Word of the Day: mash I don't like Valentine's Day. And it's not becuase of the overloveness of the day, or the commercial aspect of it. It's because bad things, big, life-changing things, seem to happen on 14 February. Not every year, of course, but sort of sporadic and only since recently. *A friend of mine from high school who had graduated and went to college was murdered on Valentine's Day by a crazy ex-boyfriend. The news completely devistated the town, and I had never, ever seen our little Catholic church so absolutely packed as it was for her funeral. *JD fell out of a tree onto the back of his neck and received five compression fractures on his spine on Valentine's Day. He really should have been paralyzed or dead, especially since he tried to get up and walk it off like a half-conscious dumbass, but only I stayed with him and kept him on the ground till the paramedics got there. He could have died but for me. Thank God I didn't lose my head like most everyone else, including his then-girlfriend. *I went into labor five weeks early with Patrick on Valentine's Day. I contracted a UTI becuase I was working by myself at the desk and didn't have time to get any water to drink. All day long I worked with a burning sensation in my lower abdoman, and I could barely breathe at times later on that evening. We went to the hospital the next day, when they told me about the UTI and that it had triggered labor. If there would have been something terribly wrong with Patrick because of his premature birth, that damned hotel would have been mine. And then it wouldn't have been becuase it's crap and I would have sold it. I don't like Valentine's Day, and it doesn't like me back. Last night, we went out for pizza and underwear to celebrate JD getting a raise because he's awesome. Or, pizza to celebrate, and underwear for Patrick becuase he keeps ruining the ones he has. Any road, it was time for Patrick to go to bed when we got home, so we got him all ready and off. JD and I sat in the living room and ate a couple of chocolate-covered strawberries that he had bought for me. Eventually, we moved elsewhere to do some boot-knockin, unwittingly leaving the other seven strawberries in the living room. When we were done, JD found Patrick in his bed with only one strawberry left, on the verge of being ingested. There was chocolate all over his face, his hands, one of his arms for some reason, on one of his pillow cases. Man, was I ever mad. I gave him a quick bath and brushed his teeth, lecturing him the whole time about how his daddy didn't spend nearly ten dollars on a treat only to have him eat almost the whole damned box, how the next day was Valentine's Day and we had candy for him to have but since he did that he wasn't going to have candy until his birthday, which will suck for him because there's candy everywhere, how he was going to have a bellyache becuase that was entirely too much sweet for a little person to have before bed without paying for it. Mad, mad, mad. But then, after I lectured him into his jammies and into bed, JD and I laughed about it. His face was so funny when we caught him red, or, rather, brown and strawberry, handed.