"I would've bought you chocolates for Valentine's Day," Adam said yesterday, "but I was afraid I wouldn't get the right kind and then you'd blog about how evil I am."

He said it in a light tone, but he was serious. What a bad wife I am! I'd never say he was evil ... but I might complain. Maybe not here. But certainly to Tiff. Something along the lines of, "Adam doesn't even know what kind of chocolates I like. We've been married for nearly eight years!"

We had this conversation after my surprise birthday party two years ago -- which wasn't a surprise, but that wasn't Adam's fault. And it wasn't much of a party, either, but it was on a Tuesday. And he did plan it all himself. But I was unhappy because he'd tried to stock the snack table with my favorites, but got Lays chips, which I hate. It bugged me, a lot, that he didn't know. And then there was my birthday last year, where he made me French toast for breakfast. I actively dislike French toast. And then when I was sick recently, and he bought cranberry apple juice. I hate apple juice. Each time, though, he made a big effort. And each time, I bitched.

So, he didn't get me the chocolates. And when I opened the gift he did get, a Ben Folds Five CD, after about 10 seconds of thanks, I said, "You know I just wanted Ben Folds, not Ben Folds Five, right?" What a bitch. He explained he knew I'd wanted a live Ben Folds CD, and this one of the group (rather than the solo artist) had the most live songs. Nice, Lori.

He tries. A lot. And I'm horrible for making him think, even once, he's less than thoughtful. Bad me. Something to seriously work on.

As I'm napping on the couch yesterday (buttery-soft leather; I try to sleep on one of them at least once each visit), I listen to Adam padding in and out of the house, snatching candy from the numerous dishes all around. I doze a little while he reads by the pool, hearing the traffic rush by, the wind through the palms, content in the knowledge that Em is napping too and all is good.

Adam keeps distracting me by grabbing candy, though. The door creaks and I know he's come in the house yet again for another handful. "How much candy are you going to eat?" I ask, eyes still closed.

My mother-in-law Abby replies, "As much as I want."

Oops.

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We're never going to get Emma to go home. All through our long, late-night (for a preschooler) flight, she said, "I just want to get to Phoenix to be with my grandma." Today, riding in the car with Grandma beside her (and me up front chauffering), she insists, "I want to stay, stay, stay, stay, stay, stay, stay, stay, stay." Mommy and Daddy are no longer the coolest; it's all about Grandma Abby and Uncle Bryan (with PopPop Tim and Aunt Jenny close behind). Adam and I get kicked out of the room so she can read with Grandma; no one else can brush her teeth or help her potty. Maybe it's the candy. Or the In-n-Out we had for lunch. Or the DVDs Grandma had waiting. Or the giant stack of new clothes or the equally tall one of new books. Or the Valentines' gifts. Or the constant attention. Or just all the love. Who can blame her?

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It's in the high 60s here, sunny and gorgeous. Yesterday, Em dipped her toes in the pool (but quickly decided the water was way too cold). Still, though, she ran around the backyard in shoeless in panties and a T-shirt (hey, we don't have any shorts in the right size). The low at home is 24 today. We've fed the ducks, ate out numerous times, shopped, shopped, shopped; I've read an entire book cover to cover. Folks we love are everywhere. There's a BBQ tomorrow. Adam and I are actually going on a date tonight. I may never want to go home, either.

Em and I actually made these last weekend, but didn't want to ruin the surprise for anyone who might be getting them. We had great fun. And even more fun was being with Grandma Abby when she opened her mailbox to find the Valentine waiting.

Happy day, everyone. Kiss someone you love.

Em's library basket (in the sidebar) is again updated. And check out everything we've checked out this year, too.

We're always looking for new authors and old favorites to try, so please, tell me yours.

Let me just say, I adore TV Tome. (Adam swears it's TV to me, I think it's TV tomb.) It doesn't lessen my love for IMDb, but it's often more helpful.

