Happy Valentines Day!

This was a greeting for general use to any customer or person on the street yesterday. For those of you that know Rob & I, you won't be surprised that we don't celebrate Valentine's day, so you can imagine me trying to keep a straight face, which was a useful distraction as I'm not sure exactly how to respond to it: "Er, thanks"? As I walked into Kroger, a local supermarket, I was greeted joyfully with "Happy Valentine's Day!" and the little demon in the back of my mind made me want to burst in to tears and tell the woman that my husband had just left me for a man, but I reminded myself that I do generally like it that every member of staff greets me with a smile and a "Good morning" or "How are you?" every time I go in there.

It should probably come as no surprise to me by now that Valentine's Day would be celebrated in an over-the-top commercial way here in the USA; it's over-commercialised in the UK, which is why I don't really like it. However, I never dreamed it would be yet another opportunity to stuff kids with vast quantities of artificial foodstuffs mixed with sugar, a. k. a. 'candy', until 'Valentine's Party' popped up on the school calendar and class lists were emailed home. The deal is that each child sends a valentine, comprising of a small card with some attached sweets, chocolate, and/or party bag type tat to all his or her classmates. The valentines are exchanged at the party by posting them into boxes or bags that the kids have decorated. They then get to eat some of the sweets and play games like stacking 'sweet heart' sweets and throwing heart-shaped hoops on pegs. Of course, the kids loved it.

Now, where do I find the Valentine's stuff ?

Preparations for the sugarfest.

Party on David

An optimistic Southlake resident.