i deserve flowers

So Valentine's Day started out wonderfully -- I had the morning off work because of the roads, so I spent it on home improvement in the kitchen. I purchased a pot rack the other week to hang over the stove (and got it half off because it was a display -- which still seems like an astronomical discount, but I wasn't about to complain; quite the opposite: I danced in the car all the way home), and as the darn thing is heavy it's currently sitting on the floor. But since it will be hung soon, this morning I took down the pots and pans that have been hanging on one wall, spackled all the holes (badly, but it was my first try, so what the hey), and washed and screwed in a couple more old crates to use for shelves. The two form a rough "L" shape on the wall, and are now sporting my extra cookbooks, an assortment of tea tins, my recipe box, teapot, loveliest mug, and new ceramic nesting bowls (red, of course). The effect is neat, and I'm so glad to get some extra storage space in my storage-space-challenged kitchen.

Plus using my drill is somehow relaxing, comforting -- like talking while working with an old friend.

The day is beautifully sunny, so I drove in to work with a light heart and light work load.

The only canker in the hedge was when the florist next door brought in an enormous flower arrangement for my boss's wife -- bursting with gorgeous roses of all different colors. Because I'm just as happy to spend the evening at home sipping a glass of White Zin, working in the end pieces of yarn in my knitted blanket, and talking on the phone with Leigh Ann while watching Bones (that's a pretty much perfect evening), but I really, really love roses.

I felt an unexpected wave of blueness surging toward me. And thought, Nope. I'm not going to let it get me. This holiday is ridiculous enough.

And put on my coat, walked next door, and ordered a half-dozen pink and yellow rose arrangement for myself.

They're going to look so pretty when I get home tonight. And (hopefully!) smell delicious.

Then I gave the twelve-year-old kid who lives on the other side of the office a dollar for shoveling snow so he could get his girlfriend of three years a flower. As I told him, "Dude, you've been dating longer than I have!"

But it was totally cute. He's one of those freckled, cowlicked, open-faced, polite, eager to help, do-work-for-money kinds of all-American kids. He looks like he should own some scruffy, rascally dog that follows him everywhere; but he's usually by himself, grinning and earning change to buy things for his mother, who just had a baby. He could easily get himself in trouble, I think, but he's simultaneously delightful.

Yay for flowers.