Another Valentine's Day post

Usually one every 2 years is enough, but I was noodling around on the 'net today while my kids are trying to make snowballs out of the eighth-inch on the ground and came across some ruminations on the topic. (Moo!) I am reminded of the first V-Day I spent with my husband.

He took me out to a nice Italian restaurant, his favorite place. It was not a fancy place, but not a plastic-grapes-hanging-from-the-ceiling pizza joint. The food was fabulous.

He had made a reservation (I think) but there was still a wait. Well, that turned out to be the most entertaining part of the evening! People-watching on V-Day is such fun! The atmosphere was thick with passive-aggressive discontent. I think I was the only happy woman in the place. The rest sat around looking put out, either because the place wasn't nice enough, or because they had to wait. The waiting, I think, implied to them that the man had not thought ahead and made a reservation.

I am surprised we could converse over the sounds of exaggerated sighing.

Now I am not a big Valentine's person. In the past a dinner out with some good wine has been the standard celebration. But I have young kids. My girl is really into the whole heart and love thing, and at her age it's cute. She make valentines for special people, relatives mostly. My boy couldn't care less about it.

But, we have realized that we should probably make a slightly bigger deal out of it for our son. See, some day (we hope) he will have a wife. And while I pray (fervently and frequently) that he doesn't end up with someone like those sighing passive-aggressive dames I used to see at La Galleria, he might end up with a woman who's just a little bit into Hallmark holidays and would like something. Not jewels, you know, but maybe a Whitman's sampler (is that the one with the little map on the lid?) or, our personal favorite, Ghirardelli Espresso Escape. The poor kid is already a freak, not having an x-box or even a real game boy. We may as well not handicap him any more.

So, what to do? There's not much time and between school, homeschooling, our dog, the visiting dog, the electrical fire in the back yard (more on that another day), life is just plumb full! But my husband and I are not above pulling a long-forgotten (and never noticed by the kids) book off a shelf and wrapping it up, just so we have a gift to give. In our house, books are the best gifts anyway. Hm... I wonder if they ever noticed this new copy of The Selected Writings of Thomas Aquinas that's sitting on the desk here... how romantic!