Update (20:40 EST): The Lady M.Div. is IN. Feel free to leave comments and questions, if you feel like asking questions, in the combox, and I'll answer pronto. (Otherwise, carry on with your evening film, activities, etc. I shall while away the time with depressing Polish tango songs.)
Update 2 (23:15 EST): The Lady M.Div. is OUT and going to bed. Zzzz. Whose saint's day is tomorrow?
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B.A. flew back to Scotland yesterday, taking a good chunk of my heart with him, which puts me in an appropriately gloomy mood for Valentine's Day. Solidarność!
Good morning, ladies.
My cardinal rule for Valentine's Day is EXPECT NOTHING, and this is helpful not only for Single Girls without Boyfriends, but for Single Girls with Boyfriends and indeed Married Women. Boyfriends and Husbands are terrible mind-readers, and they often underestimate the importance of Valentine's Day, let alone understand what it is supposed to look like. If a woman with a boyfriend or husband lets go all of her ideas of what Valentine's Day is supposed to look like, she may find herself pleasantly surprised.
When I was a child, I was not at all rooted in reality, and I used to imagine that something might happen THAT Valentine's Day although nothing exciting and romantic had happened the Valentine's Day before or the Valentine's Day before that and, anyway, I was twelve. This bad Valentine's Day mental habit continued through high school, although it was not as unrooted in reality as there were Valentine's Day candygrams, and sometimes I got one.
I suppose I should explain candygrams. The candygram was the most exciting method of communication in my teenage life. In short, candygrams were notes delivered from the boys' high schools to the girls' high schools and handed over by the student council with the appropriately seasonal piece of candy. (They were also notes delivered to the boys' high schools from the girls' high schools and handed over by their student councils with the appropriate candy, unless the student council cheated and ate all the candy, as I seem to recall a boy claiming his did.)
The advent of the candygrams was announced over the public address system during "The Announcements" or a note was posted up outside the Student Council room and the news spread like mono throughout the student population. The result was 900 girls crammed between a stairwell and a door to have a look at the Candygram List.
Oh, the joy of seeing one's own name on the Candygram list--especially if it had (2) or even (3) written beside it! I'd like to tell you that it was nothing, NOTHING, to the news that Seraphic Singles would be published as a book but---alas. I'm not sure it was. Like Tosca, as a teenager I lived for art and for love. Sadly, the love was entirely unrequited, but at least I got some candygrams and, therefore, respect.
The one shadowy part of candygrams was that I never knew whether I had received a candygram because I was the delightful sort of girl teenage boys loved to send candygrams to, or because I had sent the senders candygrams myself and they were sending candygrams back only to be polite. As the boys to whom I tended to send Candygrams were strictly brought up by their Middle European immigrant parents, I fear the latter.
In hindsight, if I could live high school all over again, I would try to think more strategically about boys, as it is laughable to imagine I could live high school all over again without thinking of boys at all.
And this brings me back to Valentine's Day because it reminds me that we have choices in this life. We can be super-modern and send men valentines in the hope that they will send us valentines back. Or we can be traditional and hope we get valentines anyway and grieve when we don't. Or we can be traditional, hope we get valentines anyway and make sure we have organized a nice treat for ourselves so there will be no grieving.
Now, I will be out having a coffee at 17:30 Eastern Standard Time, but I will be back by 20:00, when I will sit by the computer waiting for comments to respond to. So we can all have a lovely chat in the combox, if you like.
Meanwhile, a very happy Valentine's Day to all my little Singles.
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