Valentine's Day Is For Lovers - I mean, Losers

I'm really not jaded; just a little cynical. Jim and I have never once celebrated Valentine's Day, not even in the gooey-eyed endorphin phase of our relationship.

Why not?

It's just so lame.

You probably disagree, because all of my friends have 'date nights' lined up and are shopping for their husbands/wives/boyfriends/girlfriends. But Jim and I are both so gift-challenged that removing this bit of unnecessary stress from our lives actually frees us up for more foreplay, so the end result is the same.

We'll do something for the kids, of course, but I'm here to say that there is no other holiday more eye-rolling and nauseating for me than Valentine's Day. Oh, the crap that comes into our house the entire week of the event...

And I do mean C-R-A-P.

Paper squares with torn, perforated edges featuring robots and princesses. Who needs it??? Suckers and candy hearts, plastic, trinkety doo-dads, cellophane, more suckers, Red-Hots... Please, somebody douse me in gasoline and light a match. Blech.

I am the Grinch Who Stole Valentine's Day.

Holiday M&M's nonwithstanding, there are just no redeeming factors for such an insipid, disposable holiday. At least Christmas, despite being stressful with kids and family, comes with songs, smells, warmth, and goodwill.

Halloween - my favorite - is affixed with imagination and provokes the depths of our psyches, and Easter blooms in the spring, when it is nearly impossible to be in a bad mood (summer's a-comin', after all).

And then there's Valentine's Day, mired in the bowels of winter, faking cheap cheer in the midst of stomach flus, runny noses, chapped faces and croup.

In fact, my third baby was due in the middle of February. After our inital visit to the doctor, Jim's first comment was, "Please don't let it be born on Valentine's Day. That would be so tacky."

And so she wasn't. February 12th, 2005, my third baby made her debut into this crazy place. I left the hospital the next day, never one for plastic hospital mattress covers. And I certainly wasn't expecting a Valentine's Day gift, because they were unprecedented in our household and I had just passed a baby through my loins.

So imagine my surprise on February 14th, 2005, when the doorbell rings. And I answer it. And a group of men in straw boater hats are at my door. And I am hemorrhaging like a Biblical character. And checking my boobs for milk every five minutes.

"Honey, I ordered a barbershop quartet to come sing for you for Valentine's Day!"

"What the hell???"

And so I, in an adult diaper, sweatpants, greasy hair, and a nursing bra, sat there awkwardly, listening to these men sing to me and me only, as my milk decided to come in, and thus received my first Valentine's Day gift ever in our courtship and marriage. It was very thoughtful.

But it totally sucked.

This year I better not get a damned thing.

Happy Valentine's Day!