Valentine's Day Stories

For the first time in I don't want to say how long, I spent all of Valentine's Day not dwelling on the fact that it was Valentine's Day and I was alone. I went to Mass and completely missed the fact that there was a reason Fr. Pedro was speaking on love. I spent the morning at one of our rental properties where two of our workmen talked about their plans for later that day. I went to the grocery store and was honestly surprised at how many people were waiting in line with flowers in their hands.  (I did laugh out loud at the woman with a life size Spiderman balloon.) I went to work at the parish and was really quite pleasant all day without feeling jealous of the married women who were shuffling chocolate and flowers around on their desks.  All in all, it was a good day.

Then I got off from work and I couldn't escape the text messages, the saccharine love songs on the radio, the balloons and cards at yet ANOTHER grocery store, and then I sighed... and thought of last year's Valentine's Day.

Last year Tia and I were making french onion soup... lots of it. We ended up cutting up about eighty pounds of onions.  Our faces were purple, tears were streaming out of ours, we were choked up, our hair and clothes were a mess, and snot was running out of our noses; we were a sight.  And then the doorbell rang.

Tia only had to look at me to know what I was going to do but before she could stop me I was running for the door.  There stood our mailman, holding our live butterfly larvae in a box, and staring, mouth agape, at my appearance.  I choked out the words (still crying), "We're watching Pride and Prejudice and Mr. Darcy just pronounced his undying love!"  He nodded slowly, as if unsure if he should stay and comfort me or drop the larvae and run.

His indecision was long enough that Tia came up behind me. Her appearance didn't help his uneasiness but her words did. Tia told the poor mailman that we were making french onion soup and had been cutting up onions for an hour.  He nodded slowly again, handed her the larvae and left, leaving me in fits of giggles.  Tia didn't find it nearly as funny as I did as I ran through other things I could have said out loud.

"...Romeo just died..."
"...Tom Hanks just found Meg Ryan..."
"...Rhett Butler just told Scarlet O'Hara that he doesn't give a damn..."
"...Wesley and Buttercup found their happy ending..."
"...Johnny Depp just took his shirt off..."

Now that was a good Valentines Day.