Valentine redux redux

This is becoming an annual entry....but I can't think of a better entry to repeat yearly.

 

As I sit here in my office writing this entry, Walt is busy collecting all of the garbage from the house and dog poop from the yard so that he can take our 3 garbage cans (we are into mega-recycling in this town) down to the curb for garbage pick-up tomorrow.

Walt's a good guy and while I mention him in this journal now and then, I never actually write about him, so I thought that on this Valentine's day, I would do just that.

I knew I had someone special the day we brought Jeri home from the hospital.  We arrived at our apartment and he parked the car and told me to wait, then he went inside and when I went upstairs holding our precious new baby, the house was full of pink roses and there was a record of music box music playing lullabies in the background.

How he loved that baby!

SUperbaby!

It warms the cockles of my heart that he and Jeri have always had a close relationship.  I'm jealous of her.  I would like to have been that close to my own father.

But Walt was always a great Dad, whether giving each kid a piggy back ride right after coming home from work, coaching Little League or going to Indian Guides, helping make a Pinewood Derby car for the Boy Scouts, working backstage at Sunshine Children's Theater, or just reading "The Night Before Christmas" every Christmas eve.

He started buying each of the kids little boxes of Whitman sampler chocolates for Valentine's day, and now that they are grown, he mails them (now including one for the spouse, and boxes for Brianna and Lacie). 

There is nobody who doesn't like Walt.  He'll do any favor anyone asks, happily, without complaint.  Right now he's on the board for Citizens Who Care for the Elderly, and has been for many years, helping raise money for people who can give caregivers in Yolo County a break for an hour or two now and then.  He does his own respite work with our friend who is in a wheelchair so that his wife can get out a couple of times a month.

He's so patient with my difficulties with my mother.  He has been there and knows how difficult this is for me at times.  His mother didn't have dementia, but she was quite incapacitated by her blindness and inability to move much.  He went to Santa Barbara as often as he could, and after a particularly bad time, he stayed there for a couple of weeks, sleeping on her little half-couch and making sure she got her "Boost and cheese" every day, in an attempt to keep her weight up.

He has been an amazing husband.  Sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve him.  When he retired, he said he had decided to take over the job of keeping the kitchen clean, and every night after dinner, he takes the huge mess I have made preparing it and makes the counters (or as much of the counters that don't store stuff permanently) all clean again.

He has done his own laundry ever since the day I washed his Air Force uniform (when he was in the reserves, back in the 60s) with something red and didn't realize that his uniform was pink because he left before the sun came up.  He discovered it when he got to the base.  After that, he took over doing his own laundry and we have both been better for it!

He has put up with all of crazy part-time jobs and my weird projects, especially 10 years of hosting foreign students -- and what experiences we had with those 70 kids from around the world!

He is my chauffeur and attends all these plays with me.  He understand my terror of big trucks (a terror which developed for absolutely no reason one night in 1986 and has not left me) and he is careful either NOT to pass a large truck or to pass it two lanes over or to go slow and stay behind the truck.  He puts up with my intermittent gasps when my mind sees imminent highway danger where there is none.

He drove me to and from Logos every Thursday for four years, since my knee won't let me ride a bike any more and the City of Davis won't let me park for four hours.  (Of course the beer he got every Thursday before he picked me up, at the pub around the corner from the book store, might have been an incentive!)

We have traveled the world together and he's always been very encouraging, helping me make it just a few more steps when I'm ready to give up, and waiting for me to rest when I just can't go any farther.  I have seen more of the world than I ever dreamed I would....and walked farther than I dreamed possible.

I love the relationship he has with Polly.  He is "her person" and she prefers to sleep in his lap at night.  If he walks by the chair where she is sleeping without stopping to pet her, she jumps up and barks and barks and barks until he comes back and does so.  He has liked all of our dogs, but Polly is the first dog who chose him as her person and she is so cute with him.

He keeps me supplied with mini ice cream bars at night while we are watching TV after dinner.  We both love to watch Jeopardy together.  After 52+ years, we speak in movie or play quotes and punchlines of old jokes.  I've said that we've run out of original material.

He is kind and loving and does much more than his share around here and I love him for it.  I don't exactly sit and eat bon bons every day, but I definitely don't do a fraction of what he does.

He's a very special man and I don't tell him that often enough.  So now I have.  Happy Valentine's day, dear!

