Well, I must say, and I do say, that today is not as happy as I thought it would be when I first marked it on the calendar and noted that it was a Blog Off Tuesday, for this is to be the last, the swan song, the coda, the capitulation, the termination, the proverbial end of the proverbial line.

Flowers are absolutely essential to our marriage. In August it will be 36 years, and over the years I have faithfully sent her flowers on at least two occasions a year: our wedding anniversary and on Valentine’s Day. There have been a few other occasions but, come what may, always on those two days.

I am not as big on cookies as I am on baked goods, especially sweet baked goods, and not as big on those as I am when we are on a trip somewhere. In a sense, it’s a time machine, a trip back to the early years of our marriage.

When I saw the subject for today’s Blog Off, my immediate impulse was to write a diatribe about “removing the sexism from English,” but as I thought it about it further, I realized that, much as that particular item sticks in my craw, it is really just symptomatic of an almost universal lack of grammar skills.