This time of year I hear a lot of hate about Valentine’s Day, and I think all our problems with it could be alleviated if we’d just admit the truth: Valentine’s Day is Halloween without the costumes.

Think about it:

It’s all about the candy. Seriously. Do you really want to get–or give–flowers or a teddy bear? No. You want candy. And maybe oral sex. But mostly candy. And this time of year you don’t even have to roam around with a pillowcase begging for it, or dodge Bits O’ Honey. Advantage: VD

It’s fun for kids, but too much pressure for adults. Assuming the kids go to a school at which every kid has to give valentines to every other kid so no one gets singled out, Valentine’s Day is pure fun for kids. Candy, bad puns, and an excuse to not do schoolwork for part of the day. In contrast, adults are all freaked out about what to wear and who’s expecting what when and what everything MEANS and how many Weight Watchers Points Plus all that candy is. And the stupid radio plays way too many love songs and not enough “She Blinded Me With Science.” Advantage: Halloween

If you delve too deep, the actual origins of the holiday are thoroughly gruesome. Halloween: The night in which the barrier between the dead and the living is lowest, so evil spirits are everywhere. Valentine’s Day: various martyred saints and a mob massacre. Advantage: no one.

Somebody’s using the day as an excuse to dress in an inappropriately sexy way. Red camisoles as office wear are hideous, as are sexy nurse costumes, sexy devils, sexy cats, sexy zombies, sexy Mitt Romneys, etc. Advantage: it’s a draw.

The only people who care about it are retailers and people who hate it. At Halloween it’s the retailers and “Halloween is eeeeeville” people who care about Halloween, and everyone else just shuts up, puts their noses to the grindstone to find costumes for their kids, and that’s it. At Valentine’s Day it’s the retailers and newly lovey-dovey paired-up people who care about Valentine’s Day, and everyone else just buys SpongeBob-themed valentines for their kids to hand out and a bag of Dove hearts to eat alone after everyone else in the house is asleep. Advantage: retailers.

When you wake up the next morning it’s totally over and you don’t have to think about it for another 11 1/2 months. Unless you choose to stock up on half-price candy. Advantage: you.

So try to hang in there a few more hours until it’s over. It could always be worse–you could be dressed like a sexy nun.

I work from home, and that means that every morning at 10 am, my trigger to make coffee is the theme song to The Ellen Show. The timing works out such that I’m usually putting the coffee in the machine and starting it during the intro of the show, and then I get to dance along with Ellen, and then my coffee’s ready and I sit back down and drink it while I’m working. Sometimes my only interaction with Ellen is our daily dance, but if I’m interested in her guests I’ll keep an ear on the tv.

One thing I’ve noticed since I’ve been watching is how kind Ellen is. She’s witty and sharp, but she’s also kind, to the viewers and to her guests. (Kinder than the guests deserve, sometimes.) She seems like a completely normal person, who just happens to be funnier and prettier than most of us, and married to an unnaturally gorgeous woman.

So when she announced that she was the new spokesperson for JC Penney, it made complete sense to me. I figured JC Penney was trying to make a new push into retail since KMart was going down in flames (and who knows what that would do to Sears) and was trying to be more modern. Why would you not ask one of the most likeable, least controversial people in America to be your spokesperson?

Gwynnie’s at it again. More advice, from the woman who has it all together:

“I have little kids in school. I want to maintain my marriage and my family, so I have to be here when he comes home.” Hence her recent advice to a girlfriend (who remains tantalizingly unnamed): “She is an actress and in a new relationship with someone else with a big career, and I said this may not be feminist, but you have to compromise. It’s been all about you and you’re a big deal. And if you want what you’re saying you want—a family—you have to be a wife, and that is part of the equation. Gloria Steinem may string me up by my toes, but all I can do is my best, and I can do only what works for me and my family.”

