bah, humbug

I have a confession.

I am quite fond of saying I am the valentines day scrooge. I've said it perhaps four times throughout the day to different people. I act all stand-offish and act like I think valentines day is a big corporate hoax to get people to buy flowers and chocolates and cards. I say the whole thing gets on my nerves.

But it's a lie.

Secretly.... secretly I want to wear pink glittery nail polish and paint hearts on my cheeks with lipstick and walk around shooting nerf love-darts at everybody.

So, why the act?

To be fair, I have traumatic early memories regarding shameless confessions of love for people. Derrick, who sat next to me in kindergarten, one day kissed me on the cheek in the middle of class. Everybody laughed and I was embarrassed, but later I decided I should do something in return, so I picked him some flowers on the playground. When I offered them to him, he tossed them on the ground saying “flowers are for girls.” In third grade, I decided to risk love once again, so I sent Tremayne a valentine on which I'd written “I love you. P.S. Don't tell anyone!” Of course, he told everyone, and I decided it best to deny that it was even from me. Later on, in junior high and high school when they'd deliver carnations or candy or messages to your friends in class on V-Day, not once did I ever receive anything. Not once!

...Until...

Senior year, I became friends with this very sweet guy who was in both my English and Government classes. We loved talking to each other, such that we soon resorted to writing notes back and forth, discussing any topic you can imaging. On Feb. 14 of my senior year, the school was delivering cans of “Crush” soda as valentines, and he sent me one. We were just friends, but for some reason I kept the “To Robyn, From Adam” message that was delivered along with that can, and it meant so much to me.

Of course, five months later I married a guy from my church, and the sweet guy from high school moved to Belgium.

But somehow—and it's still sort of a blur to me how it all happened—somehow, here we are. Eight years later, February 14, we've been together for two and a half years. Adam has invited me down to his house where he has offered to cook dinner for me, and we're going to enjoy a nice red wine and a mystery movie, and cuddle.

So, I guess by now, I should be over that whole valentine's day scrooge thing, huh?

winter machine

I'm starting to feel like this whole winter thing is getting a little out of hand. It had gotten all nice and springish in january, convincing my mind and the flower bulbs that it was done snowing for the year. (Of course, last year it snowed in April, two weeks before school let out for “summer” vacation, so I should have known.) But the cold air came back. And whenever the temperature shifts back and forth like that, I get sick.

Thus, here I am, hanging out with the Lucy-dog for the weekend while Adam is in . . . guess . . . Florida. He called yesterday from Palm Beach with his feet in the atlantic ocean. I was fantastically happy to hear from him, and to know he was thinking of me at the beach. It made me feel just a little less stuck here. He said he hesitated to call because he didn't want me to feel like he was taunting me, but I wasn't frustrated that he called.

The frustrating part is simply that I'm sick, and that I know it's Ohio's fault. Last time I went down to florida, I remember being able to breathe better, I was even able to smell again. (In case I haven't mentioned it before, my sense of smell doesn't work.) Yet, here I am, in central Ohio, coughing every time I inhale, my nose red and sore from all the kleenex. The ground outside is frozen and dead. The sky is blank. The trees are naked. I took Lucy on a walk yesterday morning and there was a small tree that literally looked like it was shivering in the cold, its dead, dry leaves trembling miserably. We've got at least two more months of this kind of weather.

On the plus side, over my spring break Adam and I might get to fly down to florida for his cousin's wedding. As long as we take a couple detours for some photo sites, he can take the company plane for free. I was looking yesterday at national and state park websites to see where we could tent camp instead of paying for hotels.

In the mean time, I shall continue to enjoy my cold, overcast, homework-and-laundry-filled weekend.

friday the 13th

There's a lot that's great about having a pilot for a boyfriend. He loves what he does. People enjoy hearing about his work. He travels often and it gives us a nice chance to miss each other, keeping the relationship fresh. Last weekend he took me flying with him and I got to see Columbus from above. . . .

But even with benefits like that, there are certain aspects to dating a pilot that are usually easiest not to think about. Unfortunately, sometimes, they're impossible to ignore.

I was staying at his house over winter break. It was an unusually windy day, the kind that causes the outside walls of the house make those nervous shifting noises. Around noon, I decided to call him, just to make sure he wasn't going to fly in such gusty weather, but I couldn't find my cell phone. There's no way he'd be out in this weather, I assured myself.

That evening when he came home:

“Hi!” said I.

“Hi!” said he.

“How are you?” said I.

“Uh... I am ok!” he exclaimed with an odd dramatic quality in his voice.

“Did you get fired?” I asked jokingly.

“No,” he responded assertively. “I have been assured that I definitely am not fired.”

That was not a response I was expecting.

“Did you crash?” was my next logical question.

“Yeah,” he replied, and quickly added before I could freak out, “but I'm ok!”

It was on the evening news. Two pilots (Adam was in the co-pilot seat, his co-worker was flying) got out of this plane unharmed at Port Columbus Airport on Friday the 13^th. Their front wheels had just landed on the runway when a burst of wind essentially caused the back end to go up in the air and they skidded for about 20 feet down the runway nose-first.

So, that kind of thing not my favorite thing about dating a pilot. But right now, while he's in Dallas, or yesterday when he was flying back from New Jersey, I don't think about that. I think about the fact that he's really living, that he could have kept studying Electrical Engineering and he could be sitting for 8 hours every day in a cubicle. Instead, he spends days at a time flying through the air, across the country, taking pictures of the ground below.

“Avoiding danger is not safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” - Helen Keller