Coffee thoughts: The Deck is My Life?

As a I sit here today on this beautiful fall morning outside in the fall, I am pondering the fact that this deck is a metaphor for my life this year. It’s a shitty deck.  No point beating around the bush. 

More than half the rails are gone, there are more holes than not, more rotten boards than good ones. That’s how my life feels this year - someone took some rails off when my dad died and now the world feels less safe, less normal. The rotten boards and holes are the many land mines we have had to walk around, through and over - the endless snow, need for feed, truck rolls, endless truck and trailer repairs, dogs being run over, cows dying, calves dying, 16 year old beloved pets dying, vet bills, horses being lame, cars hitting calves, calving season nightmares are made of, loss of jobs, jobs six hours from home, new jobs that halt some dreams, 7000 new ways a government can put their hands in your pocket (indeed bring cash), sad to say, I could go on.

On the flip side, the deck still holds my chair when I want to have coffee with my dogs, it still holds my barbecue for when I want to cook for my family, it is a place to feed my dogs and cats. Those good qualities reflect our physical health, as it has continued to be one of our blessings, and our support system from near and far - the family and friends who lend a hand, lend a shoulder, lend money, text and call, send thoughts and prayers. 

So the deck isn’t all bad, but it’s pretty crappy. So, here’s the thing. A new, better deck can be built. So why haven’t we ripped the crappy one off and started a new one? In what ways can we shed the unbelievable bad stretch of events we have had and start fresh? That’s the question. Maybe we will start by ripping off the deck. I really think if we don’t rip the deck off, it’s going to completely fall apart. I also believe that if we don’t make some significant decisions and life changes, our life and marriage are going to fall apart. 

The fact is the deck is not working out, we need a new one. This decision is not working out and we need a new one. This deck may really hurt someone if the fall through, our current life is going to hurt our relationships beyond repair. 

Now the question is, what kind of deck do we build? What kind of life do we build? Do we make a newer, bigger, fancier deck? Or a smaller, more for function than style deck.  Do we put a cover on it to protect it from weather? Do we put a hot tub in it for warmth and downtime? Do we spend a ton of money and time on this deck? Or do we go for simple and efficient?  The same could be said for our life choices.  

Truth be told, right now, I am not sure what the new deck will look like. I know I am really over the old one. It is starting to be more hazard than help. I feel the very same about our life. Like the rotting deck boards, something is going to give if we don’t replace it, mental health, marriage, financial fitness. It’s time to talk about the new deck.

Nevertheless, She Persisted

I have been thinking on this blog since a package showed up at my door on August 1. Clearly it's taken some time for me to get to it. On August 1, a surprise arrived in the mail from 2 of my favourite people.  It was an out of the blue surprise and in the card was a pretty necklace from Origami Owl that says "Nevertheless, She Persisted", with a lovely note from both ladies.  For those who know me, they know this has been an incredibly difficult year for many reasons, not the least of which was losing my dad 6 months ago.

I had my daughter put my necklace on that day and it hasn't been off of me since.  It has become a bit of a mantra.  As I think of the #domoreag and Mental Health in Agriculture movement, as I think of the pain of grief, loss and coping, as I think of ADHD, as I think of brain injuries, post concussion syndrome, making major life changes, I think that this mantra could not have come at a more perfect time. 

You see, I am unique, and yet I am not. My circumstances are unique to me, my challenges are unique to me, however, I am not the only one who has challenges.  There are so many people out there that need a mantra.  They need a gift out of the blue.  They need support, love, kindness, to know that someone cares.  They need reminders that they have a 100% survival rate of every bad day up until this point and that they can keep surviving.  If you aren't the person that is in need (and even if you are), reach out and lift someone else.  You honestly never know when your words or deeds may be the difference between a good day and a bad one, a nervous breakdown and a resolution to keep carrying on, a thought to take one's own life and to live. 

To ensure this isn't a multi page blog - as it bears some discussion over a few posts, I am going to try to keep my train of through from wandering too far off track, as it is wont to do.  The facts are that life throws challenges at us. It is not all sunshine and roses.  Anyone who says otherwise is either delusional or lying.  Plain and simple.  However, how we react to this challenges is the ball in our court.  As Gabrielle Bernstein likes to say in her book, The Universe Has Your Back, we need to thing of challenges and obstacles as Detours In The Right Direction.  I find this most challenging when I have lost sense of what the "right direction" is.  Learning to let the universe/source/God lead the way can be a hard lesson for some. Choosing my reaction instead of simply reacting, is also a test at times. Choosing to let go of some control is a stretch.

