Longing for scissors and glue.

Having more or less given up on "love" (see how I even have to put it in quotes), I've been trolling for interesting dinner partners at Craig's List. My requirements have boiled down to three: (1) not a Republican; (2) able to spell; (3) doesn't use expressions like LOL or ROFL. It's surprising how few posts come up to this high standard, but there are, luckily, a few.

So I emailed a guy: "I'm free for dinner Tuesday or Wednesday," and he wrote back: "Let's make it Tuesday, Valentine's Day is going to be a zoo," and I realized I'd completely forgotten tomorrow is Valentine's Day.

How could this happen? Easy, the same way I missed Christmas: if you don't watch tv, listen to the radio, or go to the mall, you avoid those nagging, hypnotic messages relentlessly trying to sell stuff by reminding us what an important day it is.

As my frugal Pennsylvania Dutch dad used to say about Father's Day: "it's just a plot to sell more ties."

As a hat-tip to Laudator Temporis Acti's "antediluvian, bibliomaniac, and curmudgeon" (Michael Gilleland), who sent me a Valentine "buck up" email last year, I commend his most recent post, about eating acorns, and offer these quotes from the one before that:

There was a time, indeed, I fretted myself about the mistakes of government, like other people; but finding myself every day growing more angry, and the government growing no better, I left it to mend itself. (Oliver Goldsmith)

Princes appear to me to be Fools. Houses of Commons & Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something Else besides Human Life. (William Blake)

Last year's Pratie post: One Tough Day for Two-Timers: As Cheaters Juggle Valentines, Private Eyes Work Overtime; the Feb. 14 'Business Trip'

The previous year: Sweet Potato Queens' Advice for the Lovelorn, said advice including the words with which I soothed Hannah when her love interest was no longer interesting: "They makin' them thangs ever' day." (Now she has the Urban Caballero and they seem happy.)

You know what I miss most about Valentine's Day? Cutting out construction paper hearts and gluing stars on them with my kids. They went to a Quaker school where, if you wanted to give a Valentine's Day card to any one child, you had to make one for every child. We had assembly lines, hearts and stars in a sprawling matrix on the floor waiting to be glued. For me, such a project represents the pinnacle of satisfaction. Sigh. I wonder if either Zed or Hannah has made a construction-paper heart this year?

I leave the disgruntled among you with this quiz from the QuirkyAlone site, which indicates one might even be better off abandoning the whole idea...

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