Love American Style

So being the good little calendar observant zombie Hallmark wants me to be, I set out with my little man, LJ, yesterday to buy a few Valentine's Day cards for my wife. Honestly, I'm not big on these kinds of faux holidays; like I need a national reminder that prompts me to tell a person I care for that I love them via a horribly written card and some bad chocolates with that white haze over them.

Anyway, there we stood in the stationary store, shoulder to shoulder with our zombie brethren, eyes wide and glassy trying to visually navigate all the touching cards and sentiments that the shopkeepers were so gracious to lay out for us in precise detail - "for wife from husband", "from Granddaughter to Grandmother", "from left-wing radical to Nazi sympathizer sweetie". It's all there, the Long Tail greeting card style, frilly and frothy.

Now if all this sensory overload wasn't enough, down the isle stood this awesome, 50-something gentleman reading each card one by one and muttering some sort of comment to himself afterward under his breath like, "nope", "crap". Distracted by the floor show, I didn't realize my son was systematically rearranging a bunch of cards as only a 3 yr. old can, pulling them from their appointed cubbies and moving them to foreign categories. For a moment I thought of stopping him but honestly the glorious prospect of the Nazi sympathizer getting an "I love you Grandma" card was just too great a concept for me to interfere with... "Enjoy, my boy, enjoy!"

As a reward for exceedingly good stationary store behavior, LJ and I stopped by the bakery on the way home to get the big boy a cookie. It seems even the neighborhood bakerman is in on the Valentine's Day action and of course after the marketing dose he just received, my son selects the biggest heart-shaped cookie (see above pic) this side of a Mount Airy Lodge Jacuzzi.

A half an hour and a half a cookie later my son, looks up at me, cringes and says, "Daddy, my stomach feels funny".

Love hurts my grievous angel, love hurts...

Happy Valentine's Day.

XO,
Gram