An anniversary

Of sorts.

Today is the 14th anniversary of the last day I was neither engaged nor married. 14 years since I traded the stinging salt air of freedom for the shackles of a family man. Ahh, the nostalgia that Valentine's Day bring out each year.

I proposed to The Mrs. the day after Valentine's Day. I was going to do it on Valentine's Day, but then I decided that that was just waaaay to cliché and conformist for me. So, you let V-Day pass, let the disappointment build through a glorious, swelling, turgid crescendo, and then swoop in to save the day (well, save the next day).

Plus, like my marriage, my proposal was memorable mostly for its humor value. I can't remember the lie we agreed to tell The Childrens if they ever asked about it. But let's just say the The Mrs. knew what she was getting in to when she said yes.

Speaking of which, I hear that Ellie is getting married. That's fahbulous, as it gives me an opportunity to trot out CherkyB's Secrets to a Happy Marriage:

1. Don't get married.
2. When you choose to ignore #1 (beause you think you're different), at least don't have kids.
3. When you choose to ignore #1 and #2, buy the biggest, most expensive bed you can afford.

I wanted to do something really special for Valentine's Day today. Something that really captured the essence of the holiday. So, I cleaned out the drain pipes of our sinks. I mean, who doesn't want to get their pipes cleaned on Valentine's Day?

It turns out we have a lot of sinks. Nine of them. I started on the second floor, where there are four sinks, cuz my sink had been draining slowly, and no amount of Drain-o Max Gel changed that. Drain-o is, naturally, for people who either don't know what the f'k they're doing or are dreadfully lazy. I was trying to be in the second category. But no. I had to remove the pipes and clean out the traps and the down tubes and everything.

I did only seven of the nine, cuz I have the kitchen on open all the time (The Mrs. has not yet learned the moderation required with the garbage disposal), and I cleaned out the bar one just a few weeks ago. My fingers are still stinky, despite washing them a billion times.

So the Week of Disappointment has passed largely without incident. The Mrs. has managed to complain numerous times that I bought her a birthday cake rather than cooking her one, but then she keeps staring off into the distance and saying, "though I guess the oven was broken..." as though this is a major point of disappointment that she can't get full complaint value out of a store-bought cake. And a Carvel's ice cream cake at that. Which, as she says, "Is your favorite and The Childrens' favorite, but not my favorite."

I gave HannahC her first guitar lesson tonight. She is going to be taking guitar in her "Options School" school for homeschoolers next year, and she's been very excited about that. I dug out my acoustic to see if it would fit her (though The Mrs. has declared that she will not be allowed to take that guitar to school on account of how expensive it was). It didn't. I'll have to find a smaller one. She learned the first 7 notes of the first exercise in William Leavitt's "A Modern Method for Guitar: Volume 1." That was about 40 minutes into the lesson, cuz we had to learn the various parts of the guitar and how to hold the pick and how to shape your left hand before we started playing, and we spent a lot of time comparing and contrasting the guitar to the viola that she plays. Tomorrow, maybe we can add a few more notes.