My friend and mentor Num-Num (her internet nickname, not her real name) says that the key to success in life is seeing your luck when it comes. She believes that everyone has luck that comes into your life, but some people don’t see that it’s come so they ignore it, and others see it but don’t do anything with it.

Since the divorce, I’ve tried to be aware of my luck and grab it and hold onto it when it shows up. Getting admitted to the grad program I’m in is the most obvious example of luck that’s popped up and that I grabbed onto, and I’m thankful every day that I grabbed it. (OK, maybe not every day. Like the day I took a 3 1/2-hour Financial Management exam from the Orlando airport between a work meeting and a flight, with random kids pelting me with candy and some lady yammering on her phone right near my head about how her flight was late. That day I wasn’t so excited about it. But other days, yes.) It is amazing to me how much things fell into place when I followed that path, even though I had no idea how it could possibly work out when I started on the path.

While most of us got excellent care during pregnancy and birth, some of us have heard bizarre things, alarmist misdiagnoses, or just plain weirdness from our care providers.

Slide show of weirdness after the jump:

A famous blogging couple announced a split, and the internets are wondering how it happened. I wrote about the sadness we feel when a couple we thought was healthy breaks up over at the co-parenting blog I write with my ex-husband, but I thought I’d talk about what it means to be a blogger who reveals something so big and so secret.

The thing about blogging is that you share so much of yourself with your readers, but you’re not sharing everything. Those of us who have been online for a long time have gotten very good at sharing the essence of us, without every detail and every interaction. When you’re in a marriage that’s going south (or even in a job you hate but aren’t ready to leave, or another situation you have to be loyal to until you can make the break), you aren’t asking for input. You don’t want to crowdsource marriage counseling or whether you should stay or go. So you CANNOT say anything about it until it’s a done deal. There’s a part in the amazing book Uncoupling by Diane Vaughan (which I recommend to anyone going through a breakup because it’s just a timeline, not a guilt trip) that talks about having that seed of doubt that your relationship will work but not being able to be disloyal by saying anything about it to your partner. In a way, in blogging, your readers are your partners. If you know something is wrong, but you can’t tell them, that means you have to try even harder to live on the good parts and only write about things that seem normal.

Add to that the complication that in a divorce you are in a legal fight and have to defend yourself and advocate for your best interests constantly. Until the settlement is signed, it’s constant negotiation (negotiation if you’re lucky; donnybrook if you’re not) and anything can change anything. From something as small as which set of grandparents your children get to spend Labor Day with this year to where your children live and what school they go to to how much money you will have to live on in two years–it’s all up for grabs.

Even if you both want the split, even if you agree on how the days should flow for your kids, even if you trust the other person to do what’s best for the kids (and those are some huuuuge assumptions), there are moments in which you panic. You are assessing exactly who you can trust and exactly how much you can trust them constantly, and if you find out that there’s been even a tiny breach, it can send you into a tailspin.

The media image of divorce is that it’s a knock-down-drag-out in court with parents who become so self-centered that they will do anything they have to to get their ways, or (the latest media darling, and yes, my ex and I have been asked to play into this image all the time) so calm and peaceful that the separating is just logistics. And maybe there are some people who fit those extremes. But the truth for most of us who’ve gone through divorce is that your story changes every single day. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. You are simultaneously trying to figure out what happened, figure out who you are, figure out what is best for your kids, figure out what’s best for you, and then fight to get those bests against someone you thought you knew but don’t want to be around anymore. It is exhausting and hopeless, with no safe place to stand.

How could you possibly let your readers into that? Some of them wouldn’t understand, and some of them would understand too well. Some of them would take anything you wrote as the truth for always, and some would dismiss everything you wrote as being too emotional. So, honestly, it’s best for everyone if you write about the same stuff you’ve always written about. Eventually you will have your feet under you again, and that stuff will become the truth once more.

