to my parents, and made it over there, the wait time had become 2 hours.

TWO HOURS??? This was not a fancy, exclusive restaurant. This was a typical steak & potatoes place. Not even The Night Out could overcome the agony of spending that much time waiting for a table.

I told J I was NOT sitting there for 2 hours and we went home and watched Bones and American Idol.

Two hours later, we went back.

Zero wait time. Night Out. Texas Twist Margarita.

BLISS.

We had scheduled a furniture assembly company to come by today and (10 points to anyone who guesses this) assemble some furniture.  But the desk/hutch/bookcase were in boxes at my parents’ house where they have been since before Christmas.

So J called up Jon and they collected the really big boxes of disassembled furniture and brought them to our house.

And put them in the living room.

I asked J why he and Jon weren’t bringing the boxes upstairs to the office, where the assembled furniture would go.  He replied that he would let the assembly guys do that.

I asked him if he was sure that assembly companies moved furniture - after all, they were assemblers, not furniture delivery men.  He said something about it would be silly for them not to move it where it was supposed to go, in order to assemble it, and that they weren’t going to show up and then leave because it wasn’t in the right place.

Again, I asked him if he was sure about this, and if they would charge us extra for having to move it.  He assured me that I had nothing to worry about and that it would be the assembly company’s responsibility to get the boxes upstairs.

By now, you’ve probably guessed where this story is going.

A short while later, the assembly crew guy showed up.  He took one look at the boxes and informed J that he was not moving any boxes, especially up stairs.

So guess who gets pulled off her butt in the middle of a work-related project to move three 200-pound boxes up a flight of stairs.

Just to be repetitively clear on something…Those things were HEAVY.  I couldn’t even lift my end of one of them.  And all the while, Mr. Assembly Man is standing there watching me break my back with this look of hurry up, I didn’t drive over here to wait.

Not that he would have been much help.  The guy looked like an emaciated version of ZZ Top and seemed to have enough difficulty getting his own bag of tools up the stairs.

But still.

Afterward, he didn’t even clean up after himself.  It’s one thing to avoid carrying heavy boxes up the stairs for liability.  It’s quite another to charge $200 to put a few screws in some furniture and then leave all the empty boxes and debris all over the place.

I’m writing this from the JFK Airport in New York, while on a layover before continuing on to LONDON and then to ROME.

Because J is JUST. THAT. COOL. Merry Christmas indeed!  Will share details later.

Hope you’re all having a great holiday, though I’m betting it’s not as cool as mine (insert maniacal laughter here)…

I have ISD. I’ve had it since approximately 6 months before J and I got married.

I’ll do the math for you: for past 6 years, I’ve felt defective and he’s been in a constant state of sexual frustration.

We have a great relationship. We get along fabulously and couldn’t be better matched for each other in terms of personality, sense of humor, ideals, etc.

But my ISD has always kind of been the elephant in the room. He tries to be understanding, but he’s the one that’s “normal.” I try to be accommodating, but I can’t fake something I don’t feel.

I used to misdiagnose it as different things - paranoia about privacy, physical oversensitivity, stress. I remember the days when my drive was normal …now I would give my left arm for a day of feeling “hot and bothered.”

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my problem started when I started birth control. I’ve tried several different brands of BC in the hopes of finding different hormone levels that wouldn’t affect my sex drive… to no avail.  I even tried getting off the pill for a several-month stretch, but it didn’t really seem to help. And then I got pregnant. Which also didn’t help.

And now I think it’s getting worse. I used to be able to enjoy a good love scene in a movie. Now I find myself fighting the desire to roll my eyes. And I hate myself for it.

I read today that anemia can be a cause of reduced desire. I’d never heard that before. I’m anemic. Perhaps I should start taking those iron pills more diligently.