Happy Valentine’s Day

 

This is Veronica’s gift to me on Valentine’s Day. She picked them herself.

Reasons Not to Turn to Drink on Valentine’s Day

Ah, Valentine’s Day. A day filled with gorgeous blooms, gourmet dinners, sweet confections and fine wines. Oh, and love.

Maybe your day didn’t have any of those. Maybe you don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. Maybe you don’t have a special someone to lavish gifts on even if you felt so inclined. Maybe the lovely souffle you painstakingly slaved over fell flat. Or burned.

But just because the day wasn’t fabulous doesn’t mean you should turn to drink. You won’t find the comfort you seek in the bottom of a bottle. In fact, you will likely make things worse.

Still need convincing? Here are several reasons NOT to pick up the bottle tonight.

 

You may find yourself unsteady on your feet.

 

You may care less about your appearance, even to the point of losing articles of clothing. This can be embarrassing in public.

 

You may have trouble forming complete sentences, or slur your words.

 

You may find yourself feeling drowsy, and fall asleep in an inappropriate place.

 

You may find you are becoming more and more dependent on the bottle, and have trouble controlling when and how much you drink.

 

All good reasons NOT to drown your sorrows in booze this Valentine’s Day.

But drown your sorrows in chocolate? That’s another story.

Homemade Valentine’s Day

While we don’t have anything against Valentine’s Day here in the Greene household, we do try to steer away from the commercialism that demands spending lots of money so your significant other knows you love him or her. Instead, we traditionally do a little fancier dinner at home and let the kids participate, too.

 

This year, that meant serving dinner on our seldom-used china.

 

Though not everyone got to use the fancy dishes.

 

It meant a fun, pink Valentine’s drink.

 

And Valentine’s clothes, too. No matter if they are decorated with aforementioned pink Valentine’s drink.

 

It meant a do-it-yourself floral arrangement from Paul, since Trader Joe’s ran out of the potted orchids he usually likes to give me (and I like to receive).

 

Not bad for a guy who is partially colorblind. Ariadne approves.

 

It meant a husband who was willing to hold a fussy baby so I could finish my dinner, since Ariadne has a knack for knowing exactly when we are ready to sit down and eat. Actually, he does this pretty much any time she’s fussy during dinner. That is love.

 

It meant heart-shaped cake pops that weren’t perfect but still tasty.

 

And, of course, it meant messy hands.

 

It meant homemade Valentines to Daddy from three little girls.

 

And a little bit of LOTRO geekery from this wife to her husband and best playmate.

 

A fun and tasty Valentine’s Day! Hope yours was just as nice.

The Present

We don’t normally do much for Valentine’s Day. I usually cook something a little special, and Paul brings home a beautiful flowering plant for me to neglect take care of. Maybe there’s a tasty dessert involved. That’s usually about the extent of it.

This year Paul decided we needed some chocolates, and believe me, I have no objection to chocolates. He picked up a box of assorted chocolates at Trader Joe’s on his way home from work on the 14th, and we set it on the counter to pick at later.

 

Because I had made a cheesecake for dessert, we didn’t get around to eating the chocolate that night. When we went to bed, they were still wrapped up in the heart-covered wrapping paper which had led Veronica to label them a “present” earlier in the evening.

Fast forward to the next morning. It was Tuesday, so I got to sleep in a bit while Paul went off to work. It must have been about 7:30 when I heard the patter of little feet coming into the room and over to the bedside.

“Mommy, mommy! I know what’s in the present!”

Uh, oh.

“It’s chocolate!”

 

I jumped out of bed and ran to the kitchen where, sure enough, the box of chocolates was missing. Without stopping I went straight into Veronica’s room to see ripped up wrapping paper on her bed. At this point, between the destruction on her bed and the chocolate on her face, I just knew she had eaten the whole box. I was doomed to dealing with chocolate-induced tummy issues throughout the day.

But when I finally made it over to her bed to assess the damage, there was only a single chocolate missing from the box. Most of which had been spat back out. Apparently Veronica does not like nuts as much as her parents do.

But that is the last time I ever leave anything even remotely attractive to Veronica out on the counter over night.

Until the next time, anyway.