The Underachiever's Career Guide

This week's Girl Talk Thursday topic: When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? 

I've always been an animal lover.  When I was growing up, we always had a family dog.  When I was 7 or so, my parents bought me a chinchilla--and with heavy persuasion from my brother who was deep into the Lord of the Rings series at the time, I named it Frodo.  When Frodo passed away, I got a grey, fluffy, lop-eared rabbit (this time I wasn't going to bow down to my brother, and oh-so-creatively named it 'Fluff'; so there!).  I had a ten-gallon fish tank in my bedroom.  I dreamed of animals and every creative writing piece written during my elementary years had the basic premise of a girl who found a rock (or other object) and spit on it (or it got rained on), and it turned into some fluffy creature.  Magic!  You'd think after that brilliance, my career aspirations would certainly involve writing, but I wanted to be a veterinarian.

Once junior high and high school came around, anatomy piqued my interest.  The teacher in my high school's Anatomy class took a small group of students with the highest grades each year to see an autopsy, and I made sure I was part of that group even though my grades weren't the highest--I can be...persuasive, when I care about something.  The stress of helping someone who was alive but sick or in an emergency didn't appeal to me, but I loved the idea of finding out why someone had died (and then going to court to testify in front of a rapturous jury; that sounded awesome).  I took another Anatomy class while in college, and it was the only undergraduate program in the country at that time that had six whole cadavers to study each semester, just like in medical school.  I loved the class, but I got a D.  Do you know how many veins and arteries and nerves and lymph nodes are running up through your armpit?  It's like a crazy 16-lane highway traffic jam in there.  I can show you where your anatomical snuffbox is, though. 

You see, I'm an underachiever. When I was young, I learned how to play the game and get great grades by doing the bare minimum.  It worked pretty damn well for me in my youth, but it didn't go over very well when I got to a college that had higher academic standards than the good ol' Dade County Public School system.  Thomas Jefferson was a student at my college, and I'd bet he wouldn't be pleased to know I was lowering the school's reputation.  My sincere apologies, Thomas--founding fathers deserve more than that.  So, my career choices of veterinarian or medical examiner hit a brick wall when I realized veterinarians were like, doctors, but for animals. And being a doctor meant going to medical school. And medical school seemed like an awful lot of...work.

At this time, I had read a lot of true crime stories and I really, really wanted to be a Profiler for the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit.  I scored a few days' externship at the FBI training facility in Quantico, and yes, it was even cooler than you'd imagine.  They had a whole fake street set up with a bank, pool hall, apartment building and the like to practice skills.  The only gun I've ever shot in my life was blanks from the FBI's Glock that we used to practice clearing rooms that day (think sliding slowly with your back pressed against a wall, looking quickly around the corner with a pointed gun, the whole bit).  This was it; I thought.  I'm going to be an FBI agent.  But then I heard about that pesky lie detector test part of the interview, the one where they ask you if you've smoked pot more than 10 times in your life.  Ten?  Um, who can answer that truthfully and be in the FBI??  I'm not going to come out and admit any drug use right here, but let's just say that I'm a terrible liar.  So I didn't bother applying.

I managed to graduate college in four years, albeit with terrible grades.  Hah!  Who cares, I thought--my dad (a Dartmouth grad with less-than-perfect grades) told me that people only cared about your college grades when you were looking for your first job.  It wasn't like I was going to go to grad school!  And then I applied to grad school (my job as an Activities Director at a nursing home was the best I could do with my undergraduate degree in Psychology, and I lasted there a month before wanting to poke my eyes out).  Luckily for me, I'm a good test-taker, which balanced out my mediocre grades and a law school took a chance on me.  I figured my talent in persuasion could be put to some use.

Fast forward a few years, and my underachiever self who couldn't fathom the thought of medical school had a law degree.  And had been the Managing Editor of a law journal.  And had one baby and was pregnant with the other while studying for (and passing the first time, to my mom's shock and amazement!) the Bar exam.  All while fixing up an old house in a developing neighborhood (okay, it was a total shithole in the 'hood, complete with a neighborhood prostitute and crack house). 

I may be an underachiever, but I certainly am an adept multi-tasker.  And my evolutionary biology-minded friend recently described my underachieving nature as something to the extent of 'a wise evolutionary strategy because of the effective use of energy and resources'.  Sounds good to me!

