grrlTravels

vday for the unromantic

Here's the thing. If you know me you know I disdain Valentine's Day as a Hallmark holiday created to sell cards, chocolate and roses. K. told me long ago that I'm not romantic and he's right. I'm of too practical a bent to fluff around much.

Reality will intrude on my little sphere of practicality though. The kids do go to school and they will get cards from their friends and it doesn't seem quite the thing to make them pariahs over a holiday that presumably celebrates love. (Another holiday, sure, but not this one.) On the other hand it makes me absolutely crazy (too crazy really, so crazy that I'm actually, you know, crazy) to go and buy the little bits of product placement that are called Valentines these days.

So I must conform, but I must conform with my psychoses intact. This takes some doing. I do not want to buy my way out of my predicament; the "cards" such as they are must be useful or amusing; candy is not to be involved (I am dreading the candy coming home already, to go and sit with the still uneaten Halloween treats and the Christmas stuff); I will not look like a scrooge in the process.

This year Z. is taking in these postcards with stamps already on them and a little note that says "send to someone you love!". The cards are to be accompanied by erasers. I love these postcards a lot, and the idea of giving something that the other person can use right away is appealing. The erasers are a toss-away but at least 60% of the cards will have something attached and at least erasers can be useful.

E. was a little tougher as the postcards were rather too pink to send in with him and I couldn't find boyish postcards suitable for vday and he had requested sharks in any case. I gave the sharks a good try but had to abandon them in the end. So E. is taking in these fortune tellers (we used to call them cootie catchers) which are rather less useful than the postcards but at least can be used for something, along with some tiny notepads I found at Michaels today.

Here are some other ideas which I liked but abandoned for one reason or another:

• bookmarks (personalized or not)


• this ruler bookmark (great idea!)


• magnets (printable ones give immediate gratification)


• small paper house to construct (I love this one and this one is sweet)


• unassembled pinwheels (too much work for me this year!)

I don't quite have the teachers figured out yet and tomorrow night is already on the schedule for printing and folding 22 fortune tellers so I might still be in trouble. But psychoses are intact, kids are not pariahs (yet), and I've got a "romantic" treat (the male version of "romantic") for K. Things are not all bad. Unromantic? Yes. In the spirit of the thing? Also yes.

Posted by grrlTravels at February 8, 2010 8:46 PM