Happy Valentine's Day?

Yes it is!

Despite  a very slow start to the festivities. 

There was the night. Sleepless again. I may be reading too much, but in the middle of the night I decided I am not doing enough. Doing what, you ask? Well, advance planning in case things tumble with the speed of a rolling stone. I talk to Ed about this (yes, in the middle of the night). I mean, I'm one of those ancient types who is living off of a government social security check, and a state government pension check, and some savings invested in the market. No gold bullion under my mattress. And not much diversification And a heavy reliance on a functional government bureaucracy! There's not room for error here. So, I spin and fret and bug Ed, even though he keeps saying "go to sleep." 

I did want a nice breakfast today. I planned to have extra nice flowers delivered yesterday. Each year I pick one treat: sometimes chocolates, sometimes flowers, sometimes bubbly wine... this year I threw in my dice behind flowers. 

They did not arrive.

Not yesterday, not this morning. Many apologies from the flower people but hey, you cannot decorate your morning table with apologies. Ah well, I have the grocery store bouquet and though it's old, it's still nice.

I feed the animals. It is cold. Very cold.

To add warmth to our morning Valentine's Day meal, I bake my VERY BEST blueberry muffins.

And while I'm baking, Ed gets a call from the people working on his machining design. It's an important call: the project is nearing completion and they have a bunch of good test results coming in, so I don't blame him for taking the call. I mean, it will be nice to put the new model into production if the company stays afloat (you know -- despite the market chaos). Still, I ate our special Valentine's Day breakfast without my goofy Valentine.

And then I went back to reading the news, ostensibly to stay informed, but of course, I am, if anything, too informed. So much so that I can't sleep at night. And it's too cold to go skiing or walking or to do anything outdoors, and don't tell me that it's all in the clothes -- stepping out feels... cold.

 

Here's where things turn around a bit: in the warm quiet of our living room, I thought about how good these years have been for me. How many kind people there are in my everyday. How luck has been with me for a long while now. And on top of everything -- there is now snow outside.

I worry about this country, I really do. Being poorly informed never served anyone well and we are a nation of very under-informed people. The complexities of life in the 21st century grow steeper and deeper, and we remove ourselves from expertise because it's far easier to pick up a piece of gossip from a friend than to dig in and try to understand why the world moves in the way it does. It reminds me of the days of Copernicus who proposed a theory of the universe that was at odds with the conventional thinking, and of Galileo who then was put under house arrest for defending the Copernicus model. I imagine there was a lot of support for doing away with Galileo. Complexity is always so unattractive. It messes with your life and it's hard to unscramble. Seems that we've been fighting science for hundreds of years now!

 

In the afternoon I pick up the Valentine babes. 

They spend the entire time in the car negotiating with me how much Valentine candy they can sample. Yes, Valentine candy, because it seems that simply handing out Valentines to your classmate is so... yesterday. Today you stick on a treat or a small gift of some sort. Oh, nothing big and nothing too sweet, but still, you have to wonder -- isn't it better to just hand out cute little V Day cards? With the inclusion of treats, the Valentines themselves were definitely not the star attraction.

And finally, Valentine's Day evening.  

 

 

I defrosted two tiny lobster tails and I bake them in the scampi style, along with two ears of corn for Ed and myself. 

 

 

No flowers, no gifts or cards. Just us, once again content, because it's snowing hard outside and here we are -- safe and warm, and together. With so much love.

Happy, happy Valentine's Day.