Happy Valentine's Day

I have a confession to make.  I'm not a big  (Quit laughing. I'm gonna have to come over there and smack you!) Valentine's Day kind of gal.  I've been putting up a front all these years. 

Even my mom, who never was really into celebrating minor holidays, used to put something red on our breakfast plates each Valentine's Day.  I especially remember the year that we three sisters all got red bras at breakfast.  (Mom was always practical.)  You would have thought that a memory that vivid would spur me on, but I had to be pushed into it.

Probably because my birthday is mid-January and Dennis's the first of February and we had already spent way too much on Christmas, we just never did do anything big on Valentine's Day when the boys were little. A babysitter fixed that for us. We came home after an evening out on February thirteenth only to be informed that she had told the kids that the Valentine Fairy would be leaving candy under their pillows that night.

Since we had recently had to disappoint Josh by telling him that no, there is no Fingernail Fairy, when he wanted to put his fingernail clippings under his pillow in hopes of reaping a cash reward, I gave in and headed for an all-night drugstore.  You can't go back after that.

Of course our boys got those little packets of Valentines to give to all the kids in their classes at school and brought home theirs in shoe boxes that we had decorated with red paper hearts and markers, but I never remembered to mail any Valentines to my mom out-of-town and then I would get one from her, "To A Special Daughter and Her Husband On Valentine's Day", and it was too late to send her one and I felt guilty.

Apparently the Valentine Fairy was at it again, though, because one year a huge box of Valentine's was literally dropped at my feet. No, really. I was driving down the road and there it was in front of me. Evidently a truck carrying greeting cards from a Hallmark store had hit a bump on the road by our neighborhood and the box fell off.  Of course I retrieved it and went to a lot of trouble to locate the company and called them to explain I had their merchandise. They said they would send somebody to come get it. They never did.

 So I was stuck with a couple hundred Valentines, still in plastic wrappers.  Some were the enormous, I'm not kidding, a foot-and-a-half tall that would cost a week's salary to mail, kind.  There were some "To My Sweetheart", some "To The One Who Is Like A Mother To Me," some  "Baby's First Valentine", and more.  You get the picture.  I couldn't waste them, could I?   All but the huge ones were in packages of three so that when I started sending them I had to remember to whom I had sent what so they didn't get duplicates the next year.  It was exhausting!

I mailed out those cards for probably ten years but they are gone now and I guess I have to find a new way of  sending my Valentine's greetings.  I noticed in our little local paper last week that some people were putting ads in the classified section.  I'm thinking about that.

Here are a couple of the ones that were printed.  I swear I am not making these up.

"Thank you for all you have done for me while I have been incompasitated. (my italics) Happy Valentines Day.  Love, John."  (I know how that feels, my income has been pretty low lately too.)

"Happy VD to the staff at Neighborhood Newspaper.  Love, Moe"  (I'm not sure if this would do double duty and also qualify for the notices that the Health Department makes people send out in certain instances or not.)

It's probably too late to get anything published in the classifieds anyway.  I guess I'll just take the opportunity here to say to all of you:  HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY.  I hope you feel lots of love today.