I have a strange, unmarketable talent -- I recognize obscure actor's faces. I can't always remember their names, but I'm always, "Hey, that's that guy who was stuck on a gurney in the hall in that episode of ER two years ago!" And when I can't recognize someone, it drives me crazy, like a word on the tip of my tongue I can't get out. IMDb doesn't list guest stars and before I discovered TV Tome, there was really no way to find them. Occasionally, wading through a million message board posts, I'd find someone else who noticed. But not usually.

Now that we have TiVo, this will be a little easier, because I can watch the credits in slo-mo if need be. But TV Tome is probably still easier. Just plug in the name of the show, find the episode you're looking for, and there's a guest-star list. Click on the name, boom, there's a bio. (Granted, sometimes they don't have quite as much info on the person as IMDb does.)

Last night, Adam tried to tell me the NASA woman on West Wing was Jenny Calendar from Buffy. I actually laughed out loud at him. I didn't know who she was (turns out because she's never been on anything I've watched), but I knew she wasn't Robia La Morte.

And TV Tome proves me right, yet again.

Yes, I'm a dork. But a dork with an ocean of info at my fingertips when my geeky brain can't pull it up on its own.

Here's how Adam and I are saying "Happy Valentine's Day" this year.

David boxers. (Hey, we first saw them in the Piazza San Marco. It's Venice. It automatically counts as romantic. And maybe a teeny bit funny.)

Candy hearts.

White daisies.

Ben Folds.

And the holiday isn't even here yet! I'll let you guess who got what.

Oh, and a family trip to Phoenix. Where, with any luck, we'll actually go on a date. Who says married life isn't romantic? (Oh. Wait. One of those naysayers was me. See what a difference a few weeks can make?)

When I first met Tiffany, she was perfect.

We had an early morning honors class together our freshman year, and Tiff always wore a pristine outfit, hair done just so, with the right amount of makeup gracing her porcelain complexion. She exuded confidence.

I hated her.

I was a know-it-all in class, anxious to show that I'd done the reading, knew the answer, formed an opinion. I'd been voted teachers' pet -- with good reason -- my senior year in high school, and I saw no reason to break that streak in college. So she didn't like me much, either.

We couldn't have been more different then, though we didn't know the particulars till much later. She came from a middle-class, stable, two-parent family. I came from chaos, drug deals on my kitchen table and drunks sleeping on my couch. Now we have more in common than I could've ever imagined.

Then, I'd stare at her in class, wondering what was under that perfect exterior, searching for imperfections. Now, she's the first one I call to analyze my own faults and frailties and she offers up her own in return. We share secrets that would've made the Tiff-back-then blush, and I tell stories that the young me would've scorned for showing weakness.

It's been 12 years since I met her, and I've no doubt that, after years of working together on our college newspaper, we were going to be friends no matter what. But something cemented the deal: our kids.

Want the rest? Visit DotMoms.

What I miss most about life before Emma isn't jetting off to a foreign country, sex on the kitchen table or hitting the movie theater on a whim. It's not gourmet meals, girls' nights out or spotless floors. It's not a stroll through the house without stepping on a toy, only attending to my own bodily functions or dinner at a restaurant that doesn't serve fries.

It's me. I miss being alone.

I'm never alone for more than 10 minutes at a stretch. I've got that five-minute commute into work. And yes, I have a private office, but the door stays open on a busy hall. Besides, I'm working.

Two days a week, I use my lunch hour to pick up Emma. I work from home one day, so lunch is usually leftovers with the fam at home. The other two days, I have to squeeze in work and the occasional social lunch, plus errand running. A lunch at my desk, door closed, book in hand, seems decadent.

Adam works from home full time, so even if I were to decide to take a mental-health day, he'd be there. It's not like I do things that much differently alone; it's just the idea that I can't be. He plays soccer one night a week, but Emma's with me, even though she's often sleeping. Adam bathes her more than half the time, but I'm usually still doing dinner cleanup or getting things ready for the next morning. And still, that's not alone time. He occasionally takes her to run an errand with him, which means I have at most 30 minutes in the house by myself. I usually spend it mopping the floor or scrubbing the tub.

