Valentines Day

Valentines Day,Thursday what an excuse to eat chocolate, wait I eat chocolate every day. I guess I don't need a special day to eat chocolate.
     It's the day after Valentines Day and we are halfway through the coldest month of the year. The Days are getting longer and Baseball is right around the corner.
     Life around our household has gotten into a routine and I guess sometimes you don't know you miss something until you think about it.  The Girls are usually working. Teri and I have dinner usually alone these days. Standing or sitting at the table in the Kitchen watching the small TV.  Before the girls, we would sit eating dinner in the living room watching TV. It's a rerun I guess, or maybe it's been rebooted, like some TV shows?
     On Monday because of the snow, everybody was home, so I made Korean Beef, a recipe Teri found. It is easy, ground beef, soy sauce, garlic, sesame oil and a spice. Brown the beef with the oil add the spices, serve over rice, it's great. My point is that has been the only meal I cooked this week. Teri made stuffed peppers on Sunday I ate leftover stuffed peppers Tuesday, Parmesan Chicken from last week on Wednesday. The only time we eat together these days is Wednesday, when the girls and I go bowling and it's still leftovers.
     Last Night I'm watching TV with Teri and Nastia comes home. It's 10pm, I'm thinking it's late, time to shower and go to bed. Nastia comes into the Living Room and is still wired from work and not sleepy. Teri goes up to bed and Nastia crawls into my lap and we watch a rerun of Game of Thrones picking out all the characters we know who have died on the show. At sometime during the show we are talking about going to the movies this weekend and she points out that it has been sometime since we have done that too.
     Elena is getting to the age where she is asking to go out somewhere after work. We try to be lenient without being careless, but if you think about it, the girl gets out of work 8, 9 pm and wants to spend some time with her relatively new 'friend' Jasmine, where can you go that late? Really nowhere. We let her go sometimes, other time it's no, She has to be home by 10:30. the first few times she went out with Jasmine she got home late. It gave us a bad opinion of Jasmine since Elena is usually always on time. We talked and Elena is on time now. Last Night she wanted to stay out until 10 pm. We did a deal where she could stay out until 7 and then she would watch TV with Teri and I. It was nice. After a little while she snuggled under a blanket with Teri. It ended around 9:30 when She went up to our room to watch something on our TV. She fell asleep and spent the night in our bed. It was a little crowded, but nice. She's been a little absent from our lives lately too.
     Nastia has also spent some time sleeping in our bed lately. I haven't talked about it because at first it seemed weird and I was afraid of what people might think or say. Nastia is twenty and Elena is eighteen. When they sleep in our bed I think about what my therapist, Barbara said to me years ago that sometime people get stuck at a certain age and they need to work through it before they can move on. When they were younger, neither of them had a place of safety to go to when they were afraid and needed someone. I guess they are just working through some issues and need the safety of being close to us. David, Nastia's boyfriend has gone to Albany to college and isn't around. And Elena might be working through issues with growing up, maybe getting out of high school, some major changes. She doesn't talk much about it. Still waters run deep as they say. I hope they know we are here for them, which I'm sure they do, but coming to us with their problems is an other matter. The Parent is always the last to know, even if they are very supportive and non-judgemental. We love them so dearly I hope they know how much.
     This was supposed to be a post about Valentines Day and love. I guess it is just about love.















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