All You Need is Love

So, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day – a day when we are supposed to be thinking about love, and celebrating love, and just love, love, love, all day long.

I find myself thinking about Valentine’s Days past.* I have never been kindly disposed toward Valentine’s Day, because I think if you love someone you should treat them lovingly all the time, and not just on one day of the year. I resent being told I have to be romantic on this one day. I hate the expectations it puts on people, especially men, to make big romantic gestures on this day. Roses! Candy! Jewelry! And go out to dinner! And all that crap! And never mind the sex. Your everyday sex life may be just fine, but on Valentine’s Day, you should be having wild, crazy, wake-up-the-neighbors sex! Multiple times! Do it! Do it! Do it!

Well, maybe I’m being a bit too hard on Valentine’s Day. Perhaps I have gone off on a bit of a tangent there (how unusual for me). Perhaps I’m still a bit cranky because my own personal romantic Valentine’s Day, which was Saturday night (with the fruit of our loins happily having a “sleepover!” at her auntie’s house), was ruined by me getting sick from something I ate at a very expensive and delightful restaurant. And I mean sick, as in getting up every three to four hours to lurch onto the toilet, eventually wrapping up my bathrobe as a pillow and lying down on the bathmat on the bathroom floor because I was exhausted, but didn’t want to leave the bathroom for fear I wouldn’t make it to the toilet in time. And yes, I fell asleep for a while on the bathroom floor.

Why, hello, Internet! Do you mind if I share some humiliating moments with you?

I have a sensitive stomach. It is a nuisance.

I spent most of the day yesterday dozing on the couch, waking up only to eat half a bagel, and then later some corn puffs, and finally later in the day, some white rice. Sweet William, who certainly lives up to his name, was the perfect tender mixture of solicitous yet space-giving. He would occasionally materialize to ask if he could get me anything, and then he’d melt into the background and leave me alone. He drove down to the South Bay to pick up Viva in Sunday afternoon traffic, leaving me on the couch watching Collateral and gathering my energy for the final push – i.e., getting Viva into the bathtub and putting her to bed.

I’m hoping tonight will be a bit more romantic, but you know, I think the planets are once again aligned against me. I am not sure why.

* Just realized that today is the 14^th anniversary of one of my most horrible Valentine’s Day episodes ever. In fact, I think it is the worst. My ex-boyfriend, who I had broken up with the previous September, called me repeatedly and asked if he could come over “just for a few minutes.” I kept protesting that I was sick – which I was! True story! – but he insisted he needed to see me. It was a gray and blustery Saturday afternoon in Boston, and I was curled up on my couch with my cat, watching TV, with a mountain of used Kleenex tumbling out of the wastebasket next to me. I was not feeling social at all.

Ah me, I was so young and unawares. He came over, we chatted for a few minutes, and then he said, “Well, I can see you are really sick and kind of out of it—“ Yes, I was! True story! Why must people doubt me? –“So I’m going to get going, but first, hold your hand out. I got you a present.”

“What?!” I said. “Why would you get me a present that is totally ridiculous I don’t want a present from you what are you doing?!”

“Just hold out your hand,” he said, so I did, because I am a gigantic idiot, and then he put the ring in my hand.

“I don’t want it,” I said, holding my hand back out to him without even looking at it.

“Well, you could at least look at it, Jesus Christ!” he said.

“Why would you do this?” I said, and started bawling. And that is when it devolved into a pretty pathetic interaction, where he was trying to get me back blah blah blah and I was trying to get him to leave yada yada yada and I won’t bore you with all that or put more of the horribleness of it out there on display, but suffice it to say that ever since, I have been virulently anti-Valentine’s Day.

But you, maybe you like Valentine’s Day. And if so, more power to you. I wish you happiness and candy and champagne and every romantic thing you have ever dreamed of. As for me, there are the planets, and them not being aligned and all that. So. There you have it.