Happy Valentine's Day!

Most holidays in the Rodriguez Douglas household don't get the attention that other families give to special days. For example, last Easter, the only means by which we celebrated Easter was to go to mass (much like all the other 51 Sundays in the year). However, that was the only Sunday Clara cried through mass and had to be escorted out. Besides me baking a lemon merangue pie, it was just another Sunday. Had Mario's parents not visited us for Christmas, I have a feeling that Christmas would have come and gone in much the same manner. Rather sad. But Mario just doesn't seem to get excited about holidays and the dates tend to creep up on me and catch me unawares, leaving me completely unprepared to celebrate anything.

So I had no expectations for Valentine's Day. When we were dating, we used to count Valentine's Day as our anniversary, because we knew that we began dating sometime between the end of January and the end of February. Every once in awhile, Mario even went out of his way to make the day special, giving me flowers in 2003, wine and chocolate in 2007.

This year, after trying to fix the shower all day on Saturday, Mario was faced with three months' worth of receipts to enter into the computer for his personal accounting. I knew it would take all day, so did not have any plans to do anything special. However, on Friday he had mentioned that it had been awhile since he cooked and he kind of missed it. To which I responded, "hey--knock yourself out!" I requested pork chops, as the man makes magic with pork chops. As 4pm rolled around, Mario was still in front of the computer, knee-high in receipts, denying being the least big hungry, and announcing that he would not be able to cook after all. Given the amount of work he did all weekend, I completely understood. As Clara and I attacked a liter of yogurt, Mario was apparently doing to reconsidering and decided that he would be able to cook after all, as long as I could wait until 5. No problem.

I poked my head in the kitchen a bit after 5 and noticed that he had buttered and basiled some of the sourdough bread, which was toasting in the oven. A pot of macaroni was on the stove for a first course, and he was preparing the chops as he ordered me out, claiming that the meal was to be special.

So, in the end, we broke Rodriguez Douglas tradition and celebrated Valentine's Day after all with a lovely, delicious, candelit dinner, a bottle of Casa Madero's Merlot (a winner), and dessert of chocolates that we had been hoarding since Christmas. Clara, reinforcing the idea that she is just a little woman, LOVED the chocolate.