Cupid

I claim to hate Valentine's Day.  Sometimes I think it's really true, other times I think I just over-exaggerate to make sure everyone knows I haven't bought into this Hallmark holiday.  Truthfully, though, I just don't like to make a big thing of it.  So this year I felt especially obnoxious in proclaiming my disdain for this culturally manifested holiday actually because it is my first one as a married woman.  For some reason, that agitated me even more thane ever about the Day of Love.  I felt a pressure that, because it's T and I's first Valentine's as husband and wife, it was expected that we do something big, expensive, and/or really special to tell to all of our family and friends and to make everyone around us envious of how in love we are.  I hate that; and the unfounded stress made me really angry about this day!


The pressures of Valentine's have always felt like too much to be able to enjoy it as a holiday to actually just love the one(s) I love.  I had to have a really good story.  So, after T and I's second Valentine's in which we ate a really bad, overpriced meal (like $160 bucks), and then his car ran out of gas and we had to walk two miles in the freezing cold while in HEELS to a gas station - I just felt over it.  Who wants that as their romantic Valentine's story?  That's not going to make anyone jealous!  


Thankfully enough for us, we can laugh about it together and realize that, no, this isn't the one day out of the year in which we have to go out of our way to say 'I love you.'  So we decided to spend our Valentine's evening with friends - eating chili in their home and then going square dancing afterward!  Unfortunately, with my amount of homework and with T's broken hand, square dancing didn't happen tonight.  After chili with our friends, we drove up the old familiar route to Wallingford and treated ourselves to Molly Moon's Ice Cream (only THE best ice cream in the entire world, hands down, no questions asked, I win on this one).  At the current moment, we are snuggled under a single blanket, with heads at opposite ends of the couch, I am blogging - ahem, I mean, doing homework - and T is reading.  And I can look up at his adorable face, think of the five years of memories we've created together, and simply love him.  It doesn't hurt that he got me a beautiful orchid plant and some truffles, either.