I went to Curves this morning, even though my mom is still sick. I used that as an excuse all last week (well, I did go last Monday but only because I found out she wasn't coming while I was parking outside the gym, and it seemed silly to just go home at that point) but I decided I couldn't keep on skipping the workout indefinitely. On the way home I stopped by the store to pick up some milk, since the dregs left in the carton currently sitting in our fridge had started to coalesce into something that shouldn't really be ingested anymore.

They were pretty empty, it being only about 7 in the morning at that point, but there were huge displays of red and pink - balloons, candy, hearts, and flowers. And as I walked up to the registers to pay for my milk so I could go home and have myself a healthy breakfast (thus foregoing the not uncommon stop by the local coffee shop and bakery) I noticed that one of them was framed by a giant red heart. A big sign hung from the top designating that register for Valentine's Day purchases only.

It's a wonder my eyes did not roll right out of their sockets, but I successfully avoided any hysterical laughter in the middle of the store. I imagined that later in the day that register would be doing a brisk business as hordes of desperate men randomly grabbed one of the many glittery, sugary, perfumed treats from the shelves in the hopes of appeasing their wives or girlfriends and proving that they really do love them despite having put the purchase off until the last possible second. Ah, romance. I could just feel it in the air. Or maybe that was just the feeling one gets when one has worked out on an empty stomach, and one has had absolutely no coffee at all so far. Hmm.

On the way home from work I swung by Ben & Jerry's to pick up a few scoops of Dublin Mudslide as a little Valentine's Day treat (we don't really bother with this holiday beyond maybe a card or a goofy stuffed animal). I stopped by a post office to mail off a package to my knitting secret pal (because what good is an obsession if you don't have an international circle of friends to support your habit?). Richard made jambalaya for dinner tonight and we ate it while watching the reunion show for Extreme Home Makeover - a show we both really enjoy (and one which usually has me in tears by the end because I cannot help the fact that I am a girl and happy endings sometimes make me cry). We discussed plans to go to the zoo next week to see the lemurs. It's been a nice day for a Monday.