A Valentine Redux

I said it last year and can't possibly improve on it this year, so here's a repeat, with slight revisions...

As I sit here in my office writing this entry, Walt is busy collecting all of the garbage from the house and dog poop from the yard so that he can take our 3 garbage cans (we are into mega-recycling in this town) down to the curb for garbage pick-up tomorrow.

Walt's a good guy and while I mention him in this journal now and then, I never actually write about him, so I thought that on this Valentine's day, I would do just that.

I knew I had someone special the day we brought Jeri home from the hospital.  We arrived at our apartment and he parked the car and told me to wait, then he went inside and when I went upstairs holding our precious new baby, the house was full of pink roses and there was a record of music box music playing lullabies in the background.

How he loved that baby!

SUperbaby!

It warms the cockles of my heart that he and Jeri have always had a close relationship.  I'm jealous of her.  I would like to have been that close to my own father.

But Walt was always a great Dad, whether giving each kid a piggy back ride right after coming home from work, coaching Little League or going to Indian Guides, helping make a Pinewood Derby car for the Boy Scouts, working backstage at Sunshine Children's Theater, or just reading "The Night Before Christmas" every Christmas eve.

He started buying each of the kids little boxes of Whitman sampler chocolates for Valentine's day, and now that they are grown, he mails them (now including one for the spouse, and boxes for Brianna and Lacie).  

There is nobody who doesn't like Walt.  He'll do any favor anyone asks, happily, without complaint.  Right now he's on the board for Citizens Who Care for the Elderly, and has been for many years, helping raise money for people who can give caregivers in Yolo County a break for an hour or two now and then.  He does his own respite work with our friend who is in a wheelchair so that his wife can get out a couple of times a month.

He's so patient with my difficulties with my mother.  He has been there and knows how difficult this is for me at times.  His mother didn't have dementia, but she was quite incapacitated by her blindness and inability to move much.  He went to Santa Barbara as often as he could, and after a particularly bad time, he stayed there for a couple of weeks, sleeping on her little half-couch and making sure she got her "Boost and cheese" every day, in an attempt to keep her weight up.

He has been an amazing husband.  Sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve him.  When he retired, he said he had decided to take over the job of keeping the kitchen clean, and every night after dinner, he takes the huge mess I have made preparing it and makes the counters (or as much of the counters that don't store stuff permanently) all clean again.

He has done his own laundry ever since the day I washed his Air Force uniform (when he was in the reserves, back in the 60s) with something red and didn't realize that his uniform was pink because he left before the sun came up.  He discovered it when he got to the base.  After that, he took over doing his own laundry and we have both been better for it!

He has put up with all of crazy part-time jobs and my weird projects, especially 10 years of hosting foreign students -- and what experiences we had with those 70 kids from around the world!

He is my chauffeur and attends all these plays with me.  He understand my terror of big trucks (a terror which developed for absolutely no reason one night in 1986 and has not left me) and he is careful either NOT to pass a large truck or to pass it two lanes over or to go slow and stay behind the truck.  He puts up with my intermittent gasps when my mind sees imminent highway danger where there is none.

He drove me to and from Logos every Thursday for four years, since my knee won't let me ride a bike any more and the City of Davis won't let me park for four hours.  (Of course the beer he got every Thursday before he picked me up, at the pub around the corner from the book store, might have been an incentive!)

We have traveled the world together and he's always been very encouraging, helping me make it just a few more steps when I'm ready to give up, and waiting for me to rest when I just can't go any farther.  I have seen more of the world than I ever dreamed I would....and walked farther than I dreamed possible.

I love the relationship he has with Polly.  He is "her person" and she prefers to sleep in his lap at night.  If he walks by the chair where she is sleeping without stopping to pet her, she jumps up and barks and barks and barks until he comes back and does so.  He has liked all of our dogs, but Polly is the first dog who chose him as her person and she is so cute with him.

He keeps me supplied with mini ice cream bars at night while we are watching TV after dinner.  We both love to watch Jeopardy together.  After 52+ years, we speak in movie or play quotes and punchlines of old jokes.  I've said that we've run out of original material.

He is kind and loving and does much more than his share around here and I love him for it.  I don't exactly sit and eat bon bons every day, but I definitely don't do a fraction of what he does.

He's a very special man and I don't tell him that often enough.  So now I have.  Happy Valentine's day, dear!

