February 14, 2005

sweet nothings

Valentines' Day isn't a big thing at my house, not least because the letter "r" is about the only thing Rudder and romantic have in common. We usually exchange cards, and we typically go out for dinner on the weekend closest to V-Day but then we go out for dinner on the weekend closest to everything else, too. On Friday, Rudder gave me chocolate-covered strawberries that he'd intended to save for V-day because they came with a note saying "best if consumed within 48 hours". (He admitted the strawberries were because he still feels guilty for Xmas, a stratey that would have worked better if I were particularly fond of chocolate-covered strawberries. Still, nice thought.)

On Saturday, it was cloudy again and Rudder had flying time scheduled. I went along both in case there was anything I could learn and because I get a lot of knitting or napping (but not both) done in the back seat. He'd never gotten actual instrument time before, a lack which apparently became much more urgent after I got some on Thursday. The clouds were clearing near us, but there was still cloud cover to the north and south. At the CFI's suggestion, he ended up canceling the original idea of doing instrument landings at local airports in favor of a cross-country to Tucson, and did end up getting an hour or so in the clouds. We'd left late due to having to plan the cross-country, and it took longer than the originally intended plans. Also, I hadn't eaten much that day and the emergency Powerbar in Rudder's flight bag was fossilized, so by the time we got back I was starving. I figured Rudder would be hungry too, and too tired for our originally scheduled mall trip followed by dinner at the fish place near it, so I offered to treat Rudder to a steak to celebrate his first true instrument flying. He agreed, though we did end up paying for it from the household account after all.

On Sunday afternoon, we proceeded with the mall / fish restaurant thing. (It's a really fatiguing mall, full of flashing lights and hordes of people, including lots of small children to trip over. It's a much more tiring place to shop at than our local mall, but it's an outlet place and I needed hose. And while I'm in parenthesis, I might as well admit that all of the previous drivel was just to explain why we went out for dinner twice in a row, so it wouldn't sound as if we were that spoiled.) During dinner, between craning our heads to watch the person making goofy hats out of balloons, I asked Rudder if that dinner counted as our Valentine dinner or the previous day's steaks. He said, "The steak place - that's at least a little more romantic."

I answered, "Well, it might have been, if you hadn't spent half of dinner analyzing the restaurant's order-taking system." (Yes, he is even geekier than I am - I didn't complain that we'd spent the other half of the time discussing flying.)

He said, "Well, here then," and mouthed noiselessly at me.

I guessed, "Sweet nothings?"

"Exactly."

"But how can I tell they're sweet?"

"Because I said them!"

Oig. Also yeesh.

So anyway, this morning while he was showering, I wrote out my card for him. I wrote,

_ . _..
.. ._.. _ _ _ ..._ . _._ _ _ _ _ .._ _.._ _ _ _ _.._ _ _ _
Then I drew a buble around it, labeled it "Sweet nothings", and left it where he'll find it tonight if not this morning.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that last night, we were talking about the Morse code identifiers used in flight navigational aids. Serve him right when he has to go look up the code.

Posted by dichroic at February 14, 2005 12:07 PM
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