Happy SAD!

I'm talking Singles Awareness Day, a day for people who are single to celebrate or not celebrate being single... while many couples deal with the social, spousal and consumer pressures to celebrate Valentine's Day.

I'm not fanatically anti-Valentine's Day. I actually think it's a sweet idea but how it can playout is just so depressing to me.

Yesterday was a Friday. Normally on Fridays I buy fresh flowers because I like having flowers around. So yesterday, also being the day before today, Valentine's Day, when I was in the grocery store, I saw a lot of Valentine's Day flower arrangements being purchased. Though I buy my flowers from a grocery store, I am not buying them to express affection to myself. I'm not trying to make an impression.

Watching people slap their Valentine's Day gifts on the check-out conveyor belt thingy along side their toilet bowl cleaner and Ritz Crackers was so entirely unromantic to me. It's a lesson in how not to be romantic and frankly, how not to get laid!

It made me think about the Valentine's Day gifts that I have received; my first boyfriend's made-from-scratch heart-shaped pizza with 'I love you' written in black olives, his weird and wonderful wire art things and his wood carvings. He always made his Valentine's Day, and other, gifts. Another boyfriend always wrote silly and often very sappy limericks and one year brought home a baby snake that he rescued (really, this was very sweet).

I still have all of these gifts except the pizza and the snake! or perhaps I should say, I remember and treasure these gifts and I feel fortunate that I received them. I know that I likely received grocery store flowers as well and although that is not necessarily a horrible thing, I just do not remember those gifts. Not at all. They made no lasting impression, none whatsoever. And isn't that the point? How unromantic is that?

Anyway, back to Happy SAD... this Valentine's Day, I am single and a friend of mine, who is also single, suggested that we might go to this 'singles party' tonight. When she mentioned it we both bursted out laughing...

I thought this was rather funny as well:


Happy SAD to my solo buddies!