Benny Crap

I had not had a completely sleepless night in years...maybe not in decades, but last night I simply could. not. sleep.  I finally dozed off at 7 and slept a couple of hours,  but it was going to be a weird day.

At 1 I had an appointment with the dental hygienist.   I found myself limp and nearly fell asleep while she was cleaning my teeth.  I was so sleepy that I had my cell phone in my pocket thinking of taking a selfie and never thought of it.  I was mesmerized by the posters of fruit on the ceiling, centering in on that ghastly durian featured so prominently.

But after the dentist, I went off to the Dollar Store to see about getting Valentine stuff for Benny and realized that this could be an expensive project.

I have so much crap for Benny.

I have Valentine's crap, St. Patrick's Day crap, misc crap including hats and sunglasses (they have enough that would please even Elton John), things to sit on, things to wear, party favors, a glass with hearts on it, floral arrangement, and then an assortment of things to send to the girls with their weekly letter.  

There was just a plethora of things from which to choose!

I had a great time and since it was the Dollar Store, it didn't cost nearly as much as I thought it was going to when I unloaded the cart at the check out counter.

Best thing was that it sparked my creative gene pushing that cart around the store, thinking ahead to upcoming holidays and things I could do between holidays.  I left a lot of things behind (too soon to shop for Easter) and raced home to see how I could dress Benny for Valentine's day, which will be the next letter for the girls.

(I also just realized I have started collecting a bunch of cheap used-once junk and...where will I keep it? I finally figured out a use for all of those Blue Apron boxes Walt has been piling up to use "sometime")

I liked what I did for the next Benny letter, though I didn't use everything I bought (a head start for next year!).

Who knows how long this is going to last, but now, in the infancy of the project.

Nicest thing, though, is that it has inspired a letter from Brianna.  She is writing so well now and crafted a really good letter.  She said that maybe she and "Gasper" could send me photos too.  I had to write to Tom to find out who Gasper is.

I loved her letter where she told me about a visit to an ostrich farm and then told me she had finished reading all the Harry Potter books and was now reading the Narnia books and then I had to laugh when she asked if I was reading a series or not.  Essentially she was saying "read any good books lately?"

This just feels like such a good project to have started!

The whole thing is because of my cousin Kathy.  When her firstborn grandson was born, he lived (and still does) in Iowa and she saw him rarely, but she wanted him to grow up having a relationship with her, so she started writing him letters.  The difference is she never heard whether he got or liked the letters at all.  Every time I see a photo of her grandson on Facebook and especially his sister, who was born shortly before Kathy died, it makes me very sad for what she has missed.

Brianna and Lacie won't forget who I am!

Valentine's Day

As usual, it was a low key Valentine's Day.  Walt came home from Church, having stopped en route to buy me some beautiful roses.

I had bought a small box of See's candy for my mother and while at the See's store bought 1.5 lbs of peanut brittle for Walt (he graciously let me have some too).

At 11-ish we went to Atria, where we met Ned and Marta.  They had brought small boxes of See's for both my mother and me, so that was nice!  He also brought along the book they had just received, one which Alice Nan and Joe made with pictures of their time in Jamaica.

In due time we went to the dining room for lunch.

The last time the 5 of us went to the dining room, they never received our reservation so there were no table reserved for us.  The head server that time was all flustered and kept wailing "but you have to make reservations at least 48 hours in advance" but a nice waitress named Jasmine took care of us and did so without wails, without complaint, efficiently and with a smile.  I wrote a note praising her to the Executive Director.

But this time I knew better.  The minute I talked with Ned about meeting at Atria for lunch on Valentine's Day, I called for reservations, and made sure I told the girl who took the reservation that we had problems last time so to be sure to let the restaurant know.  She assured me she would.

She didn't.

They had reserved tables all over the dining room, but none for us but the head server this time (a different one) wasn't really flustered. Ned assured her we could fit five of us at a table for 4 and our server was once again Jasmine, so all went well.

The dining room was all decked out with balloons and the barbershop quartet which sings each year was back again to sing for us.  My mother didn't even look up when they came to sing for us.

I keep thinking she will respond positively to music, but I guess she had so many decades of it with my father that it's nothing special to her any more.  But Walt and I were tickled that the guy on the right end is a friend of ours from the defunct Davis Comic Opera Co

.