Back to the theme of persistence. There are a number of ways you can look at this - "One Day at a Time", as the 12 step programs for grief and addiction speak of, "Nevertheless, She Persisted" meaning she kept going despite of and because of everything that came before, "Keep Trucking" as Dave Dudley says in one of my dad's favourite trucking songs, "Brave the Wilderness" as Brene Brown would have us do.  Whatever works for you.  Whatever it takes to keep putting one foot in front of the other when everything is going to hell in a hand-basket and you have a hard time seeing that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and better yet, that the light is not a train! 

I have fought with mental health troubles off and on most of my adult life.  Despite all the chaos in my world right now, that is one of the only battles I am currently winning.  I can certainly say that our first year as cattle owners, not just kids of cattle owners or ranch hands for someone else's operations, has tested every faculty we have. It has tested our marriage, it has decimated bank accounts, caused rifts with neighbours, caused us to be too familiar with the local veterinarians.  It continues to challenge us every day.  Yet, here we are, putting one foot in front of each other, the best way we can. And we have to be content that somedays, that may be all that we can do.  One foot in front of the other.  Other days, we may run, jump, celebrate and laugh - those are the bright spots!

Some days, it is all I can do to remember that I have survived 100% of the bad days so far.  Other days, I love my life.  I can't tell you percentages, as it changes monthly, sometimes by the hour, as to how many good vs. bad there are.  All I know, is that I am persisting.  Every day.  One foot in front of the other.  Through the endless winter of 2018, through the awful calving season with big calves and heifer cows, through the mystery disease that wiped out almost 1/3 of our calves, through my husband going back to work in Grande Prairie, through the grief of losing my dad, through a summer of cows pretending that what fences we have don't exist and exasperated neighbours, through going back to work myself full-time, through days where my post-concussion syndrome would have me in a memory-failing brain fog that renders me near to useless to the world... Nevertheless, she persisted... God willing, she will continue to do so.

Thank you to everyone who has been there for us since we moved away. It is because of the people that we choose to have in our lives that we are able to keep going. It is because of people who send letters, send gifts out of the blue, send random texts saying, "let's chat, I miss you", who call and call and call even though I am terrible for answering or returning calls.  That's what keeps us as sane as we can be when the chips are down, everything is stacked against you and you want to quit. It is the people that we have made into our village that remind us that as disheartening, disappointing, sad and hard life may be at any given moment, that we have friends and we have family members that are rooting for us, lifting us, pushing us to keep going because they believe in us and whatever our dreams may be.  And it is knowing that no matter where we go (how many miles apart), or what we do (how many detours in the right direction we have to take), that we have an amazing village that is home for us, even when we don't feel at home in our physical space.  God bless. Namaste.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

That pretty much sums up how I feel lately. Like if I put things out of sight, they will be out of my mind.  Also, it seems that as I have allowed myself to go out of sight on social media and in my personal life in a few ways, I am out of people's minds as well.  

So many things that we take for granted in this life.  The biggest one is time.  Time is not eternal in this lifetime. We have limited quantities of it, yet we spend it like we have endless amounts of it.  I have been somewhat "off grid" for the past couple months as we lost my dad unexpectedly from an illness that was apparently far more serious than the doctor's led him to believe.  He had just turned 66.  It took the wind out of my sails and slowed down what momentum I had built up from the insanity that was our spring.  I had big plans of blogging and doing youtube videos about ranch life and things that matter to me.  It turns out that sometimes you just can't talk about the things that matter the most.

We also take for granted our importance to others.  I am a frequent social media poster - with Facebook as my primary platform.  Interestingly, I have posted far less in the past couple of months than I normally would.  And even more interestingly, not one person has mentioned it.  It has also surprised me the people who have kept in touch with me since my dad passed and the ones who have been missing.  There really is a lot to be learned when the chips are down.  I don't say this with anger or hard feelings, either.  I say it as an observation - one that I will keep with me as I invest time into relationships going forward.  It seems I do a lot of reaching out and almost always get a response - however, it also seems that there are a token few that reach out to me proactively without just responding.  Everyone has their own lives, their own journeys, their own troubles and triumphs.  It's important to recognize the people who want, need and value your presence in their lives and you do the same with them and those that are truly a passing acquaintance.  With time as a scarce commodity, it should be invested in those that there is a mutual love, bond, connection and commitment with.

