What the eff is a grown, professional woman to do with a Stepford teddy bear or a hat box? I’m neither a child nor an old lady, and my sweaty baseball caps are just fine without a box, thank you.

About giving stuffed animals as gifts to women, it’s a problem. Over the years, I’ve been given more than a few. (Gawd, I hope that’s not somehow a reflection of me. eek) The toy givers mean well so I don’t want to seem ungrateful (even though I have to feign gratitude at receiving a pink and white striped tiger that plays half a minute of “Wild Thing” through a speaker that must have been made from an old, used and discarded, aluminum pot pie tin at a volume to wake the dead) nor do I want to hurt their feelings. I mean, they did go to the trouble of getting out and driving to a retail outlet to select the pink and white fluffy product from hel, so there was some effort to please put forth. But the oohs and aaahs and thank yous, what the hell am I supposed to do with the damned stuffed toys? Should I display them? Where? For how long? Then am I to store them along with other, much more meaningful and compact keepsakes, such as the funniest greeting cards and photographs? Or is it okay to give them to Goodwill or to the kids I know after an undisclosed appropriate duration of time?

After years of not knowing what to do with them, I finally decided only weeks ago that a gift received shouldn’t become a burden to keep and I boxed them up to go to charity. However, I ended up giving them to the girls who live downstairs as a way to stop their insanely noisy game of soccer-on-the-stairs without having to ask them to cut it out and therefore risk pissing them or their mother off. Both problems now solved.

Now, how to politely stop gift-givers from replenishing the stuffed animal supply?

We celebrate Valentines Day and have for 29 years. For us it is day to celebrate romance. We don’t go out. One of us (usually me) will come up with a fancy homemade romantic dinner, always with a home made chocolate wonderful dissert. We make up a fancy menu and give each other humorous cards. We have saved every card we have sent each other and put them out as decoration and to remember where we were when we sent them.

We don’t spend much money but just time enjoying each other and celebrating another year together.

Call me romantic, I like a day to celebrate love.

Gary Ray

To all the gals reading this, the truth hurts and the absolute truth hurts absolutely.

Still a fun post, thanks :)

The real Valentinus is a fine person to honor. There was none of that celibacy silliness for this priest (he was married to St. Sabina, of whom little is known other than her willingness to listen to and consider the concerns and ideas of a slave). He was often in hot water for such things as denying the bishops’ claim of divine authority to do as they pleased, and teaching that the Holy Spirit was feminine and the personification of Wisdom…what’s not to love? (And I’m a Pagan.)

And we’ll begin the celebration at midnight on the 14th, so as to scarf up on 1/2 price candy, for self and/or for giving, on the 15th. We will also give one another living plants (from our own gardens/windowboxes when possible), “that CD you’ve been trying to find forever,” handmade gifts, and job coupons (”good for one footrub–one ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ marathon evening–going to a live concert of that band you inexplicably like, and never saying they sound like constipated donkeys”). And that night…we will do whatever we want, so long as it’s for everyone involved.

Think it’ll catch on?