After lunch we returned to the apartment for awhile.  Ned has been recommending the movie Idiocracy to me for awhile and now that we have a working DVD player again, he loaned it to me.  He spent some time describing the plot of the movie to my mother which allowed me to get a very rare photo of him when he didn't know I was taking his photo.

Eventually we all left.  Ned and Marta went home, Walt and I came home to watch Idiocracy (it was, as promised, stupid).

Still full from the huge buffet lunch and the See's I'd eaten, I couldn't even think of dinner, so I heated up one of our reliable Bertolli frozen dinners for Walt and I skipped dinner entirely.

Hearts and Flowers

Valentine's day is usually such a non-holiday around here.  I laugh in the weeks leading up to it, with all the commercials for what to give your sweetheart... everything from diamonds to automobiles.  Like Mother's Day it has become such an incredible hype for advertisers! Walt and I give each other a card.  Period.

He always sends little four-piece Whitman samplers to the kids. He's been doing that all of their lives, it seems.  When they lived at home, every Valentine's day he would get one of those cards that grammar school kids give each other and the little box of samplers and give it to them.  When they moved away, he would mail the samplers and cards to them.  Now that they are married, he sends two samplers, one for the kid and one for the spouse.  This year was the first year that he sent four to Tom's home, including a box for each of the girls.

This year I didn't even make him a special dinner, since he was rushing off to the theater at 4 to take care of the show he has sort of been producing, I guess, and I was headed off to nearby Woodland to review a different show.  I had a bagel for dinner and he heated up something when he got home.

But I couldn't let Valentine's day go for my mother, so I was off early in the morning to buy flowers to take to atria.  

Nugget market was doing a big business in flowers, so big they had even set up a stand outside and I noticed that a girl kept bringing in carts of flowers, so I guess they were selling like hotcakes.

I always notice the price of flowers when I'm in the store and it seemed that these had definitely been jacked up for the holiday!  It was difficult to find a bouquet that was under $10, but I did.  Valentine's day is not cheap, even if you aren't buying diamonds or automobiles!

Then I decided to add some candy to the flowers, and the table with all the candy on it was a jumble and it was difficult to tell how much anything cost, but I chose a tiny bag with red chocolate hearts in it, ignoring the heart shaped boxes, which seemed to be much more expensive.  The little bag had no price on it and I was shocked when I looked at my grocery tag in the car afterwards -- I hadn't looked at it when they were ringing me up -- to find out that this little bag cost $13.  But owell.  It was for my mother and I wanted to make her smile on Valentine's day.

Next I looked for a card and was unable to find a card under $6.  They are clever now, some of these companies.  Instead of just selling you a card,  they package it in a cellophane pouch so it looks richer and, of course the price is higher.  I could have gone to a different store where I knew that there would be non-cellophaned cards, but what the heck, I was there.  I bought a "Mom" card.

I drove to Atria and she was thrilled with the flowers, and barely looked at the candy and the card.  I had to remind her they were there...and I had to remind her three times that I had brought a card, which she finally opened.  Her attitude was "ho hum...a card? candy? Whatever"  But she did love the flowers.

We went to lunch at the dining room, which was all tarted up with balloons.

Lunch was a delicious chicken pot pie, which was a far cry from the last time I ate there, when the "Captain's platter," consisting of "shrimp, fish, and clams" was inedible. Everything was barely warm, and so hard you could barely chew it.  But the pot pie was delicious.

While we were eating, a barbershop quartet circled the room and serenaded everyone.

I had to kind of smile because I remember them from last year, when it seemed they had more volume and were on tune more of the time.  They, like the residents, are getting older.

My mother seemed to have little interest in the music, but did tell me several times about how many balloons there were (sometimes she couldn't remember the word "balloon" and said either "balls" or "bubbles.") and what a lot of work it must have been for someone to blow them all up, and how much work it was going to be to untie them all and deflate them so they could use them again next year.

While we were eating, two little girls, Sophie and Bella, along with their father, came around to every table, carrying a paper bag and gave everybody in the dining room little Valentine's day cards.  That was very cute.

Jeri had sent a text video of the snow in Boston today.  Some guys were removing snow from the roof of their house, almost completely covering her truck in the process.  The video, taken from inside their flat, shows the snow falling off the roof past the window--and was pretty impressive.  I decided to send back a video right after I had shown it to my mother.  I turned on the video and asked her what she thought of all that snow and she seemed very flustered and then said it was "very cute" and what cute girls the granddaughters were.  It's probably just as well that for some reason the audio on my video didn't work.

