Valentines Advice For All

Posted: February 14, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: | 1 Comment

 

 

Valentines Day needs to go back to being a day for grade school kids to trade small snoopy cards with corny, but true sayings like, “Love is a warm puppy.”  For most of us the pressure is too great to have one day where we must declare our love for our sweetie in the grandest form, or even worse for those without a one special someone it makes you feel even more alone.

 

No “holiday,” especially a Hallmark one, should make people feel badly, yet those in love have every right to celebrate.  But really if you have someone in your life who makes the sun shine brighter, the wind feel less cold and a peach taste sweeter you don’t need a declarative day to celebrate how blessed you are.

 

For anyone for whom this day makes you want to stay under the covers I have a few bits of advice:

 

  1. Loving yourself is most important.  If you don’t like you it makes it hard to recognize when others love you.
  2. Friends of the same gender are as important as a sweet heart.
  3. Don’t concentrate your efforts on one person who does not appear to know you are alive. 
  4. Real people are not like celebrities and don’t walk around as airbrushed as movies stars, so stop looking for someone who might show up on Entertainment Tonight.
  5. If you are looking at someone who is not looking at you, turn around and look at who might be looking at you.
  6. More importantly, listen to what others are saying and stop listening with your eyes.  The right person for you might not make a swimsuit issue.
  7. Life is long and when you do find someone you want to love him or her forever.  Looks will fade, but funny lasts forever.
  8. Everyone needs someone who will hold his or her hand in public at every age.  If you find that you have found gold.
  9. A dog will always love you.

For those who have a sweetheart I have this advice for you:

  1. Love yourself first; it makes it easier for others to love you.
  2. Friends of the same gender are as important as a sweet heart.
  3. Ignore people who don’t know you are alive.
  4. Don’t worry about your wrinkles; if you ever are on Entertainment Tonight they can airbrush them.
  5. Don’t turn around to see who is looking at you it will just cause trouble.
  6. Listen to your sweetheart and don’t ask them how you look in your swimsuit.
  7. Laugh at your darling’s jokes, even if they are not funny.
  8. Hold hands, everywhere at every age.
  9. Your dog will always love you.

Looking Through the Valentine’s Lens

Posted: February 14, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

This afternoon Carter went to take Shay-Shay out for a walk and announced that there were flowers on the front porch.  Not just flowers, but two beautiful orchids, my favorite.  It was a wonderful treat that was not surprising on this Valentines Day.  Russ is in Chicago and won’t be home until tomorrow, but I knew he would still make the day special even if he were not here.  It is not just because he is an exemplary husband who I love more than chocolate and peanut butter, but also because he has a long-standing Valentine’s phobia.

 

Twenty-two years at our first Valentine’s Day, before we were married, Russ really felt the pressure to live up to all the manufactured hype about declaring his love on this day.  Diamond earrings were the gift he thought he should give me, probably from watching too many Kay Jewelers ads.  So for the days leading up to February 14 he searched every mall in South Jersey looking for what he considered to be diamonds worthy of his love and my ears only to discover that diamonds were really, really expensive.

 

He continued the quest until the day before when he finally realized that the prices on diamonds just don’t vary that much and had to find a plan “B” at the last minute.  For Christmas that year Russ had given me a very nice camera.  Since I was fourteen I had been into photography, even concentrating on it as an art major in college.  Russ did not know that camera brand loyalty was akin to speaking a foreign language.  Just because you can speak French when your native tongue is English does not mean you can understand Spanish.

 

I was a Cannon girl and Russ gave me an Olympus.  It was a foreign operating system to me and one where I had a lot less creative control.  I pretended I liked it, but secretly I still used my trusty Cannon.  One excuse I used with Russ was that all my lenses were Cannon and they did not fit the new Olympus.  So what brilliant gift did Russ come up with for our first Valentine’s Day together…  a lens for my hated Olympus.

 

Poor Russ.  I tried to act excited, but my reaction clearly showed that he was now compounding a wrong gift with an unromantic gift.  I tried to make him see that it is not the value of the gift, just the sentiment that counts.  I don’t need any gift on Valentine’s Day.  I love my husband and I know he loves me too.  The last thing I want him to do is stress about a gift.  His learning the “lens mistake” so early in our relationship has saved him hurt feelings and thousands of dollars in wrong gift choices.  A sweet note, or an orchid that will live until the next year make me happiest.

 

So the words on the card from the florist today, “I hope you like this more than a lens” are the similar to the words he says every year.  But it’s not the flowers or a gift that I like.  It’s my husband whom I love everyday.  He makes every day Valentines Day for me.