Photographic Evidence

A few weeks ago, Sam dragged out our old manual camera that had been tucked away in the back corner of his closet for the last 5 years and developed a few rolls of film that had been hidden in the case.  The pictures were mostly of one of the two summers we spent at my in-laws' property in northern California, the summer Sam's mom lost her battle with cancer.  I immediately began crying as I thumbed through pictures of 2-year old Jackson getting a haircut from his grandfather, Jackson standing in only a diaper with his toddler belly bulging, one of an infant Alex smiling on my lap.  Do all mothers have this feeling when they look at pictures of their oldest kids as little ones?  I'm thinking my visceral reaction may be because although I did fine going through it, in hindsight, this was a fairly overwhelming period of my life being in law school, having two children 19 months apart, and witnessing my mother-in-law's terminal illness. 

Sam came down with the camera bug during our weekend in Santa Fe and has been constantly walking around snapping pictures of the boys ever since.  We spent this past weekend working on the main floor powder room(considering its miniscule square footage, it must be the longest project in the history of bathrooms) but in between measuring and cutting baseboards (and while deflecting my nagging comments to GET BACK TO WORK!), Sam was capturing moments.  Last night, he emailed me--please join me in pausing for a moment to reflect on that, because this is a miracle in itself, I tell you in all seriousness--a link to the pictures the camera store had put online. 

This?  It's my life, my everything, and I'm so thankful I am living it and that Sam is capturing it.  As far as I'm concerned, this is my Mother's Day present right here, but since Sam doesn't read this blog I'll also be happy with whatever else he comes up with. :)

Road Trippin' on a Dime

I'm a big fan of road trips.  Years ago, we trekked with one-month old Jackson and Winston the Wonder Weimaraner out to California in our 1985 Land Cruiser.  And no, I did not keep my baby securely strapped in his car seat the whole time; I freely admit that.  With an exclusively breastfed newborn eating and pooping constantly, there were plenty of in-the-lap diaper changes and feeding sessions.  For any of you that are now dialing Child Protective Services in an effort to protect my children from their neglectful parents, I vividly remember road trips as a child where my brother and I would press our eyes against the rust holes in the floor of our parents' VW Bus so we could watch the road whiz by underneath us.  Miraculously, my brother and I made it to adulthood with our eyes intact.  My point?  Neglect is a genetic disorder; don't blame me.

Two years later, we made the same trip to CA with a 2-year old Jackson, a 6-month old Alex, and Winston (by this time we had sucked it up and resigned ourselves to owning a minivan).  Despite driving a minivan, there is something freeing, adventurous even, about driving somewhere other than Target or to a child's birthday party. 

I don't require high-end luxury when traveling, but I do make all efforts to stay in hotels that don't have the Gross Hotel Blanket.  You know, the one that you use tweezers to immediately peel down when you get in the room so you don't have to actually come in contact with it (I have seen too many Dateline NBC shows exposing the filth on those blankets...).  My efforts are not always successful, though--between Salt Lake City and San Francisco there are not a whole lot of overnight options, and we spent one memorable evening at a hotel that had a dead rabbit in the parking lot and a condom stuck to the side of the building.  And one night in a room with moist, matted shag carpeting so foul that Sam laid down a towel path (think of the Follow the Yellow Brick Road scene, but absent the happy song or the crowd of happy midgets) to walk from the shower to the bed to avoid actually stepping on it.  Good times.

We now have three kiddos (and sadly, no dog), and I decided on a whim that we should take a weekend road trip during Sam and the boys' spring break.  We don't have a lot of cash these days ('these days' meaning the last, oh, 6 years) and I'm definitely what you would call 'thrifty'.  I decided on Santa Fe because it was relatively close (6 hours' drive)...and between you and me, I read about this really great chocolate shop that I wanted to check out.  Here is a recap of our weekend vacation on a budget, listing some tips that I found helpful and rough prices (*modestly patting myself on the back as I write...*).

1.  Last-minute vacation-rental deals!  Hotels can be expensive, and staying in one hotel room with three children?  Not fun.  My kids go to bed at 7:30, so sitting perfectly quiet in a hotel room is not our idea of a vacation.  Has anyone used vrbo.com?