The truck is just barely visible--that black wedge over on the right

 So that was our Valentine's day.  I came home and took a nap, as I usually try to do before going to review a show so I can stay awake.  Walt went off to the theater and when I got home from my own show we shared ice cream cones and he went off to bed.  I fell asleep watching television.

There was no new car in the driveway, or diamonds on my breakfast plate.

VD Atria

No...there are no rampant sexually transmitted diseases rolling through "the home."  Today was Valentine's Day at Atria. 

I decided to go over and have lunch with my mother, so as soon as Walt got back from running an errand, I took off, stopping first at a store where I could get a ridiculously priced vase with 3 roses in it.  The roses look beautiful today, but from the look of them (cracked petals), I suspect that they won't last long, but it's the immediate gratification that works, and she was thrilled to have such a beautiful bouquet.

(I was thrilled to see that she had remembered to get to her hair appointment and looks SO MUCH BETTER than she has looked for weeks!)

I also brought her a box of those terrific Trader Joe truffles.   In truth, I wanted a couple, but didn't want to buy myself a box because I'd eat them all, but if I gave them to my mother, I could still have a few.

She had forgotten it was Valentine's Day, of course, and I'm not sure that she remembered what that was, but we sat and had a nice chat (and she didn't once mention the dead plants on her patio, which was a lovely Valentine's Day gift for me!)

We went off to lunch and sat at her "usual" table.  She is usually the fourth person to a trio that sits together every day, but my friend Peggy and one of the other women were not there, so we sat with the two who were. It was nice to see that she and this woman were very comfortable with each other and obviously ate together often.

Interestingly, before we left, my mother commented on how she really didn't know any people at Atria and then added that she supposed if she went to some of the events she would know them, but she didn't want to.  So her only social circle appears to be these three women with whom she eats regularly.  She used to talk about always sitting with someone new each time; now she says that if there is no space at that table, she sits by herself.  She also is adamant that this is her choice and that she is not interested in mixing socially with all these old people (she doesn't say it quite that way, but the disdainful look at the walkers and the comments about how old everyone is leads me to believe this is the reason she prefers solitude to attempting to meet anybody new)

Peggy has been a godsend.  She knows everybody by name and mostly can tell yoiu their life story.  That includes the staff and the waiters and waitresses too.  But she is moving next month to a newly opened facility that is closer to her daughter.  She has taken my mother under her wing, they seem to have a very good relationship and a bit of the spark is going to go out of my mother's life when Peggy is no longer there.

The dining room was all tarted up in lots and lots of balloons, hanging things, and hearts on the walls.  It really looked very nice.  There was even a barbershop quartet singing.

My mother liked that they were singing so softly that they didn't interfere with conversation.  I was glad of that too because they weren't very good and if they had been singing louder it would have been painful!  

But they sang a long time.  The guy on the left end is in a walker and it has to be a bit of an effort for him.  They made the rounds of the dining room and sang to as many people as they could.

They called themselves something like the Harmony Blenders and I have to say that was a bit of a misnomer, but everyone loved them, and it was a fun addition to a Valentine's Day celebration.

I came home from Atria and took a nap and when I woke up, and when I woke up, there was a beautiful bouquet of roses on the kitchen table.

I hope everyone had a Valentine's Day filled with truffles and barbershop quartets and roses.

Valentines of Yore

I think now that if kids bring Valentine cards to school, they have to bring a card for everyone.  We didn't.  We only gave cards to the people we liked.  we had paper bags attached to our desks and people would drop our cards in the bag.  The popular kids went home with full bags.  Kids like me were happy we had a few cards to take home.  I was the Charlie Brown of Valentine's Day.

Nowadays, you go to the store to buy boxes of cards for your kids to give on Valentine's Day and you get super heroes, cartoon characters, vampires.  All perfect examples of love on the day, of course.  But were cards better when I was young?   I found some examples of 20th century Valentine cards, probably most before my time, but they certainly seemed familiar, some of them.

	Nothing quite  expresses the love and affection someone feels for you like a pair of false teeth!
This is probably the kind of card that Waye LaPierre would send to his sweetie.
	Once you've caught your prey, you obviously have to boil her and eat her!...
...or maybe just part of her.
	This is the "Fifty Shades of Grey" part ... woo your beloved by plopping him/her down on a big ol' nail!
...and then cuff him/her so they can't get away.
	This may be my favorite, though.  There are so many suggestive double entendres in this one it's hard to believe it would pass the grammar school censors!

