Valentine's Day

Everyone else blogged about it, so why not me? I’ll share my deep, deep Valentine’s Day thoughts.

As some of you know, and some of you don’t, my quasi-should-just-call-him-boyfriend-but-he’s-not-my-boyfriend male friend is here this week for a work training. I haven’t seen this male friend since Christmas where we had a great time getting back to center. Six weeks is a long time when you’re only quasi talking to someone, but as it turns out, time flies by, and with only a few bumps, he arrived to my apartment and we were ready for 10 days of fun. Fun for me, because I also have the added bonus of getting to sleep in a sweet-ass hotel room all week, where I can actually turn around in the bathroom, have two TV’s turned onto different channels and put my makeup on properly in front of a mirror, rather than on my bed into the mirror on my compact.

Anyways, because we are only quasi at this moment, romance, and all things related, including Valentine’s Day plans, can easily be relegated to the “don’t have to do it” side of the relationship. I don’t know why, I’m hardly someone who requires wining and dining, but for some reason, I do buy into Valentine’s Day. I don’t require roses, candy, jewelry or anything of the sort, but I do suppose I like something, and it could be the tiniest most insignificant thing ever, so long as it was meant to show me that someone cared.

I think I feel this way because I never had boyfriends growing up. I was such a super huge tomboy and really didn’t give a flying S*** that I missed all the cheesy balloon and roses crap of high school and even college. Maybe I'm making up for it now? The most fun Valentine’s Day I ever had was actually getting completely wasted and going out dancing with my friend. I threw up into a plastic banner announcing something or other on the UF Plaza of the Americas on my way home and then proceeded to cheer about that for like 10 minutes. So I was hardly one of those single girls who whined about being single and went to the ends of the Earth to find a date. I was exactly the opposite. Since I have been non-single, for the last four Valentine’s Day’s approximately, I guess it’s important to me to do a little something. One year it was a nice Sushi dinner. One year it was a weekend cruise, which ironically cost just over what last year’s raw food dinner cost. So this year, being technically single but in a quasi-relationship, I did wonder what would be appropriate.

On my way out of the subway, to the quasi-companion's hotel, I passed tons of financial types (hotel is across from the WTC site) holding roses and balloons, girls with candy, blue-collar types mulling over sidewalk vendor gifts…and I realized that I didn’t want those things. They’re nice and all, don’t get me wrong, but flowers die, balloons are a waste of space after about a minute and candy is fattening. But then when I realized that “dinner plans” involved the five other people that are doing the training with the quasi-companion, I must admit I was temporarily disappointed. We went to the gym, and once my endorphins were flowing I felt a tad better. A nice, hot shower made me feel a little bit better. But it was only one sentence that I really required – “Lia, you and I will go out to dinner on Saturday if that’s alright. I want to network with these people while we’re all together.” Perfect, I said! And as it turns out, it was. Over a bottle of wine, and lots of sushi and veggies, I listened to them all as they chatted about work, got to know each other and just laughed, drank and had a good time. When it was all over, we watched some Olympics and called it a night. And it was an extremely nice night.

So do I like Valentine’s Day? I’m ashamed to admit, that yes, I sort of do. But I only like the idea of taking out one minute of your day to show someone that you care. It doesn’t matter to me if that means going out with a single friend and getting blasted in the name of singledom, or telling someone the two of you will go out to dinner later in the week. In the end, to me, it’s one and the same.