Valentine's Day

Last year on Valentine's Day, Philip and I had only been officially together for a couple of weeks (We had already talked about marriage and everything at that point, but that's a whole other topic...).  We were long distance, and it sucked.  He had tried to send me flowers at work, but no one had informed his of how people in New Orleans measured time, and I didn't get them until like a week later.  He had tried to send a package of cookies and candy to my house, but that also didn't get there until the next day.  He did, however, sing to me on the phone, so that made it all better.  :-)

This year, we were actually together!  He had this big plan to have us go on a "traditional" date.  Boy picks up girl, takes her to dinner, etc.  So he was going to go hang out at his parents' house while I got ready, and then come pick me up.  Unfortunately, fate doesn't really seem to like my fiance, because my car has been (almost) put out to pasture, and we've been sharing his car (and using the graciousness of his dad picking him up from work), so it wouldn't have worked out for him to pick me up.

Instead, we both got dressed up at our place and went out to Bricktown to have a nice dinner.  When we got to Bricktown, parking was nearly impossible, everything was packed, and the place we had picked out to go to didn't take reservations.  As we were sitting in traffic, I turned to him and said, "Wanna just find a place near the apartment?"  So we headed back home and went to a litte, informal Mexican place directly across the street from our apartment.  We were the fanciest dressed people there, but I told him we could just pretend like we're really important and have big, fancy plans once we're done with dinner.  After dinner (and a very large margarita) we headed home.  Philip had put candles in our fireplace and bought a bottle of wine.  But before that, we played a game of Mario Baseball on the Wii.  I totally won, but we'll say Philip let me win because it was Valentine's Day.  Then we really did act like it was Valentine's Day and drank wine in front of the fireplace.  We ended the evening by watching an episode of How I Met Your Mother and going to bed around 10pm.  Because that's what we do.

Other couples may see this as a somewhat pathetic Valentine's Day.  I LOVED it.  I liked not having to get stressed out about where to park or waiting for a table.  I loved staying close to home and getting some awesome Mexican food.  I loved beating Philip in Mario Baseball (because he's not a sore loser at all).  I loved the romantic wine and fireplace idea.  And I loved winding down with HIMYM (especially the episode in season 2 when Marshall and Lily get back together).  This Valentine's Day wasn't about us pretending anything.  We were just ourselves.

This is us, like it or not.