Valentine's Day Surprise

I went to the store yesterday to buy stuff to make a Valentine's Day party for my mother, held on the 13th because I work on the 14th.  I got some heart chocolates, a chocolate mousse cup with fruit on it for dessert, tomatoes and mozarella for caprese salad and I was ready to make sandwiches to take with it. I even found the special mustard she likes, though only one of three supermarkets in Davis carries Coleman's mustard.  I bought some red tulips planted in a pot and a valentine balloon to stick in the pot with them, and got some heart-patterned napins and a Valentine's card.

Early this morning I was up making heart-shaped sandwiches and the salad.

I made ham and cheese (and mustard) sandwiches and strawberry cream cheese sandwiches, so she could have a choice.  I made the caprese salad and packed everything in a cooler.  I found a couple of red paper plates left over from our Super Bowl party to serve everything on so there would be no dishes to wash.

I was looking forward to the lunch, but not to the conversation I planned to have with her.  Her stepson, Ed, and I had had a conversation a couple of days before, sharing our mutual concerns about her diminishing memory and about her growing inability to keep up her house, which would not be a big deal if it were me, but it's another symptom of her deterioration.  I also noted when I got there today that she has a huge plant on her front porch that is dead (and my mother is someone who can make sticks grow...and prides herself on her gardening skills).  Later I noted that the lush, full, green plant in her family room is very sick and looks like it's dying.  Ed had also mentioned that her house "doesn't smell right."  I hadn't been aware of that, but when I entered the house today, I could get a whiff of what he meant.

Bottom line:  it's time.  But we've discussed this before and she has been adamant that she is going to stay in her own house until the end.  I worried about "the talk" all the way down to her house.  Ed had already set the stage with a long talk with her the last time he saw her, so this would not be a new idea.

I didn't bother much with small talk, but started out saying that Ed and I had talked and that we were both concerned.  For the first time I talked about how bad her memory was becoming.  She agreed and said she was aware of it.  I also told her how much brighter she had been when I arrived last week and she had been visiting with a friend for half an hour before I got there. I pointed out that she no longer has the thrift stre to work in, half of her mah jong group had died, she doesn't see her best friend much any more because she's 10 years younger and my mother can't keep up with her any more.  She's aways been a very sociable person, always the hostess, always having people around and she is becoming more and more introverted. I told her I really thought it was time to start thinking about moving to somewhere where she could be around people again.

To my incredible relief and great surprise, she said that just that morning she had been lying in bed thinking the very same thing.  She said she was thinking about the 3 places she had visited and which was she interested in investigating further.

You could have knocked me over with a feather.  She's READY!!!   She agreed with everything I had to say, we talked about plans, we decided to get together with Ed, the 3 of us, next week or the week after to map out a plan of action.   I told her it didn't have to be today or next week or even next month, but that our goal should be to move herthis year.

She agreed.  Of course the memory was shot today, but she did tell me over and over again that this was going to be a year of change.  Now we just have to make it happen in the best way possible, the easiest way for her.

I packed up a big box of books to take to Logos ("take any books you want.  I just want them gone") and I moved some scrapbooks onto the empty shelf because the look of the scrapbooks has been bothering her for months, because they aren't stacked neatly. ("What am I keeping all those pictures for anyway?") But now they are neatly put away and I hope that will help.  She even looked through the book I had assembled for her 80th birthday and enjoyed reading what everyone had written, so maybe she understands why she is "keeping all those photos anyway").

(This is part of the book I made for her 90th birthday)

As for lunch, she was surprised and delighted that I had brought food. And everything was delicious.  After lunch, I took a nap before heading home.   When I left, I had gone one offramp before I realized that I had left my camera behind, so I turned around to go back and get it.  She called me to let me know I had left my cell phone behind.  Then she said she wasn't sure if it was my cell phone or my camera.  It didn't seem to hit her that she could not have called me if I had left my cell phone behind.  When I drove up, she handed it to me and said "I don't know if this is your camera or your cell phone."

I am so incredibly relieved with how today went.  I know that there will be ruts in the road as we make this transition, but we are starting out in a good place.

Ten Facts about Chocolate

This being the season of chocolate, I thought I would do some research and see what interesting facts I can learn about chocolate.

