Bucket List Mon Feb 13 2012

My Chicago Bucket List: Galentine's Day

By Niki Fritz

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Number 6: Make a New Friend

I love Amy Poehler.

I love Amy Poehler because she is funny.

I love Amy Poehler because she makes bright blonde hair and pants suits look like an awesome choice.

I love Amy Poehler because Tina Fey describes her like this:

"Amy made it clear that she wasn't there to be cute. She wasn't there to play wives and girlfriends in the boys' scenes. She was there to do what she wanted to do and she did not fucking care if you like it."

But most of all I love Amy Poehler for legitimizing Galentine's Day
on primetime television.

As Leslie Knope explains, Galentine's Day is "ladies celebrating ladies, like Lilith field minus the angst" (and perhaps more shaving). For me though the idea of Galentine's Day is celebrating all that freakin' friend love that we often take for granted in this couple obsessed world.

Since I was little, my mom, my very first gal pal, and I would have dinner and exchange valentines. From the age of five on, I associated Valentine's Day with pretty cheap flowers, an overabundance of Mexican food and shared love between your favorite people in the world.

As I got older, I grew to love creating your very own Valentine's Day mailboxes and hand delivering Mickey Mouse valentines with those horrible cheap suckers stuck to them. Throughout high school and college, the day was spent celebrating platonic love usually through the means of margaritas and a hang over the next day.

But as I got older, I felt the significance of the day dramatically shift to the side of lovers. Maybe in my little haven of Wisconsin I was sheltered from all of these adulterating KY commercials. Or maybe that is just what happens when you get past the average age of marriage for American women (eek). Either way my Valentine's Day was suddenly about heterosexual, horny love that is proven by large stuffed animals and 20 minutes of good all natural American lovemaking.

And then Amy Poehler saved me from making my standard V-day rant: "Valentine's Day is just a Hallmark-created holiday dreamed up by the suits to...Hold on... I just got a new OKCupid message." I would like to thank Amy Poehler for reminding America that you can have a ridiculously adorable boyfriend (I've got a major thing for Adam Scott), and still celebrate the awesome love for your gals.

Thanks to a wicked cold and my possible addiction to Niquil, I will not be Galentining it up at the Evil Olive tonight with my gals but I did have a chance last week to cross number six off my list and celebrate my Galentine's a little early. I made a new gal pal. ☺

More than that, I will be bold and say made a new soul mate, a person I can add to my growing list of soul mates which include: my bestie, my yoga instructor and that guy I went skinny dipping with in Uruguay.

You know you have truly made a new friend when you have no problem texting a them at 2pm on a Wednesday and saying, "I don't have a therapy appointment for another week but I'm falling apart here: drinks? Please?" and they respond, "Fountainhead 7:30."

You have met a soul mate when two ciders in, you have a series of "OMG, me too" valley girl moments. OMG, you as a strong feminist, also have trouble finding a boyfriend who will go to a NOW rally with you? OMG, you've felt like a complete freak as well because you enjoy being single and don't dread the very concept? OMG, you secretly dance to Hanson's "Mmmbop" when you get ready to go out as well? Oh that one's just me.

I've been on many dates at Fountainhead and never once have I felt like desire to grab somebody's hand and say, "I love you man. Thanks for being so very awesome and not judging me for ordering that third cider."

We often overemphasize the importance of finding our soul mate in a person who happens to have the genitalia we prefer to rub up against our own. But soul mates are really those wonderful people who make you have OMG moments of belonging, those people with whom you suddenly feel not so alone.

And that, my friends, is what Galetine's Day is all about.

P.S. If anyone has an Amy Poehler "in," I'm pretty sure we are also soul mates, so you should hook a gal pal up!

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