I found a number of vacation rentals that were still available 5 days before our trip, so I wrote requesting a total lowball, last-minute deal.  I chose this gorgeous, 3-bedroom place a few blocks from the Plaza.  It was advertised at $315/night, and we paid $125.  Even with the cleaning fee and rental tax, it was less than what we would have paid for a hotel suite and had so many more amenities!

2.  Plan some make-ahead meals!  Eating out every meal (with three growing boys) can get expensive very quickly.  My husband, with his hummingbird metabolism (damn him!), snacks constantly and the boys follow suit.  The night before we left I spent a few hours in the kitchen, but it saved us tons of money.  I made:

• breakfast burritos with egg, bacon, potato, and cheese--just wrap them up in a paper towel and freeze.  When you're ready to eat, pop them in the microwave for 2.5 minutes, and open up for a sec to spread a little salsa.  They taste awesome, and are a nice, filling breakfast before sightseeing.
• cardamom granola bars--these have become a staple snack in our house--SO good!
• vegan blueberry muffins--don't let the word 'vegan' scare you, they are delicious, I swear!

I also packed up cereal, milk, yogurt, fruit, and peanut butter-n-jelly sandwich stuff.  Cutting back on the meals out allowed us to enjoy an authentic New Mexican meal, complete with green chile, at Maria's New Mexican Kitchen (known for their margaritas!). ($50, including a house margarita each)

3.  Use the internet to make a rough itinerary.  On the way down, we stopped for dinner in Trinidad, Colorado, famous for being the sex change capital of the world.  Yes, the world.  It's not known for much else, and wanting to ensure we didn't end up at the local McDonald's for dinner, I used Yelp to decide on a restaurant ahead of time.  This also cuts down on the driving around aimlessly factor.  With such a short trip, Yelp also came in handy to get a feel for how we wanted to spend our time.  I thought for sure Trinidad would have some amazing people-watching, or surgeon's offices on every corner, but there was literally no sign of anything interesting going on.  At all.  Luckily, the brick-oven pizza we had was really good (and the oven actually came from all the way from 'It-lee', as I learned from a Trinidad bank teller). ($30 for pizza and salad)

4.  Scope out the free entertainment. 

We arrived in Santa Fe on Friday evening and had all day Saturday to explore.  I had a delicious mocha from Ecco Espresso (scoped out from Yelp) before browsing the offerings from the Native American Vendors.  We bought Alex a metal guitar pick with a cool hunter scene stamped on it (and amazingly, there was no word from Jackson about wanting something as well).  We also briefly checked the St. Francis Cathedral as they were preparing for their big Easter shindig (since it was right there; I'm not a big cathedral goer). ($24 for guitar pick, coffee drink, and tamales) 

After lunch and rest for the kiddos, we drove a little ways out of town to Shidoni, an art bronze foundry and sculpture garden.  I had contacted them ahead of time to find out when they were pouring, and we got to see them pour the liquid metal into the molds.  We all enjoyed walking around the sculpture garden.   There is also a glassblowing studio next door, which would have been another great activity if we had timed it right ($0!).

The highlight of my day was our trip to Kakawa Chocolate House.  We all sampled different styles of their handcrafted European and Mesoamerican Aztec drinking chocolate and split a piece of a delicious chocolate-covered caramel with smoked sea salt on top.  I bought a package of one style to bring home with me, and there's no way I'm sharing with my family ($22).

5.  National Parks/Monuments are cheap and awesome.

The next morning we packed up and made a slight detour to the southwest to Bandelier National Monument for a hike and to check out the Indian ruins.  We paid our car's $12 entrance fee and spent a couple hours on the Main Loop Trail.  Our friend Joel (who is living with us in Denver for the time being) sprung for the $1 guide book that provided information at numbered spots along the trail.  This monument is amazing--an easy hike and so many interesting things to see!  We all had a ball climbing the ladders up into the cavates to see how the Ancestral Pueblo people lived.

All told, the trip cost us under $500, which is just a hair over what Sam and I pay for a dinner and movie date and a babysitter.  I totally have the bug for weekend travel and am itchin' to camp at the Great Sand Dunes this spring.  I can hear my yard quietly weeping, because it was really hoping I'd get off my ass and pull some weeds.  And I know my half-finished bathroom would appreciate being dressed with some baseboards.  And a doorknob for said bathroom might be nice.  And I bet my neighbors would appreciate Sam chopping up the huge pile of free wood that is sitting at the top of our driveway.  sigh...Life slips by too quickly, but I hope to squeeze in little family adventures like these more often. 

