Happy Heart Day

Many moons ago my family and I spent a nerve wracking Feb 14^th sitting around while my grandfather underwent a quadruple by-pass. He came out of the whole thing only a little worse for wear, slightly sappier but with hair as perfectly coiffed as ever. And with that our family has taken all the Valentines love and hearts and made it all quite literal. We’ve wished each other a Happy Heart Day every Feb 14^th since.

I’m not going to do the whole woe-is-me-single-girl-at-valentines thing. Nor am I going to dive into a chocolate brownie sundae post – overly sweet and utterly indulgent – about how I can appreciate all the love that is in my life blah blah blah. Barf. I don’t even have any funny new stories for you, which disappoints me more greatly than you know.

I’m also going to leave the diatribes about broken hearts (literal or otherwise) to your capable imaginations.

Tonight I’ll possibly be at an Embassy that serves stiff drinks accompanied by Scottish dancing, with a few lovely friends. I’m hoping the gay one gets a little tipsy cause then she gets all flirty and complimentary and I'm a sucker for flattery.

No matter what happens, all I know is it is going to top last February 14th, when I had just arrived in Malawi for a 6 week contract and was utterly exhausted. I may have already walked into the office and pointed out the guy I was interested in whom I would later date for a bit, but our relationship was strictly professional on Day 1 and I hadn't yet met any of the 3 other men whose attempts at pursuit would keep me entertained on that trip.

It will also definitely be better than the year before that, when I had tried to completely avoid Feb 14^th in its entirety by planning my flight to Australia in such a way that I would depart Canada on Feb 13^th and arrive in Sydney on the 15^th and thus Valentines simply would fail to exist. Instead, I took a last minute contract to go to Zimbabwe for 6 weeks, and late in the evening on Valentine’s, got a call from the guy I was “seeing” at the time. Only upon answering his call (well, a call from his mobile phone at least), I was greeted by a woman telling me to stay away from her man.

Awesome.

Happy Heart Day ya’ll, whatever condition yours is in.