Ain't love grand?

And now, a belated Valentine's day address! Last year I bought my girl a ring but made it clear to all of you it had NOTHING to do with some bullshit holiday cooked up by bored marketers out to sell crap. I just happened to be in the mall with $20 I found in the dryer. Ahem. This year I maintain that Valentines' is a cooked up ass holiday but OK, here's the admission at last: I'm a hopeless romantic. Yep. It's true. I secretly want to be all Wuthering Heights and gusty emotions on windy nights and candles and poetry - but good poetry, not that insipid crap that passes for poems most of the time, especially with lesbians. Shit with some imagination and some guts to it. I want to cry "Heathcliff!" toward the castle in the rain, except in my case it would be "Heather!" or something, because, you know, Heathcliff was a guy.

That said, I don't live on the moors, I live in a little house in Durham with a cat that's been throwing up a lot and I haven't done my Tax homework. Sigh. Life and literature don't cross that often. The question remains how to be romantic between the out of town flights and sick cats and laundry and mortgage and the coffee table which seems to have some magical ability to collect crap, like some hellish magnet in the middle of the living room. Further, I've never been with anyone stable before and the dramatic fights and makeups just aren't here for that crying at the castle feeling, you know? NOT that the stomachaches were worth it. And as for stability and settling down - well, it has a lot of benefits; but then, you never get that first kiss again - or do you?

This year, I made my girl a CD with multiple levels of themes (yeah, I'm creative like that.) and tried to musically trace the development of our relationship. It wasn't as corny as it sounds. Shutup. In thinking about that process, it has occurred to me that every relationship has lots of mini-relationships within it, and you kind of do get that first kiss again, because things change so much, and people do, too. There was that monumental first kiss, and boy, this one I'll never forget. Then there was that day I realized I might as well quit trying to stay single because she had me hook, line and windy moor. The first time I cried in front of her. The day she moved in. The first time we split a vet bill. Signing the mortgage. The first vacation. The second vacation. The day I realized I have a tan line on my ring finger. The first time I told her I loved her. The time I told her I love her today.

Relationships take work, though, and I wonder if what happens a lot of times is people forgetting to stop and take a fresh look at that face you see every day and remembering why you wanted to see it every day in the first place. It can be hard to see through the fog of tax homework and the table's detritus. Sometimes a new face can offer promises of clean coffee tables and candles in the castle but soon, you know, they all become surrounded by socks on the floor and bills. So I think the trick is to put down the homework and pick up the socks, or not, and break out that first smile when you sneak home for a nooner; to start building new castles. Then, if they're castles made of sand, so much the better, y'all, because when they wash away, you can go kiss your girl in the ocean and build that castle all over again. Happy Valentine's, cause love is grand, socks, tax, coffee tables and all.