Valentine's Day

This is our first Valentine's Day together as a couple.

I've never been one to go out and get all excited about Valentine's Day, to be honest. Maybe it's because I've never been in such a wonderful, loving relationship (as the one I'm in now with Andrew) when the holiday has actually taken place. Maybe it's because I'm so sick of the commercialization, the advertisements bombarding us from all around, that turns me off to it. I don't know what it is, but I'm just not a Valentine's-y kind of girl. I don't hate it but I definitely don't love it.

Andrew asked me a few times this past week  what I wanted to do to celebrate the day together. Unfortunately it's on a Monday this year so whatever we were going to have to do would have to be after we both got out of work, meaning after 8:30pm. Not that I have a problem with that. He said anything I wanted to do, absolutely anything, we'd do it. We could go out to the movies (he especially wanted to see the new Justin Bieber movie: Never Say Never). We could go out for a romantic dinner. Anything that I wanted to do, anything at all... and we'd do it.

I told him multiple times that I didn't care. I'd rather not celebrate than do something just to do it because it's Valentine's Day. We actually ended up exchanging gifts last night when he came over after work. It was a nice surprise. He showed up at my house with a dozen white roses and a beautiful Hallmark card. Luckily he didn't catch me completely off guard with that because I had already finished my Valentine's gift for him a few weeks ago. I had painted him a Buddha rockin' out against a dark blue canvas and made him a pink construction paper Valentine's card complete with Sharpie'd hearts and glued on pictures of chicken feet.

If that doesn't say Happy Valentine's Day, I love you then I don't know what does. [The chicken feet thing is kind of an inside joke, I'm not that random that I'd just put chicken feet on a card for someone, just out of nowhere. There was some sort of thought process behind my insanity...]

So what did we actually end up doing on Valentine's Day? I worked - and got mad amounts of Valentine's from the kids in my class. I've got so much chocolate right now I have no idea what I'm going to do with it all. As for Andrew, he worked too, after getting out of class at Tunxis. He showed up at my house a little after 8:30 tonight and we ended up watching a few episodes of Tales From the Crypt. It was the best Valentine's Day that anyone could have ever imagined.

I loved our Valentine's Day. It was simple. It was sweet. It was nothing out-of-the-ordinary. The roses he gave me yesterday are beautiful but I could have even done without those. I could have even done without the beautiful Hallmark card (although I really, really, really do love the note he wrote inside of it for me so I'd probably want to keep that if I had my way... but even so, he could have written that note to me on the back of a 3x5 index card and I would have been just as happy to have it).

I think people today are so consumed by the commercialization of the holiday that they forget what's really important. Sure, romantic dinners and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates and a dozen long-stemmed roses are nice. But they're just things. And if you can only show the one you're with how much you love and care for them through the use of things, well, I don't really know what that means for you or the one you love. I'd much rather spend the night cuddled up under a comforter watching old episodes of Tales From the Crypt with Andrew than go out some place fancy and sit across from him at a table for two. But maybe that's just me.