Costco and Valentine's Day

I was brushing my teeth this morning and thinking about the layout of my day. I’m out of toilet paper and paper towels and liquid hand soap. Mulling the possibility of getting a new bathroom rug since the unfortunate Loreal Black Pearl hair dye incident a few weeks back. I need to go to Costco today and stock up on various household items for the next year! But it's also Valentine’s Day and I suddenly have to negotiate my day a little better considering this made-up holiday. I’ve always been a pragmatist and I walk around with a slightly cynical taste in my mouth so if something makes sense to do it, I’ll probably do it, but if it doesn’t make sense to do something, I won’t. Valentine’s Day is a holiday for romantics, not pragmatists, and I wonder what’s a pragmatist supposed to do on a holiday for lovers? I put on some rose-colored glasses and look around.

This morning, I saw makeshift Valentine’s Day gift kiosks set up at gas stations and grocery store parking lots. Stuffed animals and balloons, red floral arrangements and rose bouquets, pink-cellophane-wrapped baskets with chocolate and sea scrubs. The burgeoning romantic in me says “Don’t forget your sweetie, today!” The pragmatist in me chimes in, “…if you know what’s good for you!” Ouch. Sheesh. What’s with the bitterness? And when am I going to find the time to even get a card for my S.O.?

I look around my desk at work to see if I can MacGuyver a homemade card or fashion some love token out of paperclips and colored paper. I see my sister’s birthday card, purchased in January, unsent and most definitely will arrive late now (her birthday is tomorrow). (Just because I fancy myself a pragmatist, doesn’t mean I’m organized.) I notice a Valentine’s Day card that a sweet, older lady dropped off at everyone’s cube. You remember, the kind that came 40 to a box. In grammar school, we used to decorate brown lunch bags with hearts and stickers that said “Be Mine” and “Stay Sweet” and tape them to our desks. We'd eat chocolate cupcakes with pink frosting and red sprinkles and we'd go around and drop these cards in everybody’s bag. And I do mean EVERYBODY. So we had to give everyone a Valentine’s Day card, even if we didn’t want to. Even Jason Randall, the kid who called me "fatty" in third grade. How fair. How…egalitarian.

I thought, Hmm….maybe I can give this card to my S.O. and just pass it off as mine? I open it up, hoping she didn’t personalize it. Dang! She signed it from “a secret admirer”. Well, maybe it would work…My S.O. and I have only been together for a few months. He doesn’t know my handwriting yet as I am not the kind of girlfriend who writes sweet little love notes on Post-its and hides them in his pants pockets. I’d write him a To Do list or a Things-To-Pick-Up-at-Target List before I wrote him a note that said “I wub you just the way you are!” Ew. I know they don’t sell cards at Costco. Unless I plan on sending Valentines to my 500 closest friends, I probably can’t kill two birds with one stone while I'm there. Damn. I think I need a stronger prescription for my rose-colored glasses.