This particular blog is not about anything in particular with regards to ranching.  Though I have lots of pictures and I have lots of funny and not funny tales to tell about it.  They will come as I do want to share.  It is just that the last few months haven't been easy, they have shown me that priorities can be changed in an instant.  The loss of my dad and people's reactions to it have also taught me a few things.  These I will share - my observations or my own experiences:

When someone passes unexpectedly:
- Those who left it all on the table with their loved ones suffer immense loss and grief for all that will not be going forward, yet there is a peace in their hearts
- People who carry grudges and make judgments about others will likely carry the weight of those on top of their grief for all of their lives
- There will ALWAYS be someone who cares more about what they can get out of a situation than the people within it
- There are those who will be incredibly selfish in their grief and those who will be incredibly compassionate and empathetic, prioritizing others' grief and pain over their own
- No two people grieve in the same way
- People inevitably judge how other's grieve based on their perception of what is appropriate
- Those judgments mean shit at the end of the day.

I am sad, I am a bit lost, I am frustrated at the health care system and the hospital in particular.  I am also grateful.  My dad was not an easy guy.  He was not easy to please and he was not easy to love or be loved by.  Yet, in the past 5 or so years, he experienced a massive shift in perspective.  That shift allowed for a lot of past hurts to be forgiven, though not entirely forgotten.  It allowed for a few years of real fun, real respect and real love.  I don't know exactly where the shift came from - but I know that I am grateful for it.  

And though my being "off-grid", less out there on social media and less of the first to reach out to others to chat seems to have taken me from out of sight to out of mind, my dad being gone nearly two months from our lives, "out of sight" has definitely not taken him out of mind. 

PS

The Power of Partnerships

When you think of partnership, who do you think of?  Your spouse?  Your parents or kids on the farm?  When I think of partnerships, I think of everyone who has a hand in the success of my business.  This includes the family members that are part of the business, the accountant, the banker (or preferably Credit Union financial support), and the veterinarian.

The relationship with a vet is what spurred this blog on.  You see, the other night, when we had a cow down with a calf that couldn't be pulled in need of caesarian section, my husband could not find a vet willing to come out and help.  Our regular vet was "gone away" according to whomever answered the phone at the emergency number on the clinic voicemail.  Most of the others who answered the phone were too busy or didn't have a large animal vet available.  Then there were a couple who were too far away and didn't want to leave their own area without someone for that long if they came out here, but were willing to do in-clinic work if we could get her on the trailer (fair point for the vet, but no way this cow was getting up and into a trailer).  In all of our moving and planning and buying cattle, it never occurred to us that we may end up having to euthanize an animal for lack of ability to find veterinary care in a crisis.

This is why the power of partnerships is SO important on the ranch or in any business.  As a former lender and manager at a bank and credit union, I have seen the value of partnerships from a bit different light on the other side of the desk, but always saw the need for relationships to be built rather than once a year going to visit the accountant, banker or neighbour.  These relationships are important to develop at the beginning, not just when you need them.

A great example of this is your relationship with your bank or Credit Union.  If you start out on your own and then you get into a jam and THEN you head off to talk to the local banker, you are more likely to meet resistance than if you have been in, sat down and planned with someone what you were looking at doing.  We think of banks as money lenders, but there are services beyond that which could benefit us greatly.  There are planning services, tax efficiency knowledge, utilizing different savings vehicles and more.  How many of you use your banker to the maximum of their ability? If you don't feel the banker you are dealing with has the right knowledge to assist you (we just recently went through this at a local credit union) - go somewhere else until you find someone that does.  They should be able to answer your questions or they should have someone they can go to and get answers for you.  Do not accept mediocre bankers.  You need someone who believes in your plan and is willing to work with you.

