Working moms, do something special for your husband-homemaker today.

And everyone, have a wonderful Valentine’s Day!

-TimK

Happy Valentine's Day!

Look at this Valentine’s bear that Abbie’s boyfriend Anthony gave her.

Grr… He’s showing me up.

Happy Ballantyne...

As it happens, this morning I listened to an interview with Sarah Ballantyne on the (back-episode of the) Livin’ La Vida Low Carb Show podcast (from last July).

Sarah lost 120 pounds and eased a host of food-intolerance issues by giving up grains, eggs, and other foods, and sticking with a strict autoimmune-protocol Paleo diet. She talks about her story and some of the science behind her experiences with inflammation.

Will This Get Me Laid?

I wanted to post this on Tuesday, but I was distracted by the recent holiday. Naturally, I’m referring to National Guys in the Floral Department Day.

Every year around this time, if you go into any store with a floral department, you are likely to see a dozen or so men wondering aimlessly in the vicinity, browsing from flower arrangement to flower arrangement, obviously lost but unable to ask for directions.

Why do they do this? Well, it’s the law. And if any man in a relationship of any sort fails at this task, the consequences are serious indeed, let me tell you.

Stores plans for this day, and every year they stock up on pretty young attendants to help out the guys who don’t know what they’re doing. Except for the store that I went to, which had a fat dude telling a pimple-faced guy with a scooter—and this actually happened—that they didn’t have bouquets of roses half red and half pink. Meanwhile, I thought, if he wanted a mixture of red and pink roses for his one true love, he should have gone to a real flower shop and paid more than 20 lousy bucks on an arrangement. Then he could have swept her away on his scooter, fading with her into the horizon and the setting sun.

As for me, I chose a bouquet of a dozen roses for my Beloved, pink blossoms just beginning to brown around the edges.

She loved them, especially the brown spots. Apparently, I have her well-trained to expect almost no attention from me whatsoever. Congratulate me.

(I was just kidding about that last part, in case you couldn’t tell.)

• Pam Epstein is completing her PhD dissertation, about love and marriage from the mid-nineteenth to early-twentieth century in America. For her research, she's looking at old newspaper personal ads, and sharing some of the more interesting ones with us. Here's an entertaining ad she posted today, from someone offering a, uhm, rather interesting romantic service.

• I met Jim "Suldog" Sullivan online via our mutual interest in libertarian politics. Since then, he's been writing pretty regularly in his uniquely personal (and often funny) blog. Here's a post from his archives, about how he met his wife.

• Sandra at Add Humor and Faith...mix well recently posted about marrying her Hubby, and how God gave her the kind of husband she needed (rather than a "perfect" husband).

• And of course, here's from my own archives, my own story of happily ever after.

• Lastly, maybe Valentine's Day is about romance, not about sex. But... Well, maybe it can be about sex, too. Check out these 13 funny-sexy panties. (Maybe the Missus will get herself one of the dirtier ones for my Valentine's gift!)

The Little One (our resident artist) doesn’t know I’m posting this, but I don’t think she’d be upset. She got some white soap at the drug store, and carved it and colored it, as a gift for Mommy.

I remember when I was a kid, buying (or making) and giving away Valentines to all my classmates. One year, we made and decorated our own Valentine’s boxes. Each student in the class would then hand out the Valentines he was giving, dropping one into the slot on the top of each of his classmates’ boxes.