Happy Valentine's Day

We had a lovely time last night with the kids. Kiersi did fall asleep in the van as we drove the twenty minutes to pick up the boys from school - one moment, she was singing some song she learned at nursery school at the top of her lungs, the next minute she was completely silent as if she'd been unplugged.

"She seems a bit tired," I remarked, looking in the rear-view mirror at Kiersi's little head tipped backwards, her mouth open and her eyes squeezed shut so tightly, it gave the impression of giving great energy even to sleep.

We pulled up under the Meeting Tree at Kieren's school and he came loping out like a cool guy in a brown corduroy jacket. "Hey!" he said, getting into the van.

"How was your day?" I asked, backing out of the parking space.

"Oh, you know...." he said vaguely. "Just...."

"Schoolish?"

"Yes, schoolish. Long week. Glad it's over."

Dayden's school is right next door, so we zoomed over there and Kieren went in to get him. Dayden came running out ahead, grasping a backpack in one hand and a bag of candy that looked like it weighed about two pounds. His hair was considerably shorter than when I'd seen him about two weeks ago; Pat warned me ahead of time that Dayden had decided the evening before to cut his own hair, starting with his bangs. Apparently, he cut them off right next to the hairline, which necessitated a panic-drive to a hair salon, where Dayden was moved to tears of regret over his illicit styling maneuvers and slumped into the shop with a hood pulled far over his head.

He didn't look as bad as I'd prepared myself for and he cheerfully hopped into the van and proceeded to torment Aisling, with whom he was sharing the rear seat of the van. Kieren, Meelyn and I chatted about the week as we drove.

Kiersi slept on.

The evening absolutely flew by. I'd prepared the marinara sauce and the Alfredo earlier in the day; I'd also cooked the two different kinds of chicken. All I had to do for dinner, therefore, was bake the bread and the brownies and cook the pasta (I chose farfalle because it is so cute.) The teens and I spent a lot of time playing cards and Daydie got on the computer and visited Webkinz World, plus went to his second grade class's website and played educational math and language games, which made me very proud of him.

Kieren got a valentine from a girl who rides his bus -- just a friend, he says, although as handsome as he is, I'm inclined to believe that the young lady in question might see things a bit differently. The girls and I asked him what he did when she gave him the card and he said he opened it, read it, said, "That's a really nice card" and then threw it in the trash as soon as she was out of sight. Meelyn and Aisling ragged him about that until he said with dignity that Valentine's card are wasted on the male of the species, which I, from experience, agree with.

When I was in the eighth grade, I got a necklace as a Valentine's gift from my boyfriend Scott. It was an oval of polished onyx with a teeny-tiny diamond chip in it, on a gold chain. It was very pretty and I wore it under my blouse so that my parents wouldn't see it and kill me. It was a very romantic gift and a very innocent little relationship and possibly my one claim to fame during my school years because Scott was handsome and popular and on the junior varsity football team. We walked around the concourse of the high school field house during basketball games, holding hands. I was devastated when he moved to Beech Grove to live with his mom the next year.

The necklace's chain broke long ago and I gave the pendant to my husband to take to the pawn shop last year at this time when he worked at that other place, which we affectionately refer to as "Hell On Earth" and had no money at all.

Pat and Angie showed up shortly after ten, smiling, so their dinner was a success, I'm thinking. We all gathered Kiersi's stuff from every corner of the house. They stayed and talked for awhile, most of it riffing on me for something NICE I'd done the day before, which I may devote to another post as soon as I dry my sad tears at being so MISUNDERSTOOD.

Here's last year's Valentine's Day post, Love over lo mein, involving Chinese mustard and the family at the next table, who were both tall and germophobic. In separate incidents, just in case you were wondering.

Stop and stare

I didn't mention this the other day when I wrote about our Countdown to Spring pastel paper chain, but when I was at Hobby Lobby buying the paper for the chain, I also spent a couple of dollars buying some red, white and pink paper to make some Valentine hearts.

Ma was the person who taught me to cut Valentine hearts out of construction paper, and I can whip out a whole bunch of them in a matter of seconds, big, small, medium-sized, take yer pick. So I sat on the sofa on Sunday afternoon and cut out about a bajillion Valentiney hearts and handed them off to the girls with some Scotch tape and told them to go for it and decorate the big front window (Aisling), the glass in the front door and the upstairs bathroom window (Meelyn) and create some festive cheer. We live on a busy corner in our city's historic district and we all thought it would be uplifting, giving pedestrians, passengers and drivers something more pleasant to look at than all the giant heaps of dirty snow piled up everywhere.

