The white fluffy bunny who lived in the cotton candy tree in the forest of shared feelings

I did promise my dad a post about the bunny, but maybe I'll skip it and give a Valentine's Day report instead.

Turns out that here in the blessed British Isles, they do not celebrate Valentine's Day properly in the schools. Americans (and Canadians?) will back me up here. When you're little Valentine's Day is this huge day-long party, and everyone brings Valentines for everyone else (the kind with Barbie and Shrek and stuff on the front) and you have your little mailbox on your desk, and during the big classroom Valentine's party everyone goes around and delivers them, and you eat candy and cupcakes and drink red Kool-Aid until you're sick, and you spend hours agonizing over whether the boy you like picked that Spiderman valentine especially with you in mind. ("Hmmm . . . Valentine, I'm stuck on you . . . there's a double meaning in that.")

During high school and college, however, it didn't work that way anymore--not unless you have cool friends & family who still buy Shrek Valentines and candy and give them away to everyone, which I have been lucky enough to have. Also I have a mommy who sends Valentines to us in the mail.

But, like, the romance part of Valentine's Day has always been a pretty nonexistent thing. There's a reason we call it Singles Awareness Day. And it's not like you want to go out on February 14th with your girlfriends--not when the streets and restaurants are full of an entire BYU campus worth of disgusting schmoopy couples who are all trying to prove to everyone around them that they are, in fact, The Most In-Love Couple on the Planet, and They Will Tounge Kiss Each Other Right There at the Table to Prove It. So all the reasonable single people (read: me, every single year) stay in with their girls and get takeaway and watch movies and eat lots and lots of chocolate and talk trash about how Valentine's Day is a stupid arbitrary notholiday invented by Hallmark, and how men are stupid for not dating us because we would be so much nicer to them than the mean skanks they're currently dating.

Only this year I got to have my first Valentine's Day as a Smug Dating Someone! Yipee!

I will do my best not to make anyone throw up their chocolate, but friends, it was lovely. WR's original plan was to take me to this pretty town called Stamford to spend the day on Saturday, but we ended up not being able to go. So instead he made reservations at a Thai restaurant, becuase he knows I love me some Thai food. I wore (yes, I'm going to tell you what I wore, so if you're not into such details then too bad for you, because this is MY day) my flowy red knee-length skirt and my black v-neck 3/4-sleeve top, also black heels and black nylons because my legs are scary white and also because it's England and cold. And I'm not drunk/stupid enough to wander around in February wearing one of those those little denim belts that girls here mistake for skirts.


Also WR gave me a present. Yay for presents! He gave me a book, which I would take over chocolate and flowers any day. It's Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, who I've never heard of before but WR says he's great. Also it's about Venice, which I think is an absolutely gorgeous place that I would love to visit again. And the card was beautiful.

WR liked his gifts too. I got him the Dover edition of love poetry and made him a coupon book with vouchers for things like:

"Candlelit lasagna dinner"
"Hot chocolate at Border's"
"Nice long back rub"
"You get to pick the movie"
"Being as late as you want and [Nem] will not say a word"

I think he's the most excited about that last one.


Dinner was lovely--nearly all the restaurants in the town had pink and red balloons tied up around the tables. At the Thai House they played all the sappy romantic songs like "Dream a Little Dream of Me" and the theme from "Somewhere in Time," but then there was also "All By Myself" thrown into the mix. Don't ask me why. As I looked around I thought, "Huh. So this is what restaurants look like on Valentine's Day. Crazy." It's a small restaurant, and pretty much the entire place was full of couples. I ordered my favorite--masaman curry, with chicken satay as an appetizer. Also there were some Chinese-sounding dishes on the menu. WR got sweet & sour pork (cuz that's Thai) and chicken, egg & sweetcorn soup (ditto). English people with their sweetcorn. But it was really good, and he liked it his intro to Thai(ish) food. Also they gave all the ladies flowers at the end of their meals. Here's mine!

So. There's my story. I'll try to fit the fluffy bunny in next time.

Posted in: England