1. People spend more than $7 billion a year on chocolate. The fact does not state if this is each or grouped together, but I figure that I have significantly helped to reach this total.

2. According to the fact sheet, the per capita consumption of chocolate indicates that each person consumes 12 lbs of chocolate a year. I want to know if this is my limit, like the monthly data usage for Verizon. If this is my limit, I am in big trouble--and it's only February.

3. David Gerrold consumes well over 12 lbs of chocolate a year.

4. In the movie Psycho, Hitchcock used chocolate syrup to simulate blood in the shower scene, which may be why Janet Leigh spent so much time in the shower--she wasn't screaming; she was opening her mouth to catch the chocolate!

It is a little known fact that she gained 5 lbs during the filming of that scene. (OK, I made that last part up.)

5. The first known use of chocolate was by the Mayans from about 250 to 900 A.D. They used cacao for many things, including money. 10 beans would buy you a rabbit, or a prostitute. Of course if you spent all your beans buying a prostitute, you would have no way to keep her happy because you couldn't offer her chocolate truffles.

6. The first recorded case of "Death by Chocolate" occurred in the 17th century when the Catholic church in Chiapas, Mexico issued a ban on chocolate. The townspeople refused to uphold it and the bishop was found dead from poison mixed in his own chocolate. (Even then the clergy were issuing "do as I say, not as I do orders".)

7. More than 60 million Hershey's kisses are made each day. My mother buys most of them.

8. More than twice as many women as men eat and crave chocolate (and this is a surprise to anybody?)

9. The biggest chocolate structure ever made was made in Belgium, using at least 50,000 chocolate bars.

10. People rarely buy chocolate for fat people.

So. Given #10, I have watched each year as Walt buys chocolates for the kids. We've never done gifts for Valentine's Day (such a silly custom), but sometimes a girl just wants to have an excuse for chocolate, you know.

So this year I set about deciding how I was going to treat myself. My first thoughts always turn to See's, the candy I grew up on, but I'm not sure you can actually buy See's in Davis and I certainly wasn't going to drive 20 miles to get myself a few pieces of chocolate. And besides, someone had brought a box to See's to my mother recently and I had had some there.

I thought about getting myself a candy bar, but that seemed too mundane.

I thought of going to the candy store in town but I get all flummoxed when presented with a number of choices behind a glass when someone is waiting for me to decide. And what if they weren't really good, or at least not the taste I was looking forward to.

I bought chocolate croissants for us for breakfast this morning, and served them with strawberry smoothies (Walt found two awesome cards, one from him and one from "the girls.").

I also went to the supermarket and bought a bag of Lindor truffles (which I love) to take with me to the book store.

(I wanted to read a Harlequin romance novel because I've never read one and I figured a good bodice-ripper might be just the thing to read on Valentine's day, but I couldn't find one, so I read this instead...I couldn't pass up the baby feet in the picture!)

There is one of the pen palling bloggers who has been touting her chocolate product. I keep seeing ads for it everywhere, and even sent some to Jeri and Phil for Valentine's Day.

I was recently in the supermarket and noted that it is not available on the store shelves, so I treated myself to a block of chocolate on a stick, which you immerse in a cup of hot milk and let melt for a hot chocolate treat to end the night.

I think I'm all chocolated, now, and able to go for another year before such a splurge! (But I'm dangerously close to my 12 lb limit for 2012.)

Stuff 'n' Nonsense

I am sending no mushy Valentines to the Internet today. I had a bunch of corrections to make to Dr. G's two sites, one professional, one personal. The professional one was easy enough to make, though my god how many of those photos does one need to get the point across?

But the personal site was driving me bonkers. It wasn't the site, or the information he sent to me, but the dumb FTP connection, which kept giving me a message that it was locking me out, though I've logged into that site many times. I sent off an SOS to the provider (which is the one advantage of going with a local provider rather than ComCast or one of the bigger providers. Not only can I reach someone at the provider office, but he knows who I am when he hears from me).

I know he works late afternoon and into the evening rather than the 8-5 hours. Before I could hear back from him, I re-entered the password and it was the open sesame I needed. Whoopie! I sent a note to Rob, my provider rep, and he responded with "Yay!"

So I went to the HTM folder and started makng the change Dr G wanted made. This took about half an hour. When I went to upload them through the FTP program, it had locked me out again, and would not let me back in.

I tried doing what I did before, re-entering the password, but it steadfastly refused to let me in.

