Valentine's Day is upon us. I thought it would never get here. The last three months of the NFL season definitely slow down the passage of time to a crawl and are an unhappy reminder of just how long it is between late-October and late-February. I suppose that winter and its short days, long (and generally uneventful) nights, low sun angle (is that redundant?), and all of its many varieties of noxious weather conditions also play their parts in making the clock and calendar seem like they're standing still. But we're past all of that now. The days are getting longer and, if the nights are still pretty uneventful, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon marked by Valentine's Day and my birthday, a mere week later. Twins pitchers and catchers report on February 21, my special day. Coincidence? Maybe. But I like to think that we all deserve a break and a sense of hope that, soon, we'll have major league baseball to ease us through the still otherwise unevevtful evenings.
But we do need to get past this Valentine's Day thing first. I've never been the biggest fan in the world of Valentine's Day and have tended to see it as a contrived event to benefit the manufacturers of schmaltzy red and pink tinted cards and the retail outlets that sell the damn things. I'm all for getting tons of chocolate dumped in my lap but mostly what I've gotten instead are those rock-hard, heart-shaped little instant tooth decay pellets with the stupid messages on them. Seriously---Q-T-π? Those things are even more deadly than the sugar-coated marshmallow lumps that get sold during the Easter season. But I'll admit that there are a few silver linings in the Valentine's clouds and those have to do with...surprise!!...food and drink.
And I'm not just talking chocolate. I'm talking pizza from Carbone's on Randolph. Heart-shaped, no less. And unlike the little heart-shaped sugar jaw breakers, this stuff--though it might still kill you--will at least make the trip to the hereafter worthwhile.
We first discovered the concept of heart-shapizza a feww years back at Carbone's on Randolph, my old stomping grounds from way back in high school and even before that. I would have been far too cool to have submitted to such an emotions-on-the-sleeve thing back when I was 17. Moot point though; I'm almost positive that this beauty wasn't on the menu back in the day. No, I'd somehow convinced Miz Susan that what we really needed for Valentine's Day dinner was pizza from Carbone's. Imagine my shock when she actually agreed. Then imagine my pathetic little man-brain spinning feverishly when I ordered and they asked if I wanted it in the shape of the day. Who was I to say anything but, "Hell yes, I want it it heart-shaped!"? Particularly since I'd undoubtedly done my usual half-assed job of paying due respect to the holiday and was probably coming home with, at best, a more than half-wilted bunch of daisies from the floral department at Cub. Long story short, we loved it (hard not to love a Carbone's pizza) and we've been stuck on it ever since. A tradition had been born.
I mentioned drink as well. Miz Susan got hooked on the bubbly a couple of New Year's Eves ago down at the University Club. One of the waiters who was probably looking to pad our bill gave her a free sip of the stuff and she fell right into his trap. Before I knew it we had a whole bottle to kill and now she's always taking a detour past the champagne rack whenever we go to the liquor store. Sadly, the weather and the trials of the week conspired to keep her from that one last stop on Friday afternoon and we were left without any Schramsberg Blanc de Blanc. We've given up on any ideas of ever tasting Dom Perignon, let alone buying a bottle. I talked her into beer instead and she was more than happy to help polish off the last of the Schell's Octoberfest after I pointed out that if she really needed to drink imported she could start putting a dent in the Amstel Lights that had gotten shoved to the back of the fridge.
So Valentine's Day dinner was a relatively low-key operation despite Miz Susan having to venture out to pick up the pizza, Carbone's one major failing being that they don't deliver. Never have, doubt they ever will. But it's not like I didn't have to pay a steep price for the beer and pizza. I wonder if Miz Susan would have even allowed me this much if I hadn't played the part of Valentines Lackey for her fourth grade class.
For whatever reason, political correctness has not yet done away with the exchange of Valentines in at least a few of our public schools. The kids probably still like it and I know that Miz Susan always brings home a wad of the things every February. For her students, she (meaning me) has sometimes copped her cards off of the internet but this year she decided to throw some of our hard earned dollars at Target in exchange for a box of 32 of the cutest, glossiest, heartiest little monkey Valentines you can imagine. Complete with matching rub on tattoos. She even ponied up for a couple of bags of M&M minis to go with each card. About five minutes into the process of separating and addressing and folding and taping and M&Ming she told me that this really wasn't a very efficient use of her time. She was right, of course. She's making good money and I don't even qualify for unemployment so I offered to take over for her. I separated the perforated sheets of the little monkeys and turned them over to her for addresses and her initials. Then she threw them back at me for the rest of the minimum wage work. I tucked the matching tattoos into their little slots and taped packages of M&M minis and folded and sealed them all up with the little red heart stickers that came with the pack. An hour later, with my hands throbbing from the picky-ass work and Miz Susan smirking and basking in the glow of having Tom Sawyered another chunk of her work-related tedium off on me, I wrapped things up. After a last count to make sure that no 4Y student was going to be scarred for life due to a missing Valentine monkey card which had slipped under the bed, I poured the things back into the Target bag. To rub my nose in my low-life status even further, Miz Susan grabbed the bag with the untaped M&M's and took that away from me too. She threw me one measly little package for my troubles but that was all. I figured that I could bide my time, that maybe there'd be a few leftovers after the mayhem on Friday that would come back home. I should have known better. Those most likely got handed over to the Desk Fairy for future positive reinforcement purposes because I sure as hell never saw them again.
Can't hardly wait for Valentine's to roll around again next year.
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