February 14 - Love is …

flowers for me, music for him. Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Heart Day!

I hope your Valentine's Day is simply lovely! So far, so good around here. My husband brought a rose home for me yesterday, which absolutely illustrates the compromising nature of our relationship.

We both would have tucked into a box of chocolates, which neither of us needs, so that wasn't even considered. I love, love, love flowers. If money were no object, I'd have fresh flowers every week, all over the house. He, on the other hand, thinks flowers are silly and useless and a complete waste of money.

A lovely, single red rose is his way of saying, "I acknowledge that you love flowers and thank you for letting me get away with one instead of a dozen." Heh.

Also, happy second day of Lent. Everyone who gave up sugar and/or chocolate for Lent is probably wishing Easter were later this year.

We're not Catholic and don't feel a religious need to make a Lenten sacrifice. But when we were walking together Tuesday we talked about what we could do to mark the season. He's been on a clean-and-purge mission and would love for me to be there, as well. So we agreed that by the time Easter got here we would have divested ourselves of a lot of stuff, with the bulk of it going to Goodwill.

Then I found 40 Notes in 40 Days. And even though Day One has already happened, I think I'm going to play catch-up and complete the list. I probably won't be handwriting and mailing them if e-mail will work. Some of the people on my list are no longer living, so I might write my notes here on the blog. At any rate, I love the idea and am grateful to the Fat Pastor (who is getting less fat by the minute!) for creating it.

If you're not Catholic, do you have a Lenten mission?

What a card

I'm the early riser in my house, so when my husband got up yesterday he found a Valentine's card and gift from me. We usually don't make a big deal of the "holiday," so he was a little surprised. Every day is Valentine's Day here in the Middle of Nowhere! Heh.

He had to be gone most of the day, and when he came home he handed me a very large pink envelope. I certainly didn't intend for him to go out and get me a card just because I got him one, but he said he'd planned to get one anyway. And his history is that he always buys cards on The Day They Need To Be Given. In other words, I've never woken up and found a card waiting for me.

Before I opened it, he half-jokingly said he could have bought me dinner for what he paid for the card.

Now, if you haven't figured it out by now, we're pretty frugal around here. For my husband to spend a significant amount of money on a card was not only completely out of character, it was – in my opinion – completely unnecessary.

Not enough for a fancy dinner,
you understand, but somewhere
here in the Middle of Nowhere we
could probably find dinner for $9.

You know what, though? It was a beautiful card and it said exactly what he wanted to say. We've been together for 19 years (our first date was February 13, 1993), and there've been lots of ups and downs during those years and he wanted to tell me … well, I'm not going to go into all the mushy details.

Suffice it to say I was touched and pleased. Especially when he said he thought the card would probably be $4 or $5, but when the cashier told him it was $9.53 he bought it anyway.

He's done things like that before. The most memorable time was when we rescued a cat that had been wounded by a wild animal. Before we took her to the vet, I asked him how much he was willing to spend to save this cat's life. He thought for a minute and said, "$100."

When the vet assessed the damaged feline she said it would cost around $250 to stitch her up, vaccinate and spay her. And he said, "Of course. Whatever it takes." He didn't even hesitate.

That happened before I moved in with him, and I decided right then and there he was a keeper.

How about you? If you're in a committed relationship, what was the defining moment when you knew you weren't going to let him or her get away?

Six weeks. Ten pounds.

It's been years since I could say I've lost 10 pounds in any time period, let alone six weeks. For you young whippersnappers out there who think you've got your whole lifetime to lose weight, here's a tip: Your metabolism will slow down as you age. In other words, lose it now.

Because I weigh myself daily (but only officially record it weekly), I knew I was not going to have a dramatic loss. It's good to see the trend continuing downward, however, and it's enough motivation to continue the South Beach plan. I love the irony of hitting the 10-pound mark on Valentine's Day, when chocolates are plentiful and on sale!

 Image courtesy of valentine-clipart.com

My craving for something sweet has not gone away, and I caved in yesterday. I left the gym at around 1:30 p.m., after a hard workout (I'm increasing my sets this week, I'm now up to 3 sets of 15 reps), headed for the grocery. I walked into Tiny Kroger and the first thing I saw was a display of sugar cookies – the soft kind with icing – and free samples of half cookies. Without even thinking about it, I popped one in my mouth and enjoyed every crumb. (You recovering alkies will recognize this behavior, if not from personal experience, then from reading about it.)

I'm sure not going to do that every day. The taste wasn't enough to get me to buy a dozen, as I might have in the past. I feel worse about it this morning than I did yesterday afternoon. It's one of those "get back on the horse" moments, I guess, and in the whole scheme of things, I hope I haven't done much damage.

Damn Valentine's Day anyway. Were it not for this Hallmark holiday, those cookies wouldn't even have been on display.

It's all Cupid's fault!