Every day this week

Since I last wrote...

1.
The Cubs lost their spot in the playoffs. I have to hand it to them for achieving all of the end-of-season losses that made that happen. I mean they led the division the entire last half of the season. The division title was theirs to lose, and they really pulled it off!

As I told Blaine after the game (watched at his house because he has ESPN), it was easier being a Cubs fan when you expected them to lose.

2.
I received an out-of-the-blue email from the family that adopted the last foster dog I took care of. They had come across my email address and wanted to let me know that four years later they were still crazy in love with him. I’m so glad. He was one of my favorites and I’ve often wondered how he was getting along. The email said he’s still energetic, still loves hanging out with their cat and makes everyone laugh every day.

3.
I’ll begin taking care of Izzy tomorrow night instead of Saturday. Eve and Paul won’t leave until after work on Friday, so I can keep my plans to go out after work with Blaine, Maggie and Terry.

4.
When the weather turns distinctly fall-like, I crave two things: Van Morrison music and urban fantasy novels. As far as I know the two are unrelated.

Although it’s stretching the boundaries of urban fantasy, I downloaded the ebook Written in Red by Anne Bishop. This is an example of the cover art selling the book. The description of the story made me wary, but a few months ago I read the sample pages and decided I would give it a try as soon as the weather was right.

Once I started it, I didn’t want to put it down. I borrowed the audiobook as well so I could listen to it while driving. I’ve just bought the next book in the series.

5.
On Monday, Blaine sent flowers to my office, a beautiful collection of roses. They arrived in a long box, packed in such a way to keep the stems wet. I didn’t have a vase so I went to Susannah who has a stash of them because Eric is the king of flower giving.

She helped me trim the stems and arrange the flowers (revealing that we’re equally matched when it comes to this task...which is to say we stink at it). When finished, I took a picture and sent it in a text to Blaine, thanking him. It wasn’t long before he called me. After the opening niceties were out of the way, he gently asked where the rest of the arrangement was.

It took a couple of minutes of confusion, some Googling and a phone call to the florist to solve the mystery. He had placed the order online and had selected an arrangement that showed the roses in a tall cylindrical vase, beautifully arranged with bits of ferny greenery (obviously I’m not a plant person). But he had not checked the box that said he wanted to include the vase so the default was to send just the flowers.

“It’s been so long since I’ve sent flowers,” he said, sounding embarrassed. “I assumed I was ordering what was in the picture.” With extra misery, he said, “I didn’t read the choices carefully enough. I saw ‘Add a balloon’ and skipped the rest.”

I assured him it made no difference and did not lessen how happy they had made me. It’s the thoughtfulness and the sentiment behind the gesture that matters to me.

We talked a short time. Before hanging up, he laughed a little. “I should have known by the price. I thought they were running an unadvertised sale.” I had to laugh.

I wasn’t going to mention the flowers here since they weren’t what he wanted them to be, but they’ve made me smile every day this week and that’s worth mentioning.