My husband covered quite a few of our windows this winter with those sheets of clear plastic that are supposed to keep the heat IN and the cold air OUT -- I know, I thought it was an aesthetically unappealing idea, too, but as it turns out, it's not nearly as bad (read: unacceptably tacky) as you might have first thought -- so we couldn't go heart-wild and decorate every single one of our many large windows, but we felt that the few un-plasticked windows we had to work with created a happy effect.

We were confirmed in this thought just yesterday, when a school bus stopped at the stop light right in front of our house. Meelyn happened to have just gone out to get the mail, and she came in and said, "There are some little girls on that school bus looking out at our Valentine windows. They're smiling and pointing."

"Really?" I said, smiling myself. "That's very cute."

She peered out the front door's big window again and said, charmed, "Oh, look! That's so sweet! Now a whole bunch of kids are smoodging off their foggy windows with their coat sleeves and looking out!"

And indeed they were. I snuck a quick little peek myself before the school bus trundled on, and it was a great pleasure on a snowy, yucky winter's day to see all those bright little faces framed in the bus's windows.

It inspired us so much, I think we're going to do a show for St. Patrick's Day as well. although I have firmly resolved that nary a leprechaun shall appear on my house.

I am already practicing my cutting of this slightly more elaborate holiday decoration and am already contemplating the several different shades of green that will add interest and artistic depth to the display, 'cause we are all about the Art.

Love over lo mein

This evening, my husband took me out for dinner at my favorite Chinese restaurant in these parts. It is beautifully decorated and they play soft classical music -- lots of J.S. Bach, Vivaldi and Mozart -- over their speakers and their food is delicious. It is also inexplicably cheap.

Two things of note happened while we were dining:

The first thing is that I dipped my egg roll in a small puddle of Chinese mustard I'd put on my plate for that purpose, but continued talking to my husband throughout the dipping process, so that by the time I (long-windedly) got finished with what I was saying, I'd forgotten about the first act of dippage and went for the second dip. The resulting bite of egg roll nearly made my sinuses implode. I thought my head was going to turn into a flaming skull and start shrieking around the room like a helium balloon with the gas released, only scary-looking. Anyway, the allergy medicine I take at night? Well, I don't think I'll be needing it. Maybe for the next two years.

The second thing that happened is that the Tall Family came in. I'm talking about a man who was about 6'6 and his wife, who was about 6'2. They had their two daughters with them, one who was as tall as I was and the other, who wasn't much shorter. I figured that they were probably a first grader and a pre-schooler, all vertical things considered. They were very nice looking people, very stately and dignified. I thought that maybe they were somehow related to Legolas, Arwen, Elrond and Galadriel.

Anyhoo, Mrs. Tall did a very curious thing. She rummaged around in her large handbag (a Chanel knockoff) and brought out a plastic canister of anti-bacterial wipes and a pump bottle of Purex hand sanitizer. The family stood back, making sure not to touch anything, and the missus went over the entire surface of the tabletop with an antibacterial cloth. Then she did the chair seats with another cloth. And, I kid you not, she wiped down the ladder backs of the chairs. I AM NOT KIDDING. No matter what you're thinking, I am telling you the truth.

After she had wiped down their table (I thought she was going to come over to me and my husband and spray us with a Flit gun full of bleach solution), her family lined up solemnly in front of her and each received a squirt of Purex onto one upturned palm. At this point, I had abandoned my manners and was staring in frank amazement, a bit of lo mein falling out of my mouth onto my plate.

"Hark, yon germophobes," I whispered to my husband, indicating the Tall Family with a gesture of my head. "They are not only tall, they are very, very clean."

"When they come and sit back down, do you think I should start coughing?" he asked wickedly.

Mrs. Tall had left the canister of wipies on the table -- maybe she planned to start on the wall behind their table after she ate -- and I noticed the little Chinese server looking at it in bemusement as she set down a little tray with their bill and four fortune cookies on it.

I wanted desperately to see if she'd wipe off the tray and the cookie wrappers with an antibacterial wipe, but I never got the chance. Mr. Tall's shoulder was in the way.

My fortune cookie said this: "Be prepared to accept a great opportunity that will come your way."

I can hardly wait.