Sunshiney Goodness

I am totally psyched to have officially been awarded my very first blog award, given to me by the wonderfully caring, witty, working mom extraordinaire Kami over at The Fence.  I think I randomly happened upon her site after reading a comment she left on a post by Dooce, and then I realized I knew her in a roundabout way from high school.  Now, I have a confession to make--I am a notorious blog lurker.  I know--it's a terrible habit, and I welcome you all to leave nasty comments punishing me for this antisocial behavior.  So I lurked for a while, because I saw myself reflected in so many of her words. 

Then came one terrible morning last August when I was online reading everything I could on lymphoma, because we had just learned that my only brother had cancer (more about this here) but we weren't sure what kind yet and I wanted to arm myself with as much information as possible.  I couldn't eat (unheard of for this gal), I had knots in my stomach and throat, and I was constantly weeping.  After doing lots of reading, I concluded that his best-case scenario would be Stage 2 Hodgkin's (at this point, we knew he had tumors in both his neck and his chest).  To take an emotional break, I clicked over to Kami's blog to see if there was anything new, and she had written this post.  Strange, huh?  I commented on her blog for the first time that day, and I'm so glad I did.

Here are the rules for this award:

• Put the logo on your blog or within the post (done)
• Pass the Award onto 12 bloggers (ummmmm...12??  I already said I am a lurker, and am totally the fidgety girl standing against the wall sipping punch at the middle school dance among these wonderful blogging ladies, so there's no way I can come up with other people to pass this along to.
• Link the nominees within your post (done)
• Let your nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog (ummm, again, see above)
• Share the love and link to the person from who you received the award (done)

Well, I followed most of the rules; hopefully my award won't get revoked!  And I am going to get myself out there a bit more--I hereby solemnly swear to embark on the first step of Lurkers Anonymous.

Laxative Guilt

This is my first contribution to Girl Talk Thursday--I hope to make a habit out of it. If it's anything like my desire to make exercise a habit, I will participate three times a year.  Tops.  This week's topic is Parental Punishments--what did you endure, hate, and would use now?

I'm not looking to open a can of worms here, but I'll come right out and say that this household is a no-spanking zone.  I personally don't believe in spanking as a principle, but also because if I allow myself to hit my children when I am angry, I would hit them HARD.  Where do you draw the line?  I stop myself at a firm grasping of an arm and speaking in a low, serious tone to tell them I mean business.  What 'business' is, I'm not quite sure--hey, aren't we all winging it here?  But it's usually enough to make them quit whatever they are doing.

I only recall being spanked once as a child, after my brother Matt and I repeatedly crank-called 911 while we were supposedly under my father's watchful eye.  I (allegedly) asked the 911 operator out on a date (I was not more than 6 at the time).  Man, would I love to go back in time and hear the conversation that undoubtedly occurred between my parents that day!  Anyway, I scarcely remember the spanking, but what stuck with me was the appropriately-placed guilt.  My parents never used overdone, Catholic guilt as a parenting technique (my Mom is Jewish, which is a whole different breed of guilt, and my dad is an athiest)--this was smooth and effective...laxative guilt, one might say.  Mom and Dad pulled out the "someone may have died because they had a real emergency and called 911 but you were tying up the phone line" story.  At that age, I didn't know that the 911 system was likely, and hopefully, more sophisticated than one guy sitting on a ratty brown office chair with the foam stuffing poking out, answering one rotary-dial telephone, even if this was Tallahassee in the early 80s.  I did feel appropriately terrible, although (again, allegedly) my first draft of my apology letter to the police contained a statement along the lines of "My brother made me do it".  Needless to say, I got my first lesson in revision that day.

This laxative guilt was used throughout my teenage years as well.  I am a terrible liar (thus narrowing my career options with my law degree), so it was clear when I was hiding something.  During those years, my parents' stock line after a lie was "It's going to take a long time to build back the trust".  And it was devastating, knowing that my parents viewed me as some shifty person they couldn't quite trust.  I must have subconsciously filed that line in my parenting lobe, because I totally have used that one.  Another one I use that channels my parents is "Did Daddy already give you an answer?  Because we don't shop around for answers in this family."  Mmmmhmmmm...pure gold.  I'm sure as the boys get older and we're faced with new struggles, I'll be rooting around in my subconscious for more.

