Love is (was) in the air...

…or it would be, if it could find a place to breathe among the piles of papers scattered around my home office. The Valentine’s Day card I bought for my husband more than a month ago is safely tucked away in my sock drawer – I think. And we have tentative plans to go to a $2 showing of The Muppet Movie at the mall theater, plus it’s ‘free popcorn’ night.

In six month’s from tomorrow, we’ll celebrate our 30^th wedding anniversary. My goal is to have the office shoveled out by then. But I can’t complain since it’s my mess. Piles = projects = work = employment in the life of a freelancer.

I wrote the above a week ago, and that’s as far as I got. Valentine’s Day is history, and we’re on to Fat Tuesday. I did find the card, we didn’t make the movie, and the work hasn’t let up -- which is still a good thing.

Mulling exactly where this is going (a treatise on the passage of time? a paean to true love? a procrastination tool to avoid the deadline work staring me in the face?), all that comes to me is how happy it made me to take the morning ‘off’ to dust.

I love dusting, watching the powdery surfaces (okay it’s been awhile!) gleam from a combination of elbow grease and Murphy’s Oil Soap spray. Okay, this chore gets done enough that not much elbow grease is required.

Bathroom cleaning is high on my list too.

Lest I sound like Snow White and Cinderella all wrapped up in one (minus the teeny tiny Disney waistlines, perfectly coiffed hair, and dewdrop eyes), let me add I loathe cooking. Given a choice between sweeping the hearth and preparing a meal, hand me the broom. I’d take soot over char any time.

Fortunately the only time I have to cook is when my spouse is out of town. If I were single, a bowl of Cheerios would be on the menu most nights, but my mom (who lives with us) and I will take turns making dinner when our ‘chef’ is gone. Usually I cook for us, and she cooks for the teenager. His standards are higher than ours. Teenager also can cook as can his older brother, who makes fabulous sushi.

They take after their dad.

I used to cook in the early days of our marriage: homemade macaroni and cheese, beef ‘roly poly’ (yes, it made the eater resemble the name), popovers with Chicken a’ la King….

And I baked, oh did I bake…. (in my defense I do still enjoy baking but try to avoid the kitchen unless scrubbing pots and pans or Windexing something) Pies, cakes, cookies, brownies, lemon bars, biscuits, cinnamon rolls… just typing the words expands my hips.

Of course that all changed when my husband was diagnosed with diabetes more than a decade ago. He took over the cooking to the betterment of both of us.

We’re not thin by any means, but we aren’t as pudgy as we were during those early years. I collect cookbooks (oh the irony!), and sometimes I’ll see a fabulous recipe and think maybe I should try cooking once in a while.

Then I think ‘why’? I know how good I’ve got it (I’m very proud of the fact I’ve never cooked/ruined a Thanksgiving turkey). I have a husband who not only brings home the bacon, he fries it up too.

Saves us a lot of calls to the fire department.