What's Love Got to Do With It?

Flowers, chocolates, jewelry. Dumb greeting cards. Stuffed animals holding heart-shaped pillows. Lacy red underwear--in fact, anything red. These are all being touted by the purveyors of each as the best way to show your feelings on this sappiest and silliest of all holidays. Instead of throwing your money away, why not just do something nice for the one you love? For example, today I will see my shrink and discuss all the things that are making me miserable.  This will hopefully result in me being in a better mood when my husband returns from a business trip; that's his first gift. On the way home I will stop at the market to buy food, since whenever Mitch is out of town I let that whole thing slide and eat popcorn or canned tuna for dinner. He, on the other hand, is hooked on regulation meals with something from each food group, so a full fridge is gift number two. You get the point.

What is love anyway? How can you tell you love someone or something? These are deep questions and I certainly don't have the answers, but I do know this: Giving me chocolates when I'm still feeling fat from my recent Florida vacation would really piss me off, so I hope he doesn't try that. The greeting cards are always stupid and these days they cost a fortune; have you noticed? It's like $4.99 for a folded piece of cardboard with some "funny" cartoon of a husband standing on a ladder trying to lasso the moon, or else a sappy one with glitter and a watercolor rendering of a bouquet of roses--often they are blue--surrounded by fancy script lettering saying, "You are precious to me." He better not show up with either of those. We still have the roses he bought last week when he said he was "inoculating himself for Valentine's Day" in case he forgot to get me something or ran out of time, so that's out. As for going the stuffed animal route, he knows better, believe me.

So I am hoping for a whole lot of nothing as proof of my husband's love. As for my son, he needs to simply have a nice day and be happy with himself. That would make my day! (I guess that's love.)