frozen bananas and droopy blossoms

So what did I do for Valentine’s Day?

Oh how do I romanticize snot and despair? Let’s start with Thursday. On Thursday I woke up with a very raw sore throat. I went to school, fought my way through a test and even managed to eat a salad with peppers in it. The whole day I longed to go home and wrap myself up in heated blankets and golden retriever love, but I fought against that urge and made it through the day. Friday started sluggish so I tucked myself into my office and busied myself with blog work. I spent a great amount of time sorting through old posts of my favorite bloggers, kicking myself silently for missing out on a chunk of their lives (during Christmas of all things!), and writing pieces of their poems on sticky notes to think about for the day. I do this a lot with one of my favorite bloggers, Mark. Reading his blog is just like sitting down with one of my favorite books of poems (Go check him out if you haven’t already). Sometimes I have to wander through a poem several times before I realize why it struck me so. So, Friday I took just for me in hopes that the sore throat would surrender. By Friday night I was on my knees in tears. I could barely sleep, because it hurt to swallow and my entire back and stomach felt bruised and sunburned. When Saturday greeted me I only wanted to kick its face in, but I was too miserable. I didn’t want Robert to leave me alone. I thought that I was going to faint and knock my face in or something worse so he remained faithfully by my side. During this time I had completely lost my voice and was besieged with a mad desire for frozen bananas. He got right in the car and came back with not only the bananas but also a beautiful bouquet of tulips and irises (oddly enough tulips are my favorite and irises are my mother’s). They were in a sorry state like me, but he promised that as I got better the flowers would blossom. By Sunday the irises had thrown their purple all over the place, and my voice came back. Today I was greeted by a few tentative tulip blossoms as they struggled to outshine the irises. I knew that the dreaded cold was behind me.

Interestingly enough I was trying to figure out what Robert and I had done for previous VDays. For awhile I thought we were turning into two old frumps, but now that I think about it there is so much new love in the little surprises. Our first Valentine’s Day in 2006 was unbelievably powerful and surreal. We were in Guatemala with my mother, and on Valentine’s Day we went to Tikal to see the ruins. The next year we tried too hard with foo foo gifts. In 2008 Robert was sick with a sinus infection and while he was sleeping I snuck out and got him comfy socks and vitamin C. I remember the beauty of Tikal and the simple passion Robert and I had for each other. I remember the thrill of surprising him with something warm, something useful, wrapped in red heart paper. But I do not remember anything about the foo foo of 2007.

So what did I do for this year’s ♥ Day? I ate frozen bananas with my best friend and waited for the flowers to bloom.

Oh and Robin here is the list of books I'm most excited about:

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor
Eight Men by Richard Wright
Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
All But My Life by Gerda Weissmann Klein