It’s long been a source of secret shame for me that my husband likes anime. Really, “like” is much too weak a word. He positively adores it; he doesn’t merely watch it, he devours it. He can sit in front of it for hours upon hours and it’s nigh on impossible to break him away from it. In the early days he and Lydia bonded over Sailor Moon.*

For the past couple of years he hadn’t seemed so into it as he was when we first lived together and I foolishly hoped that he had moved beyond all that. Those hopes were dashed when he told me there was a new movie he wanted to see, The Return of the Cat. At first I thought maybe he meant The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, but then I realized that it was much too soon for a sequel to The Cat in the Hat to have come out. I soon learned that it is, of course, anime, and worse yet, it seems to have renewed his long-dormant fervor for the stuff. Curses.

It’s quite possible, however, that my flower fervor is driving him as crazy as anime drives me. My love of geraniums/pelargoniums grows ever stronger and I spent a good amount of time ordering plants online over the weekend. I’m expecting no less than eleven new varieties tomorrow or Tuesday, and I can’t wait to get my hands on them. Once I’ve received them my count will increase to 112 plant from 56 different varieties. Last week I converted our guest room into a geranium nursery and I’m already working out ways to cram more shelves into that tiny room. I might even go so far as to call myself an enthusiast these days.

*That part’s not quite true, I must confess. As far as I know he’s never watched Sailor Moon. Lydia, on the other hand is quite a different story — she was an intense devotée for a number of years.