St. Valentine, I could just kiss you!

This morning, while getting ready, my mind started to ponder the arrangement Elliott and I have regarding Valentines Day. Years ago, we decided that Valentines Day was just a commercial holiday meant to trap guys into forking over their hard earned money for something with petals or cocoa. Ha!, we laughed. We don't need all that stuff to show our love for each other. We love each other like it's Valentines Day every day!

Some years this arrangement worked better than others. Usually when I got too busy to remember to do anything for Elliott. But some years, when I happened to be feeling particularly overworked and underappreciated...and fat, the arrangement was not exactly consensual.

This year happened to be a good year for consensual non-Valentines Day celebrating. I hadn't even thought of it. Well, I thought about it. Even planned something that never got past the thought stage. But I certainly didn't expect anything. Elliott has been so busy lately with the studio, actually near exhaustion, that I thought I would do him a favor by not even mentioning it. So this morning as I thought about how thankful I am that we can have that kind of arrangement and it be okay, my thoughts were interrupted by Elliott saying, "Come on kids, let's show mommy her surprise!" What? My surprise? Oh, I'm surprised alright.

As I walked down the hallway to the living room, the kids were jumping up and down and Elliott told me to look in the corner. When I looked, the chair that should've been there, this one


wasn't there. Instead I saw this


It's the laptop with a picture on the screen. What's that you say? You can't quite make out what it's a picture of? Here, I'll get a little closer.


Isn't it just beautiful? It's the chair that I wanted to get to go with the leather couches we bought 2 years ago. We decided to wait a while for the chair because the couches were such a big purchase. "A while" turned out to be 2 years. Actually I figured I'd have to pick out something else because there's such a high turnover rate with furniture. And yet there it sat. Well, a picture of it. In the corner of my living room.


I think now would be a good time to pay tribute to the old reliable recliner. We bought it at an outlet furniture store when we found out we were pregnant with baby number 1. I needed a rocking chair and Elliott was wanting a recliner, but I have never really been fond of the way recliners look. When I saw this one, I was sold. It doesn't have the look of a big poofy lazy boy and the wood on the arms gives it a little bit of an arts and crafts type look. That was over 9 years ago. I've rocked 4 babies to sleep in that chair. Nursed, napped and even slept overnight in that chair. It's been really good to us. About a year ago, something broke on the right side of the back, making it lean back and to the right. You couldn't rock because you'd fall out the back of it. I thought that was the end, but it was only the beginning of the end. Elliott got some handy dandy bailing wire and wired it together. Now, there was only the illusion that you could fall out of it. No one ever did. I thought for sure we'd be getting rid of it with the new chair on it's way, but Elliott informed me that we still needed to rock someone every now and then and we could just move it to the other corner. To tell you the truth, I'd be kind of sad to see it go.. It's practically a part of the family!


Well done thou good and faithful recliner. You have served us well. We're all about rewarding a job well done in this family. Oh, and celebrating Valentine's Day. We're really good at that!