When you're in denial about aging, there's nothing like a visit to the rheumatology department to cheer you up. Not only is it a little dose of reality, but the magazines in that waiting room are pathetic.

So there I was Tuesday afternoon, thumbing through a grubby Christmas issue of Family Circle filled with stories of True Grit, or something like that. One of the stories was about a young man, engaged to be married, who had mistakenly thrown a bucket of oil on a fire. He was burned beyond recognition, blinded, and lost his legs below the knees and arms above the elbows. Only his genitals were undamaged. (Ok, if this hadn't been in Family Circle, I would have thought I was reading the concept for the next Farrelly brothers film.)

His fiancee was let off the hook by all involved, including her betrothed. But she married him in spite of the kind of care her husband would now need. Happily, they had 2 beautiful children who look like their dad had. The thing that stuck with me from the story, which I didn't finish before I was called into an examination room, was something the young man said to the reporter: "We believe that love isn't a feeling, it's a decision."

And so begins the countdown to the most obnoxious (at least to the single and the unhappily paired) day of the year: Valentines.   N I N E . . .