Sunshine and Light

Happy Valentine’s Day

Ok, Ok, I have to admit Valentine’s Day is one of two holidays a year against which I hold a grudge. It all goes back to that rather uninteresting dating life I had. Every year we’d get that one-two punch of New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day. They were the days on which it seemed like EVERYONE was in FREAKING LOVE except me and a few other equally bitter friends. Every diamonds commercial seemed to say “Every Kiss begins with Kay. Except for you. You don’t have a kiss or a diamond do you? Schmuck.” Bitter, bitter, bitter. And even when I did have a Mr Right (or Right Now), I was still bitter enough at the Romance Industrial Complex that both days tended to be low key. We watched movies on NY eve, or went out to dinner for Valentine’s, and that was about it.

Fortunately for me, my husband knows the four things that make me happy – roses, chocolate, babykins, and him. Well six if you count the two dogs in the car. Anyway, he showed up at work for lunch with all of the above. 2 chocolate bars from Ecuador (his birthplace) and 2 chocolate bars from Galler in Brugges, where we bought chocolate on our honeymoon. (How’s this for the perfect euro-travel setup – on the day he and the other guys on our trip rode the Paris-Roubaix course, I hung out in a French farmhouse eating Belgian chocolate. Life is good!).

Just a few more weeks, and we’ll have to tell Porter the Saga of the Honeymoon for the very first time. It’s a story that he will hear over and over again. Because it makes his daddy and I laugh. Especially the part where we were hurtling through the darkness from Brussels to Lille in a tiny car with two strangers who barely spoke English (while I barely spoke French), wondering if we were going to die in a ditch somewhere. And then got to Lille and were dropped off only to find out that “gang” is apparently a universal phenomenon. And then were saved by a taxi driver that I still pray for every day. Porter might be older when we tell him about the “Hollywood” portion of the story – the guy who may disprove the theory that you “can’t” get addicted to marijuana. And the thing that we’ll tell Porter is key to the whole thing is…no matter how crappy things get, a good sense of humor is key. We each melted down at different times, but never at the same time. But all along we knew that when it was all said and done, it was going to be a GREAT story. And it is.

Happy Valentine’s day, my love of my life. Just think, a mere 46 more of these before you get to renegotiate the contract.

posted by MyHusbandRules @ 12:57 PM