Even if you are tempted to blog it all, every incident, every revelation about yourself, every emotion, you can’t if you have children. You cannot throw your children under the bus by saying negative things about one of their parents. Whether it’s the other parent or you, you can’t leave a trail of things on the internet for them to read about what a bad/weak/disloyal person their parent is. If it’s true, they will figure it out on their own, in private. If it’s only a (perhaps temporary) version of the truth, you will hurt them by writing it.

And so. The straight facts are out there: he is moving out, she is leaving, we are splitting. And while your regular readers give you the benefit of the doubt, others do not. But you can’t tell your whole story, especially while it’s happening. You can only keep writing the essence of who you are and hope that they understand.

By now everyone knows that Beyonce and Jay-Z welcomed their baby Blue Ivy to the world last Saturday, January 7. Aside from the name (it’s like they read Awesomely Luvvie but didn’t get the point), questions about who actually gestated the baby, and a bunch of other weird stuff, there are a lot of concerns about what happened at Lenox Hill Hospital that day.

For those of you who don’t live in NYC or know anything about hospitals there, LHH has for years been the place celebrities and women with high-risk pregnancies go to have their babies. At the time I was giving birth (7-10 years ago), LHH had a c-section rate of over 40%.

In other words, LHH has the reputation of being a boutique hospital for people who need or want a lot of interventions and are willing to pay for it or have great insurance. I don’t know if this is deserved or not deserved–I don’t know what their actual demographics are. This is just the way it’s perceived by the average parent on the playground in NYC.

So no one was surprised that the Knowles-Carters a) went to LHH over other hospitals in the NYC area, or b) had a private birthing suite. (Rumors about their spending a million dollars to have an entire floor to themselves notwithstanding.) It also doesn’t surprise me that they brought their own security. And that people visiting the hospital wanted to catch a glimpse of the baby and were denied by the private security and got mad about that.

What is surprising and concerns me is the claim by parents with babies in the NICU that they were prevented from seeing their children during the time the Knowles-Carters were at Lenox Hill. Most vocal about this are Rozz and Neil Nash-Coloun, who had twin daughters in the NICU.  Here’s the NY Times story about the Nash-Coloun’s claim. LHH has counter-claimed (in the hilariously-titled press release “Lenox Hill Hospital Clears the Record on Beyonce Birth” which just, well, let’s just say “Mission Accomplished“) that it didn’t happen and no patients have come to them about being barred from seeing their children.

Here’s a hint, Lenox Hill: The parents haven’t talked to you about it yet because they are going to sue you back into the Stone Age. Or at least downtown. I don’t blame them.

Can you IMAGINE going to see your baby–your child–in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and being told that you were not allowed to, and that all security cameras on the floor of the hospital were being turned off or covered?

Note: I’m not blaming Beyonce and Jay-Z for this, as they were doing what they thought was best for their child, even though it was in complete disregard for other people. (See also: “Why rich and powerful people make seriously questionable decisions,” which may be the topic of my PhD dissertation, from a business ethics, leadership, and corporate governance angle.) I land this squarely in the lap of Lenox Hill Hospital. They have enough celebrities having babies there that this has to be something they’ve dealt with before. Balancing desires for privacy with the right to see your child seems like it would be a common issue for the hospital, and one that they’d done many times.

So why didn’t they have a plan that allowed for separation so the Knowles-Carter baby could be isolated but other patients could still have the access to their children that they were legally entitled to? Or maybe even, you know, tell the Knowles-Carters they couldn’t comply with their security requests, even if it meant that they had the baby someplace else?

If it had been me that was barred from seeing my child, Lenox Hill would have been acutely aware of the pending lawsuit. I can’t decide if I’d have gone full-on Girl With The Dragon Tattoo on them, or let it play out more slowly à la Keyser Söze. Would I bust my kid out of the NICU like the lady in “Not Without My Daughter”*? Would I simply get the police to come and arrest the head of security at LHH for kidnapping, or would I leave a horse’s head in the bed of the head of the hospital**? Or would I open a competing hospital nearby and put them out of business***? The possibilities are really endless, but the moral of the story is twofold:

1. Don’t get between a mother bear and her cub, and
2. If you go someplace that privileges money, you are only assured of your rights if you’re the one with the most money.

