Valentine's Day Approaches

At one point, we had thought we might be on motorcycles, headed to the Everglades Seafood Festival.  But my brother's wife is not up to a ride, and we thought about driving the car and letting the guys take the bikes--then we started to think about who really liked seafood and was it worth the effort?

The short answer:  no.  They'll come over in a bit, and we'll grill.  We may walk to the beach, depending on how everyone is feeling.

Yesterday, we needed to get out of the house, so my spouse and I walked over to the beach.  It was a beautiful walk, but a crowded beach.  We had watched a movie, Hell or High Water, which I liked better than my spouse did, but we needed some activity after a low key day.

I did get some weeding done.  After doing some weeding yesterday and seeing how hard it is to uproot the dandelions, I'm thinking that a dandelion would be a more appropriate flower for Valentine's Day than the roses that so many will buy in the coming days.

I've been looking through pictures from old Create in Me retreats.  I do love these metal flowers:  the colors and the permanence, so different from much of the love that comes to our lives.

 


I also have love on the brain as I am now deep into Atwood's The Robber Bride--what a perfection of a book.

Soon Valentine's Day will be upon us--I'm glad that my spouse and I are on the same page about that holiday.  I feel the same about this holiday as I do about New Year's Eve--why spend that extra money just because marketers have decided that we should?

For a more nuanced discussion of love, see this week's episode of On Being.  Here's a quote from Alain de Botton to get us ready for the annual celebration of love that may or may not be your experience of Feb. 14:
"So we have this ideal of what love is and then these very, very unhelpful narratives of love. And they’re everywhere. They’re in movies and songs. And we mustn’t blame songs and movies too much. But if you say to people, 'Look, love is a painful, poignant, touching attempt by two flawed individuals to try and meet each other’s needs in situations of gross uncertainty and ignorance about who they are and who the other person is, but we’re going to do our best,' that’s a much more generous starting point."