This year, I took up two Lenten disciplines – one was to give up booze (except on Sundays, which are feast days, and a few other narrow exceptions, like last Thursday, when NovySan took me to the Tiki Ti for the very first time.), and the other was to cut down the amount of time I spend at work, so I have more time for other things, like writing, dancing, starting my law practice, reading a few of the books stacking up in corners of my house… Y’know – the whole rest of my life. The only way to do that is to really, really focus on the work I’m doing, while I’m doing it, so I can get it done, get it out of the way, and move on to other things.

I’m not so good at that. I get bored, and I drift, and next thing I know I’m reading essays on Victorian Baby Farming and getting crap-all done. (I can justify it, though! Of course I can! I’m doing research! Those baby-farmers will will make a literary appearance, someday.)

I did it today, though. Powered through what needed to be powered through, and then realized that I had no idea what to do with myself. Not because I didn’t want to spend some time on the personal parts of my to-do list (and I did that), but because my usual timewasters weren’t exerting their normal appeal.

Maybe I’m getting better at this, after all.

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In elementary school, I longed for Valentine’s cards from the boys I crushed on. And, of course, I got them – the same flimsy cardboard hearts, adorned with bad puns and cartoon bears, that every other girl in class got. There were rules, you see. If you brought Valentines, you had to bring one for everyone – and they all had to be the same.

Things changed when I started dating. Now Valentine’s Day brought gifts that were just for me. I might still have some of them, somewhere. Flowers and candies and strange plastic toys. I don’t remember that I was ever single on Valentine’s Day, but I also don’t remember any specific Valentine’s Day. It’s all a blur of red and white, and it’s all faded into the mists of time.

I got married (the first time), and while we always said “Oh, we don’t really do Valentine’s Day,” we did. There was always a special meal, at a restaurant we didn’t often go to, and there was always Valentine’s sex, because Valentine’s Day means you have to be in the mood.

Looking back, I realize that Valentine’s Day meant something special then because, no matter how I denied it, something was missing from Every Day that had to be wedged into this one heart-soaked Day in mid-February. That’s no longer the case. I know it’s cliche to say that “Every day is Valentine’s Day,” but if that means that every day, you say “I love you,” and that every day, you do something to show it – then it’s no cliche.

And so tonight, because we have no need to indulge in a Greeting Card Holiday to prove our love for each, NovySan and I are home, drinking cocktails (Pegu for me, a Perfect Manhattan for him), and getting ready to spend some quality time on UStream with our friends Be The Boy and The Slackmistress.

It was the Slackmistress’s recent post on Pointless Banter, concerning Crap Women Don’t Want for Valentine’s Day, that provided the original impetus for my Valentine’s Post. When she described a Valentine’s Day card display as looking “like they split Cupid open and shook his red heart-shaped entrails all over the place,” I thought, “What if we celebrated Valentine’s Day really authentically, as the feast of a martyred saint?” Which led me to a meditation on the reason for the season, as they say.

According to the always-infallible Wikipedia, there are three saints commonly identified as the Saint Valentine after whom the holiday is named. Catholic Online, though, while acknowledging that there is some controversy over the number of St. Valentines, and their exact occupations, focuses on one – a Roman priest, who, according to the Nuremberg Chronicle, was stoned, beaten and finally beheaded for the crime of performing Christian marriages and attempting to convert Claudius II (also known as Claudius Gothicus, which leads me to a wonderful mental image of Derek Jacobi in heavy eyeliner and latex club wear).

So, if you aren’t spending time with your sweetheart tonight, or if you can’t come and join us for Be the Marriage LIVE! (On Ice), you might consider martyring someone. Or, in fact, massacring several someones, if that’s more your speed. Just don’t tell the cops I sent you.

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When I was 15, my mother sent me to a psychologist. She was a very direct, often abrasive German woman, with a thick accent and a collection of gorgeous suede skirts, and I hated her. At first. Eventually, though, I realized that making me angry was her way of getting inside my shell, and once she was in there, she did start helping me rearrange the furniture in ways that were, ultimately, beneficial. She ran me through a battery of tests, and at the end of it, she told me I was highly intelligent and clinically depressed. She didn’t want to put me on antidepressants, though – she didn’t like the side effects, and she thought exercise might do just as well. So, she told me to walk, half an hour every day, and she’d re-evaluate me in a few months.

She was right. The exercise helped. I haven’t always been good at remembering that, though, when I’ve started slipping back into the grey places – partly because it’s so difficult to know that you’re depressed. I’ve gotten better at it, though. I don’t want to live there again, and I certainly don’t want to take NovySan there with me. So whether or not I manage any other exercise, I’ve been walking, daily, and it helps.

The other thing it helps with is getting to really know this neighborhood I’ve lived in for seven years, but haven’t thoroughly explored. If you follow me on Flickr, or on Twitter, you may have noticed posts and pictures of things I see when I’m out and about.

