Valentine’s Day today.  Excessive pink sentiment has pervaded even here: stores filled with heart-shaped chocolates, kids exchanging valentines at school…men scurrying through the streets clutching bouquets.

Stasha says today’s list is about “things you love,” so I thought I’d tell you about my Valentine’s Day:

1. Was awakened by smiling children already dressed for school, each carrying a home-made valentine’s card for me.

2. Shuffled into the kitchen where Husband had made breakfast and coffee and in a serious sign of affection, prepared the lunch-boxes.

3. Taught my classes, met students, and then spent the afternoon getting a luscious pedicure.

4. Came home to a beautifully prepared meal, a bottle of champagne, and a spotless house.

Oh.

Wait.

Sorry. Wrong movie. Hear that scratching sound? Yeah, that’s the tape re-winding.

1. Wake up to my alarm and a silent apartment.

2. Roust sleeping children who grumble but who are also delectably soft and cuddly.

3. Shuffle into the kitchen. Make coffee. Wonder why I ever got in the habit of making my children a hot breakfast every day. Idiot. Why don’t I just serve them baggies of cold cereal they can eat dry, on the bus to school? Realize that because they have such pathetic diets (if I were a French mother, I wouldn’t have this problem, naturellement), breakfast is the only meal where I can pack nutrients into their bony bodies.

4. Remember I have to drive them to school instead of have them take the bus. Dress in a hurry, hope my earrings match, grab my materials for class, hope I’ve not forgotten anything, get in the elevator to the lobby, remember I forgot my phone, go back up to the apartment, back down to the lobby, into the car, battle traffic, get kids to school on time.

5. Drive back from school after a meeting, battle traffic, find a parking place on campus, get to my own class with five minutes to spare.

6. Teach. Am brilliant. Or might have been brilliant. Have no real idea what the hell I was talking about, but the students were writing it down.

7. Drive to a meeting. Drive back to the school to pick up a child from sports practice. Drive home. Begin to help other child with some kind of clay mountain-building project for geography class.

8. Make dinner for children. Husband does not have dinner; he is packing for a five-day departure trip to Australia.

9. Bid adieu to Husband. Tell him I hope our children don’t become completely feral in his absence.

10. Put children to bed. Remember that I need to write a blog post and prepare for class. Decide that a glass of wine at this point would ensure that neither of these tasks get done.

11. Find beautiful necklace and earrings that Husband left me as a Valentine’s Day present.

12. Remember the other day, when he drew this in the sandy dust of a table where we were going to have lunch:

Husband is much better at “we” than I am.  It’s one of the many, many reasons why I am still glad he’s my valentine.