Happy Valentines Day - The Real One

I would so really rather be asleep by now. Antoine - my resident French guy - more on him in a minute - is stuck in Silverlake with his keys locked in the car (without a strong battery on his cell phone and without his AAA card handy and without anyone else to call but me, his resident lifeline) and AAA is on its way to rescue him so that I don't have to, which would really put me in a very bad mood at this hour. I just read that Roger Clemens apparently made himself look not real bright (so sorry) in court today and the beautiful Andy Pettitte might not fare too well either but at least his stories were a little straighter than the former. It's like everything and everyone is running amuck. And I just read Mercury doesn't even go direct for a few more days.

All the more reason to hone in on something good like Valentines Day. And this would be the real blog. The other "Valentines Day" was a mistake put out there by my evil twin Alvina. She did this sort of thing on my other blog too and I still wish she'd just get her own blog.

Newsflash - Antoine just called, he is "cool" and was amazed that it only took 2 seconds for the guy to get into his car. Yeah. At least he's fared better than Roger Clemens did today. 

Back to Valentines Day. 

But wait, yet another call from Antoine (with that same low battery on his cell phone) to tell me yet again that everything is cool (can I GET to my blog over here?!?!) and that it took about 2 seconds for the guy to get into his car (etc., with a French accent)....

Now the neighbors are partying and making way more noise than I wish they would on a Wednesday night before I have to get up early in the a.m.

I so need to run away from home.

Back to Valentines Day.

To say that Valentines Day is only for those in love/who have a romantic significant other, etc., 

is like saying that Christmas is only for children. Come on. We can do better than that. I like to think of this day as one to celebrate love in general, and romance as a way to just make people feel special. It doesn't have to imply seduction - not that there isn't a time and place for that because there is, but - we can romance children, grandparents, mama, anyone we want to see happy.

Today, after I made and served (and cleaned up afterwards) lunch for me and Antoine (the whole story on 'resident French guy' promises to be blogged later), I began folding and stickering my very special Jimmy Neutron kiddie valentines for distribution tomorrow morning, when I go out to exercise at the beach. That is, distribution to people I really do not know, as in, strangers. This is something I try to do every year. One year I gave them out to the guys at the car wash, the people in the grocery store, card shop, everywhere. 

It takes some courage, yeah, but I promise that it is an absolute surefire way to make people laugh, smile, feel happy, and, romanced. 

Antoine seemed to indicate that I'm a fool. Did that stop me from folding and stickering my Jimmy Neutron valentines with any less enthusiasm than a 9-year-old would exhibit? It did not. I told him that if he gave out valentines to strangers, all the girls would swoon all day long because they got a valentine from a cute French guy they didn't even know.

It was then that he asked me if he could have one of my Jimmy Neutron valentines, to give out to 'someone' - he hadn't decided yet. Whatever.

I don't need to be right in life, I only need to be happy. Why, I asked him, would I not take an opportunity to make people happy, for the grand expense of 99 cents (cost of the Jimmy Neutron valentines, and you got stickers too!). Only a fool would pass on that. The best way to BE happy is to make others happy. It's kind of a manipulative ploy, but it works.

Besides, a good way to counterbalance the fear that some people might think you're a complete wacko for giving out valentines to complete strangers, is to think like my sisters and I always do: "I'm never going to see these people again anyway".

Happy Valentines Day.