Yesterday, it was this one:

I still don’t know for sure, but the Twitterverse has several theories:

The child was kidnapped:

The child escaped:

The child was ejected:

Or, the child was traded for a fifth of JD:

What do you think?

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To kick it off a few days early (and try to get myself back in the habit with this blogging thing), I’m taking a cue from Sarah Morgan’s post “10 Years Ago Today,” which was brought to my attention by Be the Boy. NovySan went into his IMDB record to find out what he was doing, but since mine doesn’t go back that far, I had to do some math.

2008-10=1998, give or take a few days, and we end up with Halloween 1998. (We’ll call it Halloweek, just to cover our bases.) That was my first year in law school, and the year my first marriage fell apart. Or, at least, it was the year the cracks really started to show. Sometime after Thanksgiving 1998, I was sitting in front of my computer sobbing, looking up California divorce info on a dial-up connection – but I didn’t file the paperwork until 2001. Halloweek 1998, though, I was coming up on my 6th anniversary (yes, we got married on Halloween), and I really can’t remember what we did for it.

I’m also not sure where I thought I’d be in 2008, but this is where I’ve ended up – I’ve just reactivated my legal license (and it’s no easier to find a job now than it was when I passed the Bar in 2001), I’m very happily remarried, and the only thing I know about 2018 is that it’s 10 years away, and that’s plenty of time to get wherever I’m going.

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It’s been a strange, sad, joyful year for me, and while some things, I hope never to repeat, other things (one thing in particular) made it one of the best years of my life.

In March, NovySan and I went to London and Stratford-Upon-Avon, where we visited old friends, met new friends, saw F. Murray Abraham in The Merchant of Venice and Ian McKellen in King Lear, drank at the Dirty Duck, ate at Lee Ho Fook’s, wandered Hyde Park, visited the Tower, Tower Bridge and the Temple, and picked up a signed copy of Donald Rumbelow’s Jack the Ripper book at the end of his Jack the Ripper tour. I could go on for days about this trip. Definitely one of the high points.

And then, in April, I got sick. High fever, sore throat, hacking cough… Your basic horrible plague. And I stayed sick for about six weeks, through three rounds of antibiotics, chest x-rays, prescription inhalers… I think it’s the sickest I’ve ever been, and I very much hope that it’s the sickest I ever am.

July, though! Oh, July made the entire year worth it. On July 7, NovySan and I got married. I knew the day I met him that I wanted him in my life. It didn’t take me much longer to know I wanted him in my life for the rest of my life. I love you, baby.

In August, Lindsay Holichek died, of undiagnosed, and apparently asymptomatic, ovarian cancer. I always thought of Lindsay as my parents’ friend, but she was mine, too. She called herself my surrogate mother – I was more her surrogate daughter. Just a few weeks before she died, I was looking at one of the (many) books she’d given me and thinking that I should write to her. I didn’t, and of course it’s too late now. It wasn’t until after she died that I realized how strongly she’d influenced me. She was my mentor before I understood what that meant. She gave me my first copy of Tatterhood and Other Tales, which nurtured my love of fantastic literature and helped spark my feminism. (There’s a reason it’s the first book I ever gave Novy’s daughter.) She loved food and music and she had a beautiful mind and an amazing talent for gift-giving. She always chose just the right thing. It’s something I’ve tried to emulate (with, I flatter myself, some small degree of success). I’ll miss her, but as my mother (ever wise) said, Lindsay enjoyed her life, and she died quickly, painlessly, and doing something she loved. It’s a sad thing, but not a tragedy.

The end of August brought Burning Man. Our third year, and the first we’ve camped with other people. It was a good year. The early Burn didn’t affect us – I called the event post-Paul Addis “Christmas in Whoville.” I loved the wind and the dust. Something about that harsh environment speaks to me, at least one week out of the year. (Of course, I know that without Novy’s engineering skills, I’d be a miserable huddled wreck underneath someone’s car, instead of laughing at the storms from the safety of our shade structure). The Temple Burn was magical for me – life-changing, I think. There are things I could complain about, but I won’t. I think the beauty of the event is that almost everyone can find an experience there that’s right for them, and I don’t choose to have an experience in which the crowds and the bad behavior overwhelm the generosity, artistic expression and communal feeling I’m there for. I don’t know that I’ll want to keep going every year, but I cherish the years I have been.

On November 30, my friend Shawn died. I’ve written about this before. Novy and I went to Portland in December for his memorial – met his friend Linda and his partner John. I’m glad we went. Meeting them, and talking to them, helped answer some questions for me, though it raised new ones, as well. There’s so much about his death that I still don’t understand, and of course he’s not here for me to ask. This was one of the low points. Shawn suffered terribly – not just at the end, but his entire life. So many people loved him, but it wasn’t enough. He’d been so damaged, I don’t know what any of us could have done to save him.

And that brings us, roughly, to the turn of the year, which Novy and I spent with Amara and friends. I’ve got more to say about 2008, but I’ll leave it now with a wish, a hope, a prayer – I’m almost afraid to call it a certainty – that this is going to be a very good year.

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