The Course of Love Never Runs Smooth

Braapp. Braapp. How come your alarm never sounds soothing when you have to set it earlier than usual? Three thirty, three thirty a.m., that's in the morning. I must be insane. I need to make a mental list. I’ll just lay here a minute and get this all worked out. I can't have another failure like last Valentines Day.

All my life this day has been a stone around my neck. All the way back to second grade and the school play. Hard to imagine that we actually put on a play for Valentines Day, but we did. All I had to do was open and close the curtain, pull this rope to open and pull that rope to close. I had a crush on our teacher who wrote a special story about unrequited love. It seemed a bit advanced for second graders especially the parts about our teacher, who played herself in the play, hating her ex-fiancé. There were quite a lot of references to her and her ex-fiancé that didn't quite make sense to us, including the lines about hoping that he dies from social diseases caught from nomadic prostitutes. I had to ask my dad about the prostitute thing, to which he replied his standard go ask your mother.

I just pulled the wrong rope at the wrong time. The third rope, my third rail if you will, was connected to a large box of soap flakes to simulate snow. Soap flakes actually do look like snow, but when you dump them on stage all at the once, you don’t get a blizzard you get a soapy slippery mess. The substitute we had for the rest of the year was nice and gave us updates from our teacher as she recovered from the two broken legs.

In high school it always seemed that whomever I was dating at the time dumped me right before the big Valentines Day dance, leaving me stranded with non refundable tickets, an order for flowers and reservations for some fancy place to eat afterward that I just bailed on. By the time I was in college I must have been persona non grata at about four different restaurants.

As an adult I tried to throw the day out with yesterday's trash, the trash not the recycling, as I had no interest in bringing back anything connected with this day in to my life. But each new relationship brought new expectations. Love reduced to dollars.

Over the years I have given a blender, a vacuum, lingerie, teddy bears, candy, just about every kitchen utensil only to be met with blank stares, the kind that say you shouldn't have and result in a discussion about the direction the relationship is going. The gym membership was a bad idea. She couldn’t decide if I thought she was overweight or out of shape. I thought it was cute, you know, heart health on Valentines Day. She didn’t buy it.

Finally I gave up, surrendered the anxiety of trying to figure out what I was supposed to do and went on with my life. The first thing on my Facebook page under Status: Single was my personal boycott of Valentines Day.

That was then. I met her almost two years ago. This will be our second Valentines Day together and I find it hard to believe that she stayed with me after last year. You would think a night out at the pub would be a good way to celebrate, but somehow hanging out with the gang shooting darts, burping contests and trying to remember obscure rock songs form your youth with the bartender is just not seen as romantic. Go figure.

She teases me about not being romantic.

This year she has been dropping hints about her idea of a romantic evening, complete with a catered dinner. God knows if I cook I might put us both in the ER again. Okay last time wasn't entirely my fault; the seafood was bad when I bought it. I should have known not to buy fish from the back of a truck with out of state license plates. He was from Maine and swore to me that the lobsters had been fresh caught in the morning. He just failed to tell me what morning of what month. I did pay for the hospital visit.

This is her night, dinner from her favorite restaurant, scented candles, and roses strewn all over the apartment like some exotic garden. So, I am up at three thirty in the morning to drive two hours to Philadelphia to a wholesale florist to get a small van load of roses. On my way back I need to stop at Le Chucks, who specializes in French cuisine. Chef Chuck has promised me and my money to prepare his house specialties of which I cannot pronounce or spell. I had them written down on a menu card by a calligrapher friend of mine who also did the artwork for my hand made one of kind card. Then it is off to the candle place where I will pick up some three dozen scented candles of all sizes, all based on tropical frgagrances. The proprietor candle mistress assures me that none of the scents would overtake the other and combined the place should smell like a subtle tropical garden. I just hope that subtle isn't a fragrance code word for non existent.

I am just not real sure about this rose thing. I searched the internet and I cannot find out what I am supposed to do with them. I know I want them all over the apartment, especially the bedroom, but do I take them off the stems? Don't they still have thorns? I would hate to see our romantic evening ruined because of some thorny branches sticking us in places we never expected to have a thorn.

Oh well, I have lain here long enough. Off to Philly.