Today is Valentine’s Day

Today is Valentine’s Day.

No – really.

It was on this day, Feb 15th, I proposed to my wife while she was distracted enough to say “yes”.

It was almost six years to the day after we met.

We met in 1981 at an audition for a play at college called The Learned Ladies. I got a small part and she volunteered to work on the lights. When I found that out, I too volunteered to work on the lights.

The auditorium at Phoenix College had (and I presume still does) “catwalks” – iron sidewalks suspended from the ceiling by what appear to be spider-web-thin strands of wire. The rails on the side of these elevated walkways are not for safety; that’s where the lights attach. I spent many a happy hour enthralled, watching her slide through the rails and twist and turn in order to get to a bolt on one of the fixtures.
As a safety precaution, I would often have to hold on to her legs so she wouldn’t slip.

Purely in the interest of caution, mind you.

We transitioned from friends to best friends and then to dating and then back to best friends again. She felt she wasn’t ready for a steady relationship. Over the next six years we discovered that we already HAD a relationship.

So, I popped the question.

She said yes.

We were married a year later.

That was 18 years ago come March12th.

I still remember the shock (and terror) that went through me when she accepted.
I still feel it sometimes too, on those unguarded moments when she makes a joke or reaches for my hand or falls asleep in the car while I drive.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Chelsea.

I'm dreaming of a brown (post) Christmas

In an effort to clean up after Christmas, I took down our animated angel from the roof, the foldable lighted star from the eaves, and the lights outlining the house. The tree in the front yard is stripped and looks again like a tree and not a parade float. I collapsed the livingroom tree and folded it back into the worn out cardboard box it came in two Christmases ago, and retaped the box closed.

I even took down the Christmas card I had posted on the BLOG.

Of course, you can still view the card (or at lease the Cactus Tree) here, because like all the other decorations, I took it down but haven't yet put it away.

There's a piece of my hallway where gold and tinsel and plastic evergreen wreaths huddle together: an overlooked and forgotten reminder of months of preparation gone in a single day.

We've achieved about 110 days without even a trace of rain and there's none in the forecast anytime soon. The temperature is reaching the 80s and there's a fine coating of dust on everything. The smog is back with a vengeance and trying to imagine that New Years day was barely a month ago and Christmas only a week before that is more than my little mind can handle.

In the meantime, I peruse Cuppa's and AC's BLOGS seeking pictures of ice and snow as a way of trying to convince myself it's still winter - somewhere.

Barely a month ago I heard someone singing about keeping the spirit of Christmas all year long.

I'm keeping it in a corner of the hall, blocking the linen cupboard.

And though I tell myself that the original Christmas (the very first one) was also in a desert, I don't seem to be very convincing.

So, Merry Post-Christmas from the desert.

Please send snow.

Or rain, or ice or steam - I'll take a good fog - I don't care.

Maybe just a glass of water? A damp towel?

Anyone?