Today's Word: Erased

He went back and chopped out all the e-mails from his mistress, all the threads that acted as silent evidence pulling him out of this running life. One by one, all the love notes, desperate plans, half-hearted erotica vanished into the ether. And he would say one day that they never happened.

Oi, that's a cheerful sentiment on Valentine's Day. It's about 9 a.m. here in Seattle and I feel like I've been awake since the American Civil War. Very tired and spent the weekend on the couch resting in a body roughed over from two weeks of unrealized stress coming to a head. Wife and I on the couch with overfed cats perching on top of us. My snow-colored laptop humming away battery power at my feet. A parade of DVDs. Pre-emptive consumption of Valentine's Day junk food. I could use another decade on the snooze alarm.

I don't get ill that much. Most of my sickness are 12-hour minor gremlins residing in my throat or a sinus. By the next day, I'm better. Here, my muscles feel eroded and everything is on a three-second delay thanks to DayQuil. Interested in seeing what caffeine will do to my system. I'm just happy I haven't crashed out, a state I get in every once in a while where I get a brutal flu and my body is in open rebellion for a couple weeks. Everything comes out orange. It happens when I least suspect it, and lasts until I forget what it feels like to be healthy.

At least I rewrote the synopsis for contest. Got it down to three pages. Ha! My wife read the first chapter for the first time last night and was generally supportive. As an editor by trade, she'll go over it soon to weed out any stylistic varmints.

(an interlude, where some works gets done, a journey to the bathroom ensues, and our hero gets a Diet Pepsi)

Caffeine is now in my veins. The chemistry of DayQuil, breakfast, and Diet Pepsi is bringing my world into focus now. My brain is registering warm colors like red and yellow now. Thoughts and memories get their marching orders and, yes, we did go see "Woman in Black" on Saturday. Wife got scared at the proceedings, and I thought I would be terrified. I don't like going into a situation where I know I'm going to be deliberately terrified, and I had been dreading going to see the play (it's about a ghost with a revenge streak a mile wide). But in the seats, I was fine, more in agony over the plastic coffins of my new shoes.

Oh damn, I do feel a thousand percent better. It's such an amazing sensation to feel your body get better within minutes, to feel an iron shroud living from your muscles. I didn't want to spend Valentine's Day under the weather. I didn't want to just leave some cards and gifts in my wake as I tumbled off to an early bed, amorous pursuits left abandoned for vandals to wreck. I know there are cynics out there who frown on such a corporate-fueled holiday, but Valentine's Day is a sort of Thanksgiving for lovers. You take this day to give thanks for what you have in the love department, realizing all the complex calculus that it takes for two people to come together in this world, and you look around and thank whatever deity you trust that it's all working out. If you're smart, you don't just use this day to shower your beloved with flowers, candy, and a poem. You don't use this day as a mortgage to remember your lover. You're supposed to do that all year long. But today, ah, today is the day you celebrate love, and as far as holidays go, it's a decent one to celebrate. It's stripped of patriotism, nationalism, and overt religious flavoring. Valentine's Day is about love, ranging from the purity of hand-holding to the hedonism of body syrup and leather. It's for everyone. It's about the good things in life. I like it more than the corporate slaveholding that occupies Christmas, the saccharine overload guilt bomb of Mother's Day, and the violent overtones of Independence Day. Don't get me started on the Super Bowl.

So, happy Valentine's Day. And for the cynics, someone loves you, whether you like it or not.

P.S. It's snowing in Seattle!