Every day is the 14th

Yesterday I was driving through town with my sunroof open, all happy and content that I could stay up late watching Californication episodes Sunday night without feeling dread in the pit of my stomach about work the next day, when I passed by Trader Joe's, the front door of which was flanked by handfuls of metallic heart-shaped balloons on tendrils of red ribbon.

"See that?" I said to J, motioning at all the red and helium and ribbon to our left. "And people say they don't like Valentine's Day. How can you not like hearts in every entrance?"

J's put up with my Valentine's Day obsession for the last 4-plus years, so his response was (obviously) "Yes, yes, I know. Hearts everywhere, even coming out of your head."

Exactly.

Marcello Mastroianni had it right when he told Roger Ebert in 1985 that “My favorite movie love scene is when Mickey kisses Minnie and pop-pop-pop, little red hearts appear in the air between them.” This, coming from the man who in Rome kissed Anita Eckberg in the Trevi Fountain in one of cinema's most iconic scenes of all time.

Today I have been given one of the best Valentine's Day presents ever: the gift of ridding myself of That Job. (The second best V-Day gift ever was a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera that J gave me our first Valentine's Day.) I'm so grateful and appreciative that hearts might as well be coming out of my head. To celebrate I'm going out for a two-hour massage this afternoon, buying a mini-cupcake maker, then spending hours shamelessly preening and primping for Valentine's Day dinner tonight (J made reservations for us at a cute restaurant nearby).

Even though I celebrate love in its varied forms every day, I especially love today because it's a reminder that if you look around