Valentine is trying to kill me!

I make no false pretenses in pretending that I care for or do not wish bodily harm upon the Hallmark approved day of love.

I'd say ever since my gradeschool days of pecking and hunting through the mushy "Won't you be my valentine?" pieces of cardboard to find ones that wouldn't cause you to turn beet red if given to a male that you neither like or even find to be a decent human being.

Something about the mandated need to LOVE LOVE LOVE! really got under my skin. So Valentines day and I have always not gotten along. In my earlier days I flirted with the Anti-Val day crowd. Wearing black, getting together with friends to celebrate Not Love, watching a lot of Lord of the Rings (not completely applicable to all Anti-Val crowds just the ones I run with).

Then I started seeing my husband and hate gave way to ennui. I just couldn't care less about Valentines day, and started to do my best to keep it to myself. Let those who enjoy it slog through a restaurant and movie, I'd sit at home with a book and the puppy gnawing on a bone. Some years I started to forget what day it was.

Except, this year, Valentines decided to fight back. Apparently like rampaging billboards and d-level celebrities the easiest way to piss off a holiday is to ignore it.

My husband and I always get our weekly groceris on Sunday, normally it's pretty empty then if we beat the "just out of church" crowd and we don't run into any maddening 12 hour sales unexpectedly (that's a rather entertaining story in itself that left us tossing jars of applesauce and running for our lives).

I forgot that every store around this "celebration of the day a man was decapitated" must fill itself to the rafters with everything pink and red and if they can swing it every piece of floral man has ever genetically engineered.

There were roses stashed away in every aisle of the store, daisies hidden among the canned goods, and for some reason a rather menacing Audrey II hanging out at the cash registers.

You had to walk past all the flowers to get in the door and get to produce. As I was passing by it hit me like a punch to the face, the fumes from the flowers were so overwhelming I gasped and choked making a mad dash to the bananas.

My constantly stuffed up husband said he smelled the flowers a bit, I just looked at him through watery eyes like he was mad. But we still had ricotta and hoison sauce to pick up. So I shrugged off the flower attack and continued on with my grocery meandering.

Only the flowers weren't going to let me out of their petal grasp. Down the first aisle I felt my throat getting a bit itchy, by the second it was definetly partially closed, the third my nose was burning and by the fourth it felt like someone had punched my eye and I was getting light headed.

I'd never been allergic to flowers before but my mother has always had bad ones to holiday plants - poinsettias, Christmas trees and Easter lilies, and allergies have a nasty habit of lying in wait and waiting to pounce and tear you to shreds when you least expect it (like a lion that lives in your DNA).

We ran for the checkout and once that cold crisp air hit my nose the pressure started to lift. Either I have become allergic to something blooming in that floral landscape or Valentine finally took his revenge on me.

So I guess now I will just have to avoid all those flower shops and lovey dovey extravaganzas around Val day from now on. I don't know how I shall survive. Oh wait, yes I do. Extended Edition!

Finally, here's my belated Val Day gift for all of you:

Zombies make everything better.