And even if he offered to take Emma to the zoo for the day, it would be hard for me to let them go without me. I have so little time with her that I don't want to give it up. Now and then, he'll man the weekly art class, but I usually have book club or some meeting to attend. It used to be that I'd run an errand on the way home, stop by the library or do something by myself, just for that quiet time. Now, though, with only three hours between when I get to the house and when Emma goes to sleep, I have to speed right home to spend time with her. With making and eating dinner, giving her a bath and the bedtime routine, there's already little time to spare.

I've been trying to make more me time -- this weekend I spent an hour at the bookstore by myself while Em napped. I needed to go for work and to pick up a small Valentine's gift for Emma, and I actually browsed through fiction, leafed through cookbooks, drank a hot chocolate while I wandered instead of heading right back to the train table. And I made a solitary library trip, too, also with Em sleeping. Granted, all I did was pick out new books for Emma and grab those I had on hold, but still, it was 45 minutes out of the house, Adam on duty.

Thing is, though, both times, there were all of these people around. I wasn't on my couch, in my rocker, under my covers, immersed in the bath, anything at my home, enjoying the silence -- in my mind and in the house -- that only comes from being alone.

At the end of the month, I'm traveling for work. Can I just say how heady the idea feels? A plane ride where I can read my own book? Thrilling! Ten minutes in the bathroom alone? A miracle! I won't have much time to explore the new city; I arrive on Sunday afternoon, have a conference all day Monday and Tuesday and leave Tuesday night. But the truth is, I likely won't want to. With what little spare time I have, I'll hang out in my hotel room, eating chocolate in bed -- sharing with no one -- and reading or watching some trash, with no interruptions.

It ain't home, but it'll do for now. Want to guess how long it'll take for me to feel lonely?

Guess who got an early birthday gift of TiVo (and a new DVD player) this weekend?

It would make sense if the answer were me, given how I've been whining about wanting TiVo for the last year and a half, have convinced a friend to give it to his wife for his birthday, can't stop talking about how much I need the service, was fiercely disappointed to not get it for Hanukkah, though I didn't really expect to.

However, it's Adam. My birthday isn't for months and months.

It's not as bad as it sounds. But the next sentence will make it worse: I sort of convinced him the new equipment would be his gift, but I'm still going to get him what I'd planned anyway (albeit on a smaller scale, perhaps). So it's not REALLY his birthday gift, but that's how I talked him into letting me buy it.

Maybe some background will help. Our DVD player has seriously been on the fritz lately. We thought at first it was the quality of the NetFlix discs, which are sometimes pretty scratched. But when it rejected nearly new DVDs from our shelf, we knew the problem was ours. As DVD players run under $100 now, it wasn't a big deal. But the player we owned was a combo package, with a VCR. With a preschooler around (and us refusing to watch 98 percent of adult programming in front of her), we tape a lot. If we were getting a new DVD, we'd need a VCR, too. And why buy a VCR when we can TiVo, instead?

So, Adam speculates jokingly (at least, I hope jokingly) that I broke the DVD to strengthen my TiVo argument. I didn't, though had I known it would work, I might've tried it ...

We just got it installed yesterday and have only watched a Meet the Press and Dora the Explorer. (Another reason to get it is that we can have five or six different shows -- educational, mind you -- saved for Em. She doesn't have to choose from the videos she's seen again and again and JoJo's Circus, which happens to be on in her allotted 15 minutes of TV in the morning. I'm actually planning to research quality preschool programs; I know there's stuff out there I'm unaware of because we let her watch so little. Animal shows, here we come.) But in just a bit, Emma will roll into bed and we can start watching Sex and the City ... 10 minutes after it starts. We don't have to wait until the whole show is done. And I've already programmed in Season Passes for our regularly taped shows, which will make it much easier than the double-VCRing we were going to have to do for our upcoming Phoenix trip.

Yay me. Oh, and happy almost birthday, honey.

Thanks to Adam (who wanted to read my blog on Bloglines), I now have an RSS feed. So if you use one of these services, sign up to add me to your list.

For me, visiting a blog and seeing if there's something new is half the fun. But hey, if I can make it easier on folks, I'm all for it.