And a Very Grinchy Hanukkah to You Too

My uncle's second wife, the one who used to be his office temp while he was still married to his first wife until his first wife discovered that the soon-to-be second wife had become so much more than just an office temp, she is usually pretty on-point with her birthday and holiday gift giving. Unlike other members of the extended FAB clan, who like to gift FAB with practical yet mostly unwanted items like plastic cutting boards and dress socks in an assortment of neutral colors and matronly, floor-length sleepwear, or worse, items that are both impractical and unwanted (I'm looking at YOU, plastic pear Christmas tree ornament that someone gave me for Hanukkah two years ago), over the years, my uncle's second wife has regularly gifted generally enjoyable items like lovely cashmere sweaters and hardcover copies of The Devil Wears Prada and the like.

Until this year.

No, this year, we were gifted with a most unwelcome copy of Haiku for the Single Girl. A quick spin around the Googles would suggest that this book is amazingly witty! hilariously relatable! laugh out loud! and genius!, but I assure you, it is none of these things. The internet, it can be pretty dumb sometimes. Instead, I would like to submit for your consideration that Haiku for the Single Girl is occasionally amusing! definitely depressing! and oftentimes downright self-loathing, implicitly misogynistic, and crudely reductive of the varied and subjective experiences of being a woman in America today, let alone a single woman.

So, yes, family. I may be pushing 33, single, have two cats, and I also may have recently taken up knitting, but you can take your witty!!! poetry, as in: "My high school sweetheart/Has a toddler, and a gut/But I'd take him back," and shove it.

Next year, please just leave me a bottle of whiskey at the door. I'm far too busy knitting knickers for my cats.