Sam and I, thankfully, are virtually totally aligned in our parenting styles.  The one method he has used that I vehemently oppose is "The Pinch", something he learned from his own childhood.  When he acted up during dinner or couldn't get his act together in the car as a child, he would get a firm pinch on the leg.  When we had it out over this, Sam agreed that when he was being his best parenting self, he would not choose this option to change our children's behavior, that it was more of a last ditch effort, I've-had-it-up-to-here kind of thing.  That parenting method has since been discontinued in our household, thanks in part to a couple of great parenting books (and in part to, shall we say nicely, a verbally persuasive wife).

I'm not a parenting book type of person really, but I have to say that I am reading a book now that has helped immensely in my goal of being my best parenting self--Buddhism for Mothers, by Sarah Napthali.
Ladies, check it out from your local libraries because this one is worth reading.  I am no Buddhist, but incorporating some of these ideas into my every day life has made such a difference in my well-being, and given me a new perspective on interacting with my children.  Sam didn't know I was reading it, but noticed the way I diffused a situation was particularly calm and productive.  Mothers with more than one child may notice that something that worked fine with the first just doesn't work with the second or third.  Timeouts are perfect for Jackson--we send him up to his room to cool off for a couple of minutes, and then one of us goes up and has a great conversation about how he could have handled the situation differently, and how he could make it right.  With Alex, removing him from an argument with a timeout only escalated the situation, leaving him furiously kicking his door and screaming.  It took many agonizing tries and late-night parenting discussions before we adopted a strategy that is helping him slowly learn to put his emotions into words.  It sure is a team effort to parent consciously, learning to switch our pitch depending on the batter, but here's hoping it will pay off in the long run.

Musings On Motherhood

Motherhood is an experience that is virtually impossible (especially for me) to capture through the written word, as the experience is much too powerful and all-encompassing. The days I birthed each of my children, it just blew my mind (and still does) that I had taken part in something so incredibly extraordinary, yet so ordinary that it had been happening since the dawn of time, across so many species. I felt like I had tapped into this ancient universal force.

Now, don't get me wrong--I don't float effortlessly through each day in a flowing white gown and a flower in my hair, showering my children with nothing but patience, love and kindness. Just as Superman periodically became disabled by kryptonite, my flow of motherly love gets clogged by toys strewn about the living room, whiny voices, unfolded laundry, husbandy husbandness...the list goes on. And on.

But--I do have an innate, powerful appreciation for life and all the good that I have that I can only genetically attribute to Harold, my late grandfather. At any and every family gathering, Harold would weep out of joy for all of his family. All the women on that side of the family are the same way. When I was younger I would scoff at the teary-eyedness of my family, but that gene surfaced strongly somewhere in my early adulthood.

There are many children's books that I can't get through without my voice cracking, pausing in an attempt to keep my tears up in my eyes as my children patiently wait in my lap for the next page. I absolutely refuse to read I Love You Forever. Can't do it. Dog Heaven, which the wonderful veterinary oncologists sent us in the mail after we had to put my beloved 4-year old weimaraner to sleep is a definite, emphatic no. Yesterday during morning reading time in Jackson's 1st grade class, Jackson brought over a book for me to read him called Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, about a young boy and his relationship with a woman who has experienced memory loss. I made it 2/3 of the way through before I was discreetly wiping away tears.

Songs? I've got a ton that do me in: 100 Years to Live by Five For Fighting, Elton John's Mona Lisa and Mad Hatters, James Taylor's Carolina in My Mind, Linda Ronstadt's Goodbye My Friend...

Life in general, but particularly motherhood, is so precious, and difficult, and life-changing. I have a hard time when I think my boys are growing up faster than I'd like, but then I remind myself that my job as a mother is not to have cute little children, but to raise strong, intelligent, productive members of society. Only then does my heart feel a little less tight.

This past weekend as I made the 4 minute drive to the grocery store, I tuned into my favorite radio show, This American Life. The week's theme was The Parent Trap, about parents who unwittingly set traps for their children. I caught the show mid-way through, but sat in my car, riveted, in the Safeway parking lot for twenty minutes as I listened to the story of Lucy, a chimp that a psychologist and his wife had raised from infancy as if she were their human child. As an experiment. This was the '70s, clearly before humans had the decency to introduce ethics into experimentation. The story of this poor child that was caught between two species was heartwrenching. You can listen to the show in its entirety here.

