Bring on February 15th!!

I am a firm believer that Valentine's Day is only good as a type of New Year's Eve to February 15th. Why?? Easy answer to that: half price chocolate. It's Half-Price Chocolate Eve!! It could even be considered the Single Girl's Holiday because we all know how wonderful Valentine's Day is to us single ladies, heartbroken ladies, divorcing and abused ladies. All of us ladies who are still looking for love, attention and affection. Boys too I suppose but sorry guys, you don't count in my blog tonight.

I have found it easier, as a recently separated single girl with an ex who moved on barely a week after I left (questionable, I know) who is celebrating her first Valentine's alone in over six years, to think of the day as one of growth. The type of growth that allows us to pull the blanket over our heads in the morning and groan that the bed is empty. We lay there on our back, hands at our sides and staring at the sheet that's covering our face like a veil. We start thinking about what we did in past years, who we were with and how we felt. Then with another groan, possibly a grunt and fart, maybe a little belly or butt scratch (because we can do that when we're alone) we fling those blankets back and proclaim: "I will NOT let this day bother me!!" However, we did buy that extra box of Kleenex because after that proclamation, we tend to cry a little.

The day bothers us, there is no question about that. How we handle it is the key. Some of us eat as much as we can to stuff the bitterness down, some celebrate their freedom and enjoy a night out on the town, some drink alone or with a couple of close single friends. Generally, no married people or couples around because you guys are a different breed and us lonely single fools don't like you today. Stay away, we're a little vicious at your public displays of "true love". Blech, you make me sick. Sorry.

But this morning after my proclamation, my watery eyes and my obligatory pout, I turned over to see my little girl standing there with a big read piece of construction paper and the messy "I Love Mommy" scribbled under a rough but beautiful heart. Sometimes Half-Price Chocolate Eve can surprise us that maybe the love we are celebrating on the day isn't necessarily that of the person, man or woman, who is, has been or will be sharing the other half of your bed. Sometimes it's the mini-people who make you the most eye-catching and amazing pieces of fridge art, the itty-bitty blonde three-year-old who squeezes my neck and tells me that she "wobs" me. Then there is my little man, my Meatball whose steel blue eyes tell me that there are going to be a few ladies doing my little lonely Valentine 1st Annual Pout and Fart because of him. They all crawled in bed with me, they all hugged me and jumped on me and all of a sudden I realized:

That half of my bed is full. It's full of three little people who will make Half-Price Chocolate Eve one of my favourite commercial holidays.