Another example is your accountant.  As a former banker, I can't even tell you how many farmers and ranchers I met with that did not use their accountant to the fullest of their abilities.  Rather than sit down and discuss where the tax efficiencies might be and what to do about retirement and succession planning, it was merely a relationship like those the average person has with H&R Block and companies of the like.  It should be a quarterly or semi-annual meeting - not a shoe box on April 15th (this one do as I say, not as I do).  A good accountant that is knowledgeable in agriculture should be able to help you look for ways to keep money in your business and ensure that you are still mindful of retirement and succession planning.  Use your accountant.  Don't take for granted that they have your best interests at heart.  Ask questions and don't forget to plan for retirement.  You may not think you are going to retire, but you need to think about what happens when you slow down or want to transition to a family member or sell.  Similarly to the banker scenario, if you don't like or trust your accountant, get a new one.  This isn't a marriage.  It's a business partnership and you need someone who is doing their part in the partnership.

The veterinarian is another integral part of any livestock operation.  You should have a herd health program and you need someone that can advise you, and assist you.  As with our example above, clearly our relationship with our vet wasn't that great or we would have known that he was going to be on vacation while we were in the middle of calving.  That is something we will not have issues with in the future.  A veterinarian has been to school for many years and they have the knowledge that we cannot possibly have, even from years of experience.  It is important that we have someone that understands our geographic location and the issues that arise due to that.  Also, when something arises of a crisis nature, it is important to have a vet that is up to date and in the know of progressive options and treatments.

I could go on about other people that should be involved and I will blog about the family connection another day as that is a relationship/partnership that is often mistreated due to us taking things for granted - often good communication skills would resolve a lot of misunderstandings and confusion.  Neighbours, renters, crop share partners, mechanics, equipment dealerships and more are out there to work with and help to ensure you are getting the best collective bang for your buck.  Don't discount the importance of relationships when you are starting up, building up or even winding down your business.  Having an excellent network of people in your corner is going to increase your potential for success exponentially.

The Kitchen Table

The office.  The boardroom table.  The coffee shop.  The hub.  The kitchen table serves as all of these things.  Though it was originally meant to be a place where people gathered to break bread, on the farm, it is much more than that.  All my life, the kitchen table was where the action happened.

My grandparent's kitchen table on the ranch was where everyone gathered for coffee, holiday meals, card games, to grieve deaths, to celebrate various occasions.  There was never a lack of coffee in the morning and in the evenings, the beer and whiskey would come out.  I spent many hours of my life at that table.  It is where Grandma taught me and my sister to cut paper dolls and clothes, where we played hours upon hours of crib and Yahtzee, where we ate meals when I got to stay overnight.  My parents home was and continues to be no different.  Morning coffees are had and plans for the day are made.  When company comes, the table gets pulled out from the wall and we grab more chairs.

Thousands of dollars are spent on living room and dining room furniture in so many farm homes and yet they rarely get used.  In our own house, despite my efforts to make it otherwise, it seems so often we gather around the table.  Many a card game has been played around our table over the years.  Probably a few wine and whiskey drank as well.  I have been using it as my office while doing bookwork and schoolwork as I can see out my front window as the world goes by.  It is where we gather to talk business as everyone can get their notebook out if necessary.

One thing that I think is so important is sitting down at the kitchen table to break bread together.  Our kids are 18 and just shy of 16 now and it was a rare week where we didn't sit down at the table together for dinner at least 5 nights a week.  That is through years of 4-H, soccer, basketball, volleyball, social lives, ranching and more.  Some nights we didn't sit til 9:30pm, but we sat.  There is something to be said for spending some dedicated time together as a family around the table.  Talking to each other, listening to each other.  Without that one meal a day together, it would be easy to lose touch with what is happening with your kids.  I think that over the years, one of the reasons we were able to have such an open relationship with our kids is because we had that time together.

There are families out there that everyone dishes up at the stove and disappears to their own space to eat.  I find that unfathomable.  It is incredibly rare that we do not sit at the table to eat.  Even if it is only two of us.  So many memories would be missed, moments wouldn't be shared, hard topics wouldn't be covered and supportive conversations would not happen in the same way.  It would be so easy to lose touch with each other if you don't dedicate some time to just be present in each other's lives.  We live in a world where everyone wear's their "busy"ness as a badge of honour, regaling friends and family with how much we fit into a week.  When we get down to basics, though, we often let the important things slide to ensure we keep up with whomever it is we feel we need to keep up with.

The kitchen table - it's a place to parent, a place to be a kid, a place to form friendships, celebrate life, grieve death, vent, drink coffee and so much more.  Where would a ranch or farm family be without this integral part of their lives?  Can you imagine your own home without this central piece of furniture?  As I think about the many friends we have in agriculture and the homes I visited as a site visit in my time as an agricultural lender, the kitchen table is where it's at.  It's where everything is at.  My only wish is that everyone would buy more comfortable kitchen chairs!  (Mom, Dad - you know I am talking to you!)

