Valentimes

I really liked this one from the N.Y. Times today 

It was better than the one I had cooked up but decided not to send this morning.  

I don't really have anyone to share the day with but my mother for whom I have flowers, a balloon, and a card.  

So. . . fuck it. . . there's enough of that.  It completely got by me that yesterday was a Friday the 13th until late in the afternoon.  Remember from now on, when Valentine's Day is on a Saturday. . . . Or as we used to say in the hills, Valentimes.  Yea, that's right. . . just a bunch of uneducated hillbillies.  

So. . . mom is doing "great" at the spa I got her into.  Yesterday when I went to see her, she was with two of her neighbor friends at a "concert," a man singing karaoke to a room full of people with walkers and wheelchairs, so I left a note in her room and said I'd call her later.  She even showered without help, so. . . it won't be long.  

"But you said she could stay in that place for 90 days, right?"

Yea.  I can't do that.  I'm just not built that way.  She wants to go home.  Who can blame her?  Well, I know I do a lot, but. . . .

And actually, as well as she is doing, and as anxious as my hillbilly cousin is to have her Florida time, maybe that will work out.  Still TBD.  

But for now, I am home.  And that is pretty much it.  At home or at the rehab center.  I'm a veritable shut-in otherwise.  Surrounded by the ephemera and tchotchke of my life, of course.  

And so, to steal an old Royal British Navy toast with their daily allotment of Pusser's rum, a Valentine's Day ditty--"To Wives and Lovers. . . May They Never Meet!"

Having neither, it doesn't matter to me.  Rather, if you are smart and knowledgable and know the reference, "Here's to Esmeralda."  

Now I circle the bars on the promenade
While the girls in the glass, they're just throwing me shade

You're all fucked up, Saint Valentine