Cupid Hates Me

Having worked my shift til midnight and rung in Valentine's day with my cats and computer, typing away the Valentine's blog through the thunder, lightning, and torrential rain pounding against the house, I felt pretty good about Valentine's Day.  I had the right perspective, I knew it was going to be a good day, and that being single doesn't mean Valentine's Day is going to knock a girl down on her butt.

I woke up around 8:30, and blindly stumbled down the stairs without contacts or glasses as I do in order to get downstairs and put out cat food and press the on button on the coffee machine.  As I rounded the corner on the tile at the bottom of the stair case it happened.  Whhhhumpf!  I was down on the floor.  One minute into the day Valentine's had literally taken knocked me on my ass.  How ironic.  Apparently the downpour of the night overwhelmed a few systems on the island, and the application of extra pressure on some sort of gravity flow dependent pipe thing in the bathroom created a pinprick hole in said pipe which had been rapidly spraying a steady stream of water for long enough to flood the bathroom and part of the kitchen.  I try to keep the blog clean...I intended to be positive, but..."Screw you Valentine's Day," were the first words out of my mouth on Valentine's as I slowly picked my now sopping wet self up of the floor.  Once I found the landlord to turn off the water to the house, rendering a shower or food prep out of the question for the day, and used up every towel in the house (guaranteeing a Friday night of action packed laundry), and mopped furiously for a while, it was time to go to work.

I did intend to stick to the plan of avoiding the flower filled clerical area when I got to there, but that was quickly rendered pointless when I entered the quiet back entrance of my work area and turned the corner towards the locker and ran into my coworker head on, unwrapping a large gold heart shaped box filled with chocolates (that she was happy to share).  And right behind her, in it's 7 foot glory blocking the entry to my locker was....this.  It was a giant Valentine's monstrosity.

I couldn't get it in all one photo due to the height...this was the top of the display...trailing 6 feet down in ribbons to....

The base of the display.  Chocolates, teddy bears, multiple balloons,

"Is it yours?" someone asked as they went by.  I didn't even have to look.  "Nope!"  It belonged to my other obviously beloved coworker.  The good news was that it was clearly one of those days when the universe is set to mock me, so I settled in to enjoy the ride and participate in the laughter.  Self deprecating humour is part of the Canadian identity after all.  And when I was tired of laughing at myself, I mocked my coworker Lee who has an equally twisted sense of humour.  Minus the inevitable radio play of "All by myself....." we were treated to loads of good classic rock love songs...Angel by Aerosmith, Every Rose Has It's Thorn by Poison (not all love songs have to be happy), REO Speedwagon, and, of course, Journey.

Well, there is always next year I suppose :)