*strange company.

The momster is, as a rule, an enormous fan of holidays, but always with a twist. When I was a kid there was no Santa Claus, but there were Christkindls. There was no tooth fairy, but the birthday fairy left you a pretty new outfit at the end of your bed every year. There was no Easter Bunny, but there were still baskets, filled with trinkets and plastic eggs and that bizarre but ubiquitous fake grass.

On Valentine's Day, there were heart-shaped gelatin snacks and notes in your lunchbox, hugs and small presents and shiny red apples with a thick river of peanut butter running through the middle.

So for me, Valentine's Day has always been a family holiday, with none of the cloying romance and all of the laughing and teasing and needling and cocktails. It's a riot.



Or it will be, maybe next year when the celebration doesn't fall during nap time.

I've been clinging to that day lately, because there was so much that this week has not been—cheerful, positive, supportive, relaxed.



I'm very lucky to have such an utterly insane family—a circle of uniquely amazing and loony kindred spirits.



My family doesn't all have to be biologically related to me; they just have to be people who wear their crazy like a brand, so I can recognize it and match it with my own and know that I have people. There's something warm and sparkly about loving someone really really hard who drives you completely nuts.



It's also a good defense for the next time you drive them completely nuts.



So as this baffling and unpredictable week marches on, I remember: "They say that good things take time, but really great things happen in a blink of an eye."



Yes, I just quoted Miley Cyrus as Hannah Montana. That's MY crazy. Look familiar?