I really didn’t care much about this whole pregnancy and birth thing until I heard about the mess LHH got itself into. Now I’m super-curious to see how it plays out. Any thoughts?

* Not recommended, as I’d probably have to bust out one of the nurses with my kid, too. And maybe some of the machines.

** I would not actually harm a horse.

*** Release the hounds, Smithers.

I can’t quite believe the difference between my life this year and my life last year. Last year I was injured and miserable and alone, trapped and going nowhere (except back into the subway for hours every day). This year my children have freedom and time, I live in a place I love, I’m challenged at work and school, and life feels full of possibilities.

My wish for you is that you see your luck when it comes, and do whatever you need to to claim it. And that we’re all happier on December 22, 2012 than we can imagine right now.

What is your heart’s desire for the coming year?

This week has been stellar. I love NYC when I have no responsibilities. I did go in to the office for a work meeting yesterday, but other than that it’s been non-stop fun.

I was extremely lucky to get tickets to see the new production of Porgy and Bess starring Audra McDonald, Norm Lewis, and David Alan Grier. One of my friends from church choir is in the chorus, so I got tickets a few months ago before the show started getting such great reviews. If you are anywhere near NYC, have any appreciation for the human voice and/or jazz, and appreciate beauty in any way, you should see this show. The staging and direction were perfect, but it was the casting and the performances that make this show so magical. I sat silently sobbing through almost the entire thing. When Bryonha Marie Parham sang Serena’s “My Man’s Gone Now” it felt like she was channeling all the hurts of the world into that lament, like everything sad that ever existed was coming through her voice. The brilliance of the show is that we all feel like Porgy (“Born crippled. Born to be lonely”) but we all feel like Bess, too. It’s going to take a long time for the performance to leave me.

It’s been strange to be in my old city and realize how much it changes but how much it’s the same, too. New stores going in, old stores closing, but I went for a run around Gramercy Park this morning and still had to dodge puddles of dog pee and listen to too many conversations about real estate as I ran past groups of people.

I’ve seen so many friends, and that’s made it feel like home here. But I still can’t wait to get back home to Michigan later today. And I’m really, really ready to have my kids back, but that’s still a few more days away.

So I’m on vacation this week. This was precipitated by two things: 1) My kids are with their dad and his family this whole week, and 2) I had to take these days off or lose them and not a single one of my clients is in the office this week anyway.

So I’m in NYC this week. This was precipitated by three things: 1) I knew if I was at home for a whole week without the kids I’d get all mopey and start eating too many Spicy Sweet Doritos and do nothing but read cheesy romance novels, 2) work paid me to fly out here for a client meeting anyway, and 3) a friend of mine is in the shiny new Broadway production of one of my favorite shows of all time.

So I’m here, as a tourist, staying with two separate sets of friends, and just hanging out for 3 1/2 days.

It is glorious. I wish I could bring all of you here, without your children, without having to go to work, and with nothing to do but eat really good food (holy mackeral the pizza I just ate!) with good friends and talk about everything under the sun.

I’m discovering that I really do like New York, when I’m not trying to live daily life here. At the same time, I’m reminded why I don’t live here anymore–my pant legs are sopping wet from mid-thigh down because I had to walk to and from the subway to get back from dinner. (I miss my car.) The subway doors closed right in my face. And I saw some passengers berating a subway conductor for something she had no control over. People are just too stressed here.

I think that it’s ok to love two (or more) places. I think it’s sad when you live in a place you don’t want to be, because the longing to be in the other place is just too much. But it’s ok for me to love and miss NYC, since I’m happy being in Michigan. Not the most profound or brilliant thought, but it’s what I’ve gotten to at the end of vacation day 1.

And now I’m going to pass out in a pizza-induced coma.