The Realities of Valentine’s Day

You should know this is an unusual post for me (also you should know I had another post all ready to go so if you don’t like this one stay tuned). I used to be a romantic and get mad at all the Valentine’s Day haters. But now I am starting to see that my dad may be right. He used to say, much to my annoyance, that he didn’t like Valentine’s because he didn’t like a huge corporation to tell him to show love. I was like “Oh come on Dad, join the party! Every party has a pooper…” But now that I am old and apparently  a little cynical, I am beginning to see the wisdom in my Dad’s words. (This has been happening for a while, for my dad is a very wise man, like if he had been alive when Jesus was born he definitely would have been following a star and bringing a gift. He is THAT wise. And most days I am aware of how blessed I am to have a dad that wise. Just yesterday while listening to one of his amazing teachings online it occurred to me I had my own direct line to him literally… I called him and he sorted out my current problem with in about 15 minutes) Anyway, now I think he may be on to something with this Valentine’s Day thing too. I have a lot of single friends and some of them don’t care about Valentine’s but for some it is very painful reminder that they don’t have a valentine and the throw-up of red and pink everywhere is just like slapping them in the face.

But let’s look at this from another angle... all of us “happy” people WITH Valentines. My Valentine’s Day started with a angry diatribe about my husband because he forgot to put the leftovers away last night AFTER he said he would. (You may be wondering why I didn’t just slip them into the fridge myself; this is not the point! Stick to the real issue please.) Why so angry, you may ask. Well you see when you HAVE a valentine, NOT putting the left-overs away is not just "not putting the left overs away". It is, “You don’t love me because you didn’t put the left-overs away! You don’t respect the hard work I put into that meal… (that was WAY too spicy for you AND you were allergic to several key ingredients but told me it was yummy anyway”. Stick to the point people this is MY story).

This may have all started when having a discussion about life on our couch the other day (see the key is, this happened Valentine's week.) Something caught Al’s eye. It was an unidentified bug crawling up over his shoulder from his back. He proceeded to scream like a little girl and THEN flick it off his shoulder DIRECTLY on to ME! So now we are both screaming but mainly I am screaming at him for flinging it at me. This leaves the 2014 woman in quite the conundrum by-the-way and fighting about this must be done very carefully. Because we want to be all equal opportunities and such, so really we should not be screaming when we have a bug on us. However, I had a loophole you see, because HE was screaming about the bug too. SO it was already a case of equality. So then my argument was NOT about chivalry it was about common courtesy… see? So you can’t say “I can’t believe you didn’t protect me from the bug!” but use the carefully chosen words “I can’t believe you flung a bug at me!” which any guy could say to another guy… See it is very technical… (Secretly, I would still like to be protected from bugs by someone not screaming but feministly I am perfectly capable of handling bugs.)

Anyway, so to all the single people out there who are sad I will not say you are better off because that is insulting if you are sad and I definitely don’t feel that way. ALL of you deserve a Valentine and I hope you find the love of your life very soon. I will say though, that once you have a Valentine there is no guarantee you will have a fun Valentine’s Day… because he couldn’t get a babysitter (to be fair it is a Friday and we have like one babysitter because we don’t trust anyone with our daughter), or you are still mad about the leftover thing, or the bug incident is still very confusing. So 16 years after getting your Valentine you will be sitting at home watching American Idol with a messy kitchen (because clearly HE has to clean the kitchen because he SAID he would put the leftovers away!).

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!