Will You Be My Lame Valentine?

When did Valentine's Day become a second Halloween? Apparently it happened some time between when I left the 3rd grade and Declan went to preschool. In my day (Don't you love it when stories start like that? It's an indication that the person telling the story is an old fart.), you bought those boxes of 30 Valentines that you filled in the To/From, folded it over, dropped it in people's decorated Valentine's boxes, and that was it. Or am I imagining this?

At a Valentine's party in the 21st century, your Valentine box gets filled with loot. Here are the contents of Finn's box as an example:



Not only does practically everyone stick some sort of candy to their Valentine (thank you mother of the student who taped a pencil on instead), there are elaborate, handmade Valentines that required effort beyond name writing and folding. I just can't go there. Besides, I have boys who would think I was crushing the candy hearts and snorting them if I tried to get them to sit down and create Valentine works of art from doilies and craft foam.

Back in the day, Valentine party food consisted of one heart-shaped cookie and maybe some juice. Or again, am I delerious?

Now the food at your party is a smorgasboard of things that give your mother heart palpitations when she thinks about how you will behave when all the sugar and food additives hit your bloodstream--which is right after school when you arrive home all hopped up. Happily there are some healthier choices there now as well: Carrots and dip and chocolate covered strawberries--it makes my heart sing.

I fear I am the last holdout in this area. The boys take the foldover Valentines (Pokemon this year) and that's it. I sort of rank this up there with the favor bags that come home from birthday parties, which have practically become the size of Santa's bag on Christmas Eve. I protest. I protest it all.

I wonder if my kids will be branded as "those kids who only bring in the cheap foldover Valentines."

I blame it all on Hallmark.

I Wish I Could Call in Sick

If it wouldn't expose me as a sniveling whiner, I'd call my mother and ask her to call the companies I work for and tell them I'm too tired to work tonight. And then she'd also need to call Declan's teacher and tell her I'm too tired to ice 50-odd heart-shaped cookies for the Valentine's Party tomorrow. I'm also too tired to go to the Valentine's party tomorrow. But I'm the mother coordinating the party, so I guess I should be there.

Why? Why? Why am I so tired? Because I spent last night in a hotel with Finn Rooney who persisted in bouncing off the walls until nearly 10 p.m. making it difficult for me to do my client work until after he finally fell asleep. Then he proceeded to snore, snort, flail and generally thrash about in his bed for most of the night so that when I did finally get to go to bed, I woke up every 3.2 minutes or so.

We went to Denver on Tuesday for Finn's bloodwork and IViG. It was cloudly in Eagle, but dry. By the time we made it to Vail, we were in a full-on snowstorm that lasted until Georgetown, which is typical. As we crested the last of the foothills of the Front Range and dropped down into Denver, Finn looked around and said, "Why is it spring here?" And it did look really funny to me, too, and it seemed bizarre to think that we got in the car and there were several feet of snow at our house and then we were getting out of the car and didn't even need coats. It was like a weather time warp or something.

Finn's counts are good: ANC = 2700. I can't remember if I wrote about this before, but we had his eyes checked in November because his chemo nurse felt like he was squinting. So I took him to WalMart and the doctor (but now I wonder, how qualified was this guy???) said he was fine. But Finn's squinting continued and his teacher even commented on it. So yesterday the oncologist checked Finn's eyes and felt he saw something that wasn't quite right. We were able to squeeze into an appointment at a pediatric eye place (I'm sure "eye place" is the technical term they prefer to be referred to as, don't you?).

Lo and behold, Finn does indeed have a problem with his eyes--astigmatism. The doctor said he felt this is something Finn would have had regardless and is probably unrelated to the chemo. Good--something I can finally not blame on cancer. I'm sure cancer is relieved.

So The Mighty Finn will be getting glasses. Depending on the moment, he is either happy or unhappy about this. Tomorrow, depending on the snowstorm that is supposed to come through here tonight, we'll go to Glenwood and pick out some glasses. I can't even picture Finn with glasses! He's very worried people with make fun of him, like Arthur's friends did in "Arthur's Eyes." Why, oh why did I show him that video yesterday at the clinic? Now he's all paranoid. I'd better to hide the episode of Little House on the Prairie where Mary gets her glasses and all the kids make fun of her. . .that is until she realizes Miss Beadle also wears glasses. I don't understand what difference it really makes because was Miss Beadle really that cool? I guess to Mary she was. And I definitely don't Finn to see the LHP episode where Mary's glasses start a prairie fire! He'll be out on the sidewalk assassinating ants with his glasses all summer long.

At any rate, after both clinic and eye appointments were finished, we would have been driving home from Denver in the dark, which just isn't my bag, baby. I hate to sound like a big wuss, but driving around in the wilderness where big things like deer, elk and bighorn sheep leap off cliffs at you and you wipe out trying to swerve on snow covered roads, well, it's just not my thing.

I talked to a very unhelpful young man at the American Cancer Society who claimed I had never left him a message on his voicemail and that's why I didn't have a hotel room, and I had to fill out a new release form (which I had never filled out to begin with) before he could make any phone calls to any hotels, yadda, yadda, yadda. . .I actually had to cut him off in the end and hang up on him. I know that sounds mean because the ACS has been very helpful in the past, but this guy was decidedly unhelpful and I was out of time to sit there and listen to him blather on.

I ended up making my own reservation and we stayed at a very nice Hampton Inn and Suites. When we got there, it was like the country cousins arriving in the big city. Finn walked in and was saying, "Whoa! Wow! Look at that!" And on and on. You'd think this child had never stayed in a hotel before let alone traveled internationally on multiple occasions. He ate dinner at the desk in the room, ate popcorn in bed and watched movies on the portable DVD player while I worked, and ate a gourmet breakfast of Sugar Corn Pops and a biscuit. He was so overwhelmed by his journey that he didn't know what to do with himself. What a letdown he'll face when he wakes up tomorrow back in his own bed.

Which actually sounds really good to me because the 50-odd heart-shaped cookies are still there waiting for me. Mom?