How about you guys? How did you spend your time last week?

There is something about February that just feels off. I can’t put my finger on it, but the month just feels mean. Petty. Spiteful. It’s stupid, I understand this, and yet, I feel it just the same.

Work has been incredibly busy. I cannot believe the amount of work that’s been coming in and the expected due dates. What’s that? You need 90 pages of website content? But you don’t yet have the wireframes to give me? Or the general hierarchy or navigation? Or even a rough idea of how you want the site to work? And you need it in 8 days? NO. That’s like telling me to build an airplane while we’re already in the air. Luckily, my boss has been completely awesome by serving as the metaphorical dragon at the gate, so I have been able to shovel off some of those stress projects. (They’ll probably be assigned to Future Shauna, but I cannot allow myself to think about that.)

Speaking of shoveling, it has snowed here five days in a row. Not a lot, but enough to shovel. Jason has done most of it because he gets home before I do (despite working 10-hour days), but this morning I offered to do it before work so he didn’t have to deal with it last night. And this morning, just like every other time I shovel, I reach that point where I just feel the futility of it all. Maybe it’s the sickly blue light, maybe it’s the ice ruts my shovel always gets caught on that results in a shovelful of snow spraying everywhere, or maybe it’s the soggy scarf wrapped wetly across my face. Regardless, I always end up totally fatigued, mentally and physically: I shoveled, but what does it matter? It’s going to snow again and all of this will have been for nothing. What is the point?!? 

See? February strikes again.

Completely unrelated, our volleyball team is this ragtag group of women out to have fun, and our tallest player is maybe 5’9. But yet we always seem to play super-serious, super-competitive teams consisting of 4 or 5 giantesses. Last night, our group was warming up on our side of the net when a player from the other team decided to practice her serves. Three times she nearly hit one of us and then got mad when we wouldn’t roll her ball back to her, leaving it instead to languish in a dusty corner. Sorry we’re not going to hand your ball back to you so you can nearly bean one of us, OK? Don’t effing serve the ball when there’s a group of people standing right there! Jesus. Also on her team was an Amazon woman (literally, every time this creature spiked the ball, she’d utter a primal scream like a cavewoman) who got on my nerves instantly. Luckily, despite being a foot taller than everyone else, she wasn’t that good. Most of the time, she’d hit the ball into the net or out of bounds, and in one deliciously awesome moment that I took way too much pleasure in, she got blocked by one of my teammates. But during those rare instances when she got in a good hit, that yelling instantly made me hate her. Look, I’m all about making good plays, you know? In fact, my main goal when playing volleyball is to annoy the hell out of the other team. But only because of my good play, not because I celebrated like an annoying douchebag. So when the time came to shake hands after the game, instead of saying, “good game,” like I do to every other person, I slapped Amazon’s hand and said nothing. Just my little passive-aggressive way of saying, “Eff you.” And yes, it was petty, and yes, I know the woman had no idea what I was thinking, but I did it.

I’ll blame February.

So, Jason won our 2012 cribbage tournament. Big deal, good for him, this year’s MY year, blah, blah, blah, right?

No. I was ahead in our 2012 tournament for 354 days. Seriously. We played our first game shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day, and I won. And then I kept winning, so that – for the entire year – I was ahead of Jason.

And then December 20th happened. He tied me. I thought, “No biggie; there’s plenty of time left.”

And then he kept winning and winning and building more of a lead, and then my thinking went to, “Well, if we play 25 more games and I win 17 of them, it’ll be fine.”

And then he kept winning some more, and I kept becoming more and more angry because seriously! I was ahead ALL YEAR.

During one game, I was getting the most wonderful cards. When I finally paid attention to Jason’s pegs, he was beating me. And I got all incredulous (and whiny) and questioned his obvious cheating strategy, and Jason said, “Why are you so mad?” And I replied, “Because if I was getting crap hands, it would make sense that you’re beating me. But I’m getting awesome hands, and you’re still winning! That’s not fair.” Then I think he called me a sore loser, but I can’t remember because I was too busy pouting.

Finally, with only a few days left in the year, we set down some ground rules because the score was so close. That way, the person who was behind couldn’t keep asking to play more games in the hope of regaining the lead. We decided to play just 10 more games. The only way we’d play more was if the season ended in a tie.

And, well, obviously it didn’t.

Boo.

P.S. Notice how in the last 3-4 years, the font size on the engravings keeps growing larger and larger? Yeah, don’t use Crown Awards if you don’t care for that. (When I first ordered the plaque, I ordered six years of info at once, which is why those are consistent.) But apparently, they don’t keep record of the font size they use on the engravings, so for the past two years, I have had to have them redo it three times. (This year, I even sent them a photo of the size I wanted and specified the correct font size (14.5 serif), and it was still too big.) Not cool when you want to have multiple engravings look the same from year to year.