I went ahead and finished the edits, then logged completely out of the FTP program, logged back in again, re-entered the password and voila! I was in once again. I quickly uploaded the files and I think I have it all finished, except for what Dr. G is going to send me over the weekend.

We're taking off for Los Angeles tomorrow morning. This is our now-annual trip to So. California to see recording of four different episodes of the radio show, Says You. Ever since we went the first year and only went to one of the tapings (they tape 2 shows each on 2 nights), we have gone back and splurged on both day/night broadcasts.

Last year Walt found a great motel that was very near the Skirball Cultural Center, where the show is taped. It came with free wi fi and a Denny's on the property, so it was perfect for our needs. We've re-booked this time too. Ashley is going to be staying here and may or may not be bringing a foster dog. We won't know if we have a new foster dog until we get home Sunday night and see how many bodies are here!

Then, this apparently being "radio week," on next Thursday, the 19th, we are going down to UC Berkeley to watch a taping of the radio show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, with Char and some of her family. I'm not as big a fan of Wait, Wait as I am of Says You, but I know it's going to be a fun experience. That show is much more topical, so it doesn't last as well as Says You. You can listen to Says You several years after the particular show was broadcast and it's just as fresh as it was originally, but Wait Wait relies more on topical material.

I found these on the internet the other day and I'm wondering if anybody has any experience with them...or any thoughts about them. I'm thinking this would be just groovy for me to take with me to France/Italy in June, to save the worry about losing pictures. But I'm not sure about the availability of wi fi spots where we'll be. But it sure is a cool idea, I think!

The Valentine's Day Scam

I heard the most ridiculous commercial on the radio the other day. It was for The Shane Company--"your friend in the diamond business" (but then I think all their commercials are ridiculous. Shane Co. is the one which talks about their finance plan for your "emergencies" -- who has jewelry emergencies? -- and also the diamonds or sapphires or rubies that complement "her jewelry wardrobe.")

This commercial topped them all, though, I think. The announcer was offering a solution to the last minute emergency of running out to Safeway to pick up a Valentine's gift. Instead, he says, come to Shane Co. and look at their fresh crop of diamonds.

Can't you just see some guy who was planning to stop by Safeway to pick up a $5 box of chocolates for his sweetie suddenly hearing the commercial and deciding to get her a diamond necklace instead 'cause now he knows where he can go to get one?

Thanks to this week's Says You I know where the legend of Valentine's Day began. Supposedly in the 3rd century A.D. the Emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage (for straights too!) because men were refusing to go to war, preferring to stay at home with their wives and families instead. A priest named Valentine was secretly marrying couples anyway and was beaten and then decapitated for it. Out of that bloody history has come the holiday we now celebrate as Valentine's Day, which was set aside by Pope Gelasius in 496 AD.

The first commercial Valentine's day cards appeared in the 1800s. Presumably as people began to buy cards, merchants began to see a real money-making market and ran crazy with it.

I never remember Valentine's day as being as huge as it is now when I was a kid. In fact, I was kind of a Charlie Brown type, waiting for Valentine's Day cards that didn't come. We would decorate boxes that I can't remember where we put. Did we put them on our desks? I don't remember. It was embarrassing at school when the popular girls got lots and lots of cards and I had a handful. You smile and pretend it doesn't hurt, but it does.

By the time our own kids went to school, the rule was that you had to bring a card for everyone, which seems a better way to handle it, if kids are going to pass out cards at all.

But the gift thing is just, in my opinion, out of control. I watch TV shows which devote whole segments to all the expensive things you can buy for your sweetie, and I hear chats among women (never among men) about how furious they would be if their sweeties didn't give them a "good" gift for Valentine's day.

We've never done Valentine's day in a big way around here. Walt started buying little (what were then) 25-cent Whitman samplers for the kids when they were very little. He has continued doing that and now mails them off to the kids each year, adding boxes for their spouses as well. He and I exchange a card. Sometimes he buys me flowers. But it's just completely beyond my comprehension to make this a major gift-giving occasion. (Unless, of course, he wants to buy this for me.)

In my opinion, there are two gift giving occasions a year--Christmas and birthdays (Walt doesn't even do Mother's Day because he says that I'm not his mother). After that it just all becomes exploitation and manipulation by merchants looking to make a killing by guilting people into buying expensive stuff. (I'm a cheap date!)