It's Valentine's Day tomorrow! I've got my heart shoes all ready. I love this holiday. Always have. In high school, my friends and I would all send valentines to each other. There was always some group selling white and pink and red carnations as a fundraiser, and sometimes we'd buy those, or you could pay the choir to sing to your victim in the cafeteria during lunch. My friend Sarah sent me a Singing Valentine one year. Luckily, we were seniors then, so it was funny and nice. As a freshman, I probably would have suffocated under the weight of my own self-consciousness. All those people! Looking! At! Me! In the cafeteria!
I usually sent homemade valentines. One year I baked chocolate fortune cookies like these; another time I made wax paper hearts with crayons. Martha Stewart was a big influence. I still send out valentines each year, although my list has shortened considerably as I've gotten lazier and more self-indulgent. I'm pretty much down to immediate relatives this year. Soon I'll just make a batch of cookies for myself and call it a day.
I don't have big plans for tomorrow. Although I love Valentine's Day for the way it brightens up the otherwise bleak weeks of mid-winter, I don't like the more commercialized aspects of the holiday. Stephen and I never go out to dinner on V Day, nor do we buy each other roses or diamonds or anything like that. Instead, we usually stay home, light some candles, and challenge ourselves to cook an all-red meal (last year it was penne with homemade tomato sauce, salad with red peppers, and brownie sundaes with raspberry sorbet). Because tomorrow happens to be a Thursday, we'll also spend it watching Lost this year. I mean, what better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than by watching a bunch of belligerent marooned travelers run around a mysterious island punching each other in the face? Don't you just love that?