The most joyous time of the year?

It is calving season on the ranch.  And it is more stressful than joyous if you ask me.  Sure the babies are cute when they actually hit the ground and after when they are up running around, it's true.  But calving all these heifers may turn me completely grey.  More grey than my teenagers.  I would like to say it's fun and rewarding - and maybe I will in April.  Right now, it is just stressful and insane and I am not even the one doing the middle of the night checks.

Between hubby and our son, they are doing most of the work.  Other than the bottle bunters, that's my job in the morning and our daughter's in the evening.  We have had a tremendous amount of bad luck it seems, from 3 feet of snow needing to be plowed in order to create a pen to calve in, our first cow to calve dying, pulling 2 out of 3 calves to foxes dining on a cow while she was down to misbehaving dogs to calling hubby home from work 2 weekends in a row now to help us pull a baby.

It's not all bad, I am sure there are some highlights.  Let me think.  Ummmmmmmmm.  Ok, ok.  There was that time... Nope...  Ummmmmmmm. Yeah, what about...?  Nope.  Truthfully there is some good with the bad.  We had a set of twins out of a heifer unassisted.  That was a nice treat.  Then there were those 2 other cows that calved unassisted.  That was a bonus.

Farming/Ranching isn't for the faint of heart.  It is hard.  It is emotionally hard, mentally hard and physically hard.  The weather doesn't cooperate, at least not this year.  Although with all this snow and cold, scours shouldn't be an issue.  Ranching is never having a moment that you sit still and think, wow, there is nothing to do around here.  It is missing out on vacations because it is calving season or haying season or hauling hay season or feeding season.  It is worrying about whether babies are going to live or die.  It is worrying about where the cheque for feed is going to come from.

It is a lot of other things though as well.  It is pulling together as a family and making things happen.  It is working together to ensure a safe delivery of a baby like we did this morning.  It is sitting down at dinner exhausted, but feeling great because you got all the chores done in record time. It is a dad and a daughter who barely speak to each other spending 5 hours doing chores and trying to get cows in that are calving.  There are positives. Every day there are positives.  But it is not easy.  Anyone who thinks farmers have it easy because of the odd subsidy or severe weather monetary "bailout" has not spent any time on a farm.

I would highly encourage everyone to get to know a local farmer and rancher.  Find out where your food comes from.  Educate yourself.  And understand the people that are behind the food.  The people that put passion before themselves on the priority list.  The ones who give up having vacations because the timing is never right and you may need the money to buy new equipment.  The ones who work off the farm and on it to try to ensure ends are closer to meeting.  We don't need pity, but we would love more people to understand that it isn't an easy way to make a living.  It is a lifestyle choice and there is pride in knowing you are doing something to feed the population.

My Valentine

Is Valentine's a "Hallmark" holiday? Probably.  Is it advertised and promoted for the sake of retailers making a buck?  You bet it is.  Are some of those retailers my friends and family?  Yep.  So, if they have an opportunity to make a bit of money off of something like today, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Halloween or Christmas, I say, Good for you!

I am lucky, 21 and a half years ago I started dating the kid who would become my best friend, lover, husband, father of my children and biggest cheerleader.  He has never missed a Valentine's Day with candy and almost always flowers.  Is he feeding the capitalist machine?  Yep.  And I am ok with it.  It is like Thanksgiving.  It is not that we are not grateful for each other throughout the year.  That doesn't mean we can't have a little focus on certain days.  It needn't be black or white.  Just as it isn't "wrong" to express gratitude on Thanksgiving - better then, then not at all.  Or better yet, it is just another day to express gratitude.

Enough about the holiday itself, that isn't why I am writing this.  What I really want to say is how blessed I am to have my valentine in my life.  Honestly, he is one of the hardest working people I know, he always has been (even when my dad thought he was a good for nothing, foul-mouthed, dumb-shit).  He has always had certain priorities for us.  I, as the mother, would always have a reliable vehicle that I could shuttle our children safely around in and not worry about a roadside breakdown on a daily basis.  I have always had a nice vehicle, right since Day 1, except for the one time we bought a lemon.  He marched right back to the dealership not long after we realized it was a lemon, made a rather large public fuss and we left with a different, more reliable vehicle.  That is just one example of where his priorities lie.

