V-Day/B-Day wrap-up (plus an embarrassing confession)

V-Day

The great thing about being born on the 15th of February is that in the likely event of Valentine’s Day being a complete washout, you only have to wait a day until you’re guaranteed to receive some good love, affection and pressies. It’s been quite a comfort to me over the years…

Consider then, how pleasant it was to have a Valentine’s Day without disappointment for a change. Really, it was lovely.

Knowing that I had dinner with Cute Canadian to look forward to had me in a good mood all day. Often Valentine’s is not fun in an office environment – inevitably someone gets a big bunch of flowers delivered to her desk, just to rub your nose in your own sorry singledom. But no-one got flowers this year that I saw. The girl who sits opposite me was having snappish arguments on her cellphone with her boyfriend. People were stressed and busy with work. Just another day at the office…

After work I went to a class at the gym and then proceeded to get ready for dinner with CC. I love the whole getting dressed for a date routine... You lean forward to preen and adorn yourself with makeup and jewellery, you’re imagining what might happen that night, and you start to feel all fluttery about it. It’s quite delicious…

Dressed to kill, I headed up to Ponsonby where I was meeting him at a Thai restaurant. It was a gorgeous night – dusk had dialled the hot sticky day into a clear inky sky, the air cool and sweet.

I entered Thai House and found him sitting at a table by the front, overlooking the street. The restaurant was quite cosy - it’s a small building to begin with, and also very popular. Everyone was seated quite close to each other (we had a very touchy-feely couple showing their love the next table over). I sat down and we began to talk and we were both smiley and I guess a little nervous. As our conversation paused, he reached down to his side and presented me with a big bunch of red roses, beautifully wrapped (as seen here). He said ‘well miss, these are for you’. (An aside: I love that he calls me ‘miss’ – I find this so cute and teacher-y!)

Anyway, I was so blown away by it. I mean, it was only our second date... And he’s a teacher (with a mortgage) and I know how criminal the price for roses on V-Day is. And just to put it into perspective, no-one has ever given me a beautiful bunch of roses (plural) for Valentine's Day – not even serious boyfriends past – live-in boyfriends, even! So for Cute Canadian to do this on our second date – well, it was quite the gesture and made me feel special. What a sweetheart.

The food was good and spicy and afterwards we headed outside to return to our cars. I was expecting the standard post-date long, drawn-out goodbye with some kind of attempt at a goodnight kiss, but he simply wished me a nice birthday for the following day and said goodnight as we went in different directions. Which is fine for my nerves – I can get a bit panicky as someone leans in to make their move – but did leave me kind of wondering ‘Hmmph. Should I be insulted that he didn't want to try and kiss me?’.

In any case, I wasn’t going to let it spoil my night. I went home and happily arranged my flowers on my bedside table. (So unaccustomed am I to receiving bouquets, I didn’t have a vase big enough – had to make do with a big tumbler instead.)


B-Day

The next day I got to sleep in, which was heavenly. I have a strict policy of not working on my birthday, so if it happens to fall on a week-day I’ll take the day off. This year, since the 15th was a Thursday, I decided to make a long weekend of it and take Friday off too. Sweet!

Mum came around at midday, bearing a gorgeous Phalaenopsis orchid and took me into town for lunch and a shopping spree - fun!

Text messages pinged in from friends throughout the day, which made me smile many times. Presents are nice. Special birthday meals are always good. But the thing I love to receive most are words: simple, honest, loving words that don’t tend to be said at other times of the year.

Amongst my favourites:

* From a Portuguese couple I met on a guided tour of St Petersburg:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY FRIEND! When your visit to my country? Many kiss and a happy day, César and Marta.

I love these guys! We spent a mere three days together, over three years ago, but every Christmas, New Year and birthday without fail, I get a cute text from them wishing me kisses and happiness and a trip to Portugal soon.


* A message from a precious friend reminding me of the Sex & The City episode where Carrie turned 35. Feeling depressed at being single and without a soulmate - the girls decide that they’ll be each other’s soulmates, leaving them free to just enjoy men.

Would u like 2 be soulmates? My friend asked. And just enjoy company of Cute Canadian w no pressure 2 find soulmate? I told her I would like that very much…


* And one from Cute Canadian himself (on a borrowed cellphone, presumably, since he’d just told me the night before he was resolutely cellphone-free), hoping I was having a great day and telling me ‘I thought you looked stunning last night!’. Awwwww…


Plus an embarrassing confession for your entertainment…

All this talk and thought of Valentine’s Day had me thinking about the day in years past and how they had been spent. (Boringly, even in the years when I was in a relationship, V-Day often passed without consequence.)

Then I remembered one Valentine’s when I had made a grand sweeping gesture of romance towards my crush at the time. The year was 1989, I was barely in my teens and just starting high school. I was head over heels in sweet puppy love with Daniel, a boy from my class at Intermediate School the year before.

We’d been assigned to sit next to each other for one of the three terms of the year and it had been the best term of my life. Together with another boy, James, we had a few months seated beside each other in a row and we had a great time. We had lots of fun joking around, the three of us. I remember laughing hard and often. Going to school became the highlight of my day.

Daniel was gorgeous and lovely and very innocently, I fell for him, with no expectation of anything happening. It was a sweet crush, destined to be unrequited but forever cherished. It was a pure and beautiful thing. Unfortunately, our term side-by-side came to an end and our desks were reconfigured so that I sat beside other, less enthralling deskmates. And the following year we left for different high schools.

But I still thought of Daniel, and so in that first year of high school as Valentine’s Day came around, I decided to make my feelings known (anonymously, of course).

What form did my missive of love take? Why, I took a fresh sheet of paper, gently spritzed with that Chanel No 5 of kiwi teenage girls (Impulse), and typed out the lyrics to Especially for You (a Kylie Minogue/Jason Donovan duet which held great emotional significance for me - see below for the video).

This I sealed with a kiss and sent off to him by mail. Lord knows what a 13 year old boy made of that!