Six ways to survive February

Tips to enjoy the shortest-longest month

Jeffrey Denny

T.S. Elliot was wrong.

He said April is the cruelest month because it brings the hope of spring, and nothing is crueler than hope.

Nope. According to research and everyone, February is crueler. The cold, wet, and dreary days stretch on, without even the break of snow days to stay home from work because you work from home. Even hope has abandoned hope.

February is like 28 straight days of Covid. But there are at six ways to make the hopelessness fun:

1. Re-re-re-re-re-re watch “Groundhog Day”

Even if you missed it on Feb. 2, it’s never too late in the month to enjoy the 1993 Bill Murray-Andie MacDowell smash-hit rom-com.

Make it an annual fun February ritual and excuse to over-booze after suffering Dry January (with Dry Lent just around the corner).

Watch it every year, February after February, until you learn the true meaning of life: You can’t fake romantic chemistry like Murray and MacDowell tried. Also, Chris Elliott is an unsung miracle (as we loved again in “Schitt’s Creek”).

Fun dinner hint: Watch “Groundhog Day” over grilled pork burgers. You know, ground hog.

2. Ignore Valentine’s Day

As we know from social media, people love to be outraged.

So don’t rush to CVS, Amazon, Tiffany or Tesla for Valentine’s garbage. Give your beloved the greatest gift of all, the gift of nothing but you.

Your beloved will thrill from your progressive preening. Like how you sneer at materialism and greedy capitalism that put you through your elite private college. You care too much about the oceans than to fill them with empty Whitman Sampler boxes or deflated heart-shaped Mylar balloons that signify love’s disappointments. Your love is an ocean that’s bigger than a Hallmark holiday.

Especially when your beloved is a Shih Tzu that would be perfectly happy with a new chew.

3. Sneer at President’s Day

It’s not just a legit Monday off for entitled quiet quitters and the only federal holiday until Memorial Day. Unless you claim Catholicism in order to demand Good Friday off.

President’s Day is also a wonderful opportunity to incite MAGA family and friends by pointing out the Presidents who were slaveholders and segregationists and demanding their names be stripped from schools and streets and shamed in our children’s history books for their reeducation.

MAGAs get a hoot from triggering the libs, so why not share the fun?

4. Celebrate Black History Month

Even better than President’s Day, February brings 28 days to enjoy triggering MAGAs who are oddly and personally offended by teaching Black history, even if it doesn’t affect them or hurt their children in any provable way whatsoever. But they’re not racist.

5. Enjoy all the February holidays

If you scan nationaltoday.com, there are roughly five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred fete days. Packed into just four weeks.

I’m not making this up. February 1 kicked off La Poutine Week and Solo Diners Eat Out Week, leading to Barley Month, Declutter for a Cause Month, and Canned Foods Month, all trying to compete with Black History Month.

February also includes Car Insurance Day, Change Your Password Day, Decorating with Candy Day, G.I Joe Day, Global School Play Day, International Face and Body Art Day, Holiday Hugs Day, National Texas Day, Hula in the Coola Day, and Spunky Old Broads Day.

If you’re an SOB (Spunky Old Broad) like Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Rita Moreno and Sally Field in the smash hit “80 For Brady,” you can take any day off you want.

6. Enjoy Agoraphobic Gangsta’s Paradise

February weather brings us all together inside.

In a single day, February is bone-chilling then unseasonably warm due to climate deniers suckered by the fossil industry. Then precipitating a mixture or admixture of snow, rain, sleet, sneet, sneeze, fleeze, Fabreze, blizzards, snizzards, fugizzards, snowpocalypse, snowmaggedon, snowmando, snowmado and other Dr. Suess-y terms for February end-of-days weather coined by TV staff meteorologists enjoying Edible February.

As a great sage (me) once said, “February is like a cold sore — it’s ugly, painful, crusty and oozing, and makes you want to hide from society. But it’ll go away.”

Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.