My friend Kami at The Fence wrote a post today about struggling to be the mother she wants to be, and it really resonated with me. She recently had a few wake-up calls that are helping to put things in perspective. I get a quick, slap-in-the-face back to appreciation anytime I think of the Bingham family. In late fall of 2006, I was a mother of 3-year old and a 2-year old. The Binghams had a four-year old daughter and a 2-year old son, and went out downtown for a cup of hot cocoa to celebrate fall one evening. As they crossed the street at the crosswalk, a drunk driver plowed them over, killing the mother and her two children. The unbelieveably terrible details can be read about through my link. The father had a few injuries, but his entire life was gone. In an instant. A nice young family, with their son wearing his superhero cape, out for cocoa? They were US; that could have been us so easily. For whatever reason, I, the mother of three little boys, get to be here now, and Rebecca Bingham and her two beautiful children are not. Dammit, I'm going to appreciate it, because my life can change in an instant and I would hate to look back and think, "Man, I had it so, so good and I wasted all those years bitching and complaining."

In her blog, Kami linked to a Mom-101 video that sums up the motherhood experience so wonderfully, I wanted to share it. I don't know how any mother could watch this with a dry eye.

Table for Two

Poor Valentine's Day.  It kind of got the shaft as far as holidays go, being relegated to chalky conversation hearts and lame packages of Disney-themed cards awkwardly passed out in elementary school classrooms around the country.

Its only saving grace is its association with the second-best Simpsons episode--the one where Ralph Wiggum declares his love for Lisa with a card that says 'I choo-choo choose you'.  This episode is a very close second, behind the one where Homer is prescribed medical marijuana (I don't know how to attach sound clips, but you can find some great ones from this episode here if you are looking to procrastinate working on your taxes). 

 Eight years ago today, I had a dinner date at Sam's apartment (the one with the living room that featured the two non-matching lawn chairs and trusty cardboard box as furniture, where we spent our evenings playing Scrabble).  One of his many talents is making homemade pizza--none of that store-bought crust stuff, but real, thrown-in-the-air crust perfected from his days working at Pizza My Heart in Santa Cruz.  He made two really delicious gourmet pizzas, set everything on the table, and then ran next door to borrow a corkscrew (I know, it's surprising he wouldn't have a corkscrew considering his furniture...).  He came back in to join me at the table and knelt down on the floor.  I thought he dropped his napkin, but instead he asked me to marry him.

Fast forward eight years, and we've got that much love plus three as we sit at the table.  Time is what we don't have, and after a snowy morning spent at the after-hours clinic and pharmacy to treat Kenyon's ear infection, a romantic meal for two (plus an earlier dinner for three) wasn't going to happen.  Late this afternoon, Sam took the boys sledding--I hate to have missed the fun, especially after hearing how Alex laid down on the sled with Kenyon (ear infection and all) riding on top of him, and Sam and Jackson holding hands and standing up while riding down the slope.  We didn't give the kids candy or presents this morning, but I rallied and wanted to mark what this holiday means in our little family unit.

I made a mess in the kitchen and in the hour that my family was gone, I whipped up beef tenderloin medallions with potato risotto and salad, lit candles, set the table with placemats and cloth napkins, and opened a special bottle of wine.  I also made bittersweet molten lava chocolate cakes and homemade cinnamon-coffee ice cream.  Epicurious, I owe you big-time for your fool-proof recipes.



It wasn't a romantic dinner for two, but I am so incredibly thankful that I have these boys in my life to love every day, and told them so (after sending Alex away from the table twice before dinner even started, and threatened that if there was a next time he'd be eating dinner alone upstairs).  After dinner, Jackson told me that he had wanted to do something special for me, so he had folded down our comforter and turned on our heated mattress pad for us.  How cute is that?  Kenyon kept saying Happy Birthday because of the candles, but once in a while threw in a Happy Valentine's Day for good measure.

After the boys went to bed, Sam and I sat at the table and played a game much like we did eight years ago when we were first dating.  Sure, this table is a little more sturdy than Sam's old cardboard box, and I'd like to think our path together is as well.  Valentine's Day, I will never buy into your forced Hallmark card/boxed chocolate/flowers shtick, but you have become a special holiday for me as a reminder of this path that I've chosen with my Sam, and for that I will always look forward to February 14.