I think my plans for tonight involve getting my eyebrows waxed and then going home and painting. Try not to be jealous.

I was trying to remember what I did on past Valentine’s Days (henceforth, VD). Last year I was supposed to go to dinner with a whole bunch of girlfriends but there was mass craziness and estrogen backlash and they all got into a big fight that afternoon. Ridiculously, the night out was cancelled, and I ended up literally all dressed up with nowhere to go. I think I spent the night watching TV in my heels and lip gloss. Good times.

The year before, VD was the day I moved into my apartment, oddly enough. It was a Friday and I was supposed to be moving in the next day, but there had been warnings of Big Snow Coming. I remember I was at work, which was this huge engineering company I temped at for ages when I got back from London. My mom called me in the morning and was all, “There’s going to be 26,000 feet of snow hitting tomorrow. Get your stuff together and tell your boss you’re taking the day off; we have to move you in right now.” Which is what we did. (This was that move-in day from hell I have mentioned before.)

OH MY GOD. Weird cross-connecting post thing going on. I just remembered that there was another person who helped me move in that day: Detroit Boy. And, I had already broken up with him the weekend before, so he was just helping me out of the goodness of his heart (or possibly out of a misguided expectation of thank-you sex). Hmm, I forgot about that. Now I feel bad for writing such mean things about him for the Detroit thing. Sorry, Detroit boy!

So I got all moved in and everyone went home, and the next day we actually did get the 26,000 feet of snow and the city was shut in for the next four days. Which gave me plenty of time to get everything unpacked and built and hung, and also to go insane and start muttering to myself, because being alone for four days straight is WEIRD.

Now, the best VD I ever had, other than the clap (totally kidding! Because obviously the best VD is syphilis), was freshman year of college. It was my second date with a boy I had recently met and he was planning a surprise for us. All week I had been bugging him to tell me what was going on, and when that didn’t work I bugged my friends, because they were the ones advising him on what I would like.

I remember VD was a Saturday that year, and he called in the morning and told me he was coming to get me and I had to dress really warmly. I was hanging out with my roommate. We had some cheesy mix station playing on the radio and “I just called to say I love you” came on, which I hadn’t heard since I was a kid, so that made me happy. I was very nervous. I felt lucky that I had found someone who obviously liked me enough to plan a surprise for me, and I didn’t know what I had done to deserve that. I had never had a serious boyfriend before.

When he showed up, he had a backpack and a blanket and said we were going on a little hike. We ended up at some historic battleground (I went to school at a small town in Virginia, so this was a normal local attraction) and it was very crisp out but nice, kind of gray and overcast, which I actually like. Finally he decided we were at a good spot. We unpacked everything and it turned out he had made a picnic of all my favorite foods. There was soup, and bread with fancy cheese, and pears, and pasta (I know, weird food combination, right?), and chocolate mousse for dessert. I was very touched.

We sat and ate and talked for forever. Eventually we realized our entire bodies were numb, so we went back to his dorm and watched some terrible movie with friends. I think it was “Ransom” but I could be wrong about this.

He became my first serious boyfriend and we were together for almost a year.