Some things that he does probably seem like they are never recognized, but I give him sole credit for the fact that I finally was able to develop self-esteem (all-be-it not until I was in my early 30's).  He has been my biggest cheerleader.  He puts up with my ADHD and changing goals, priorities, careers, mindsets.  He has shouldered a large burden when my mental health was at a point where the depression was more prevalent than my personality was.  He couldn't for the life of him, understand what I was going through, but he tried every day and he helped and supported despite not understanding.

Most recently, he has held my hand as I have dealt with my accident and the fallout of it.  The day that I came off and slammed my head into the fence, the subsequent "scariest moments of his life" when I was seizing on the ground and blacked out after the accident, he was there, despite his aversion to human blood and anything medical.  He was a shoulder to cry on when I was terrified of needing to see a neurosurgeon and potentially would need brain or skull re-construction surgery.  And for the past 14 months, he has continued to help me deal with the Post Concussion Syndrome's ongoing challenging of memory, inability to handle a lot of stress as well, anxiety, frustration, feeling the need to give up a hard-earned career and our dream home - both that I loved as I couldn't keep up with the required workload.  And he has been by my side as I deal with a bit of post-traumatic stress as well in that I have lost my love of riding and am even somewhat terrified of getting on certain horses, which breaks my heart as I have been actively been riding and loving horses for over 35 years.

The last thing about my valentine that I can't help but share is his dedication to his dream.  I say his dream because anyone who knows me knows that cows sure as hell are not MY dream.  This is where being a good wife comes in and I support his wanting to live this dream and it is a big part of my life, but it's his baby.  His baby has caused us nothing but grief for months; we have had equipment breakdowns upon equipment breakdowns, we have had an aborted calf, horses that get out for no particular reason at all, a lice outbreak, not enough hay and not enough time to haul it, and when there is, we have "snowmaggedon" and you are taking your life in your hands to go on the road.  He has literally been out in the shop working on something and feeding til no earlier than midnight all but 2 nights of the last 17.  Last night he was out working on the tractor until 3, followed by feeding the cows and this morning he got up and went to work.

The moral of the story is, he's kind of a hero of mine.  He has busted his ass so that our kids could do things that were financially out of reach for he and I as children, like High School Rodeo and play sports upon sports, and have good horses, a nice truck and trailer to haul in, dependable vehicles and on top of that, he always worked hard to be present at those games and the rodeos, despite working full time.  He has been more than a rock for me, a bit more the size of a mountain.  He's a good, dependable friend that people always knew they could call on at any time of day or night.  He's just an all-around good guy.  Now, I can't say he doesn't have flaws.  He does.  He snores loud... REALLY FREAKING loud.  When he's drinking with a few of his buddies - he is always the loudest, up the longest and quite often the drunkest.  He chews tobacco behind my back and lies about it when he does.  He drives too fast, doesn't stop at stop signs, tends to wreck things because he's a little rammy.  But I have flaws too.  No one is perfect.  What is perfect anyway?  It is an unattainable expectation of self and others.  That's what it is.

My valentine is not just my valentine today.  He's my valentine every day.  He makes me be a better me.  He holds me in high regard but doesn't hate me when I fail to live up to expectations.  He's a great dad and I know he's going to be one of those crazy grandfather's that all the kids love, if and when we have grandkids.  I am not sure he understands how much I adore him and most of all appreciate him.  I do.  I really do.  I am also very blessed to have "grown up" as adults with my best friend and someone who could love me and all my flaws.  So, to the naysayers of the "hallmark" holiday, I say this: if you show your love and appreciation for your other half every day and don't need a special day to do it - that is awesome!  If you are single and you don't have a valentine - that's okay, you don't need to!  It's okay to be single!  To those who think it's a waste of money holiday, don't spend your money, but if you do, consider shopping local, supporting home business owner friends and find something unique.  To those who love Valentine's Day because it means chocolate is on sale on the 15th - don't forget to go shopping tomorrow!  It doesn't have to be all or nothing, black or white.  We can celebrate Valentine's or not - what we do needn't affect what others do.  For me, I am going to take a few minutes and just sit in appreciation for the wonderful Valentine I am blessed to be with and then finish making dinner because the poor guy has been working all day on less than 4 hours of sleep.

Happy Valentine's Day!