A Heartbeat At My Feet

"My little dog - a heartbeat at my feet" - Edith Wharton

A couple of weeks ago little Alabama turned one year old.  She is now officially older than her poor stray cat mother was when Alabama was born.

She's starting to calm down and act like a cat more often, but she still has her kitten moments, when her ears flatten back and she just gallops from one end of the house to the other, and then back again... and then back again.  Sometimes she still suddenly decides she wants to claw her way up  a wall, or attack one of her toys with a passion that makes Greg, Sydney and I look on in wonder.  But she's not tiny enough to fit in my palm anymore, and she never chases her tail anymore, and she is more likely to be found napping than playing with the grout lines on our ceramic tile floor.

We still call her The Kitten, though, and she is still our sweet tiny kitty.

Alabama

Will You Be My Valentine?

I feel so sorry for myself when I get sick.  I got a stomach virus, and vomited so many times I cried.  Maybe I'm just a whiner, but geez.  I haven't been that sick in years.  In retrospect, I kind of regret not taking my temperature, I'm sure it was terrible and could just be one more detail to add to the litany of horror that was my existence.

For a day or so.  It really didn't last that long, it just seemed like it.  And I still can't eat much, I took saltines and applesauce with me to work today.

Once again, I am so glad for my wonderful comfy bed and pillow and comforter.  And eventually, when I could stand for more than 30 seconds at a time, my steaming hot shower and my clean toothbrush.

I'm still really tired.  And I am learning what is wrong with being a whole department unto myself at work: when I'm out, nothing gets done.  There is a 90-minute report I have to do for every day of the week, and right now I'm at last Thursday.

I'll probably bring the computer home with me this weekend.

But today is Valentine's day, and it's a holiday I really like.  Even though I know all those people on my Facebook and Twitter feeds complaining that it's a "Hallmark holiday" that's just made up and meaningless are all bitter lonely single people who are not enjoying their singledom, I am secure in my knowledge that it's a "real" holiday, at least as real as any other non-religious holidays.  Well, for us atheists, you can throw religious holidays in the same questionable pile.  What defines a holiday?

But my google searching has proven somewhat vague.  Apparently no one knows for sure exactly when or how Valentine's day began.  We do know that Pope Gelasius declared February 14 to be Valentine's day at the end of the 5th century.  ("We" = "history.com")

That is old enough for me, and certainly way before Hallmark started.

If one wanted to take a stand against a manufactured fakely romantic construct, one could pick diamonds.  Diamonds did not mean engagement or marriage or love until the DeBeers advertising campaign in 1947: "A diamond is forever".  Now it seems to be required to have a diamond engagement and/or wedding ring, and that particular piece of marketing is a lot more expensive than a Hallmark card.

My valentine's present this year, and Greg's, is wedding rings.  We have both lost so much weight that our rings don't fit anymore.  He got a sophisticated band, and I got a set of three channel-set white sapphires.

It was quite an adventure going into a half-dozen jewelry stores and telling them that I was looking for a wedding band, something pretty, but no diamonds.  Funnily, not a one of them asked why I didn't want diamonds.  We bought them a couple of weeks ago, but they had to be ordered in our size so we won't pick them up for another week or two.

I'll post pics when we get them!  In the meantime, happy Valentine's day.

From CuteOverload.com, the best website ever