Valentine's Day

(Michael) I knew that I wasn't going to be able to get away with anything easy this year, no thanks to the incredible amounts of Valentine's Day advertising in the mail and stores. (Amanda)...and the fact that on our first Valentine's day while still dating he gave me an anatomically correct paper mache heart, how can you one-up that?

This is one of my (Amanda) favorite pictures

Anyway, I was really determined to surprise her so I decided to fill up our front room with red and white balloons.  Maybe not incredibly romantic, but I figured it would be festive.  It seemed like a simple idea, and maybe to a more wise and trained mind it would be...


I figured I would need to do around at least 100 balloons...and I'm not sure how I came up with that number, but I went to the store and apparently they only sell them in packs of 72.  I thought to myself that if 100 balloon would do the job, then 144 balloons would be exponentially more fun.


My use of the word "exponential" in that last paragraph would make it seem like I'm a mathematically minded person...this is not the case, as can be seen by a couple of problems I hadn't thought about.


To fill a balloon all the way it takes about 7-8 breaths and a little under 30 seconds.  That meant that even if I could go straight without any breaks, I would be blowing up balloons for over an hour.


The second problem was the fact that only 27 balloons can fit in our Toyota Camry. Why was I blowing up the balloons in the Camry you ask, well I was doing this all after Amanda had gone to bed (around midnight) and balloons are impossible to tie quietly (I tried to blow one up inside and almost ruined everything).


The other problem was that I hadn't thought about how I was going to get the balloons from the car to the apartment.  I had imagined maybe a black trash bag, but unfortunately we only have the white kitchen bags which only held...any guesses as to how many balloons? The answer is two, and so I had to resort to hand carrying them 5 at a time up to our place.


Another problem I hadn't foreseen was that I can only tie balloons using my left pointer finger and after 70 balloons it started to get a bit painful.  There probably was an easier way, but by then it was around 2 or 3 in the morning and I was starting to feel pretty tired....and out of breath.


At one point, I thought it might be a good idea to blow the balloons up at the bottom of the stairs outside our apartment.  It didn't take very long to see the problem with that....freezing cold outside, wind blows balloons away, temperature change causes balloons to pop right outside neighbors front door.


To make a long story short, I stopped around 4am and had only done 95 balloons.  It did fill up most of the front room, but I'm not sure it showed 4 hours of work.  Luckily (since I had a suspicion that the balloon idea might not work as I had imagined) I put a little piece of paper in each balloon with a memory of something we had done together...I think she liked that. (I did)  Even though I really liked what she did with them after they were all popped...

That evening I told her we would avoid the busy restaurants and  I would make something special.  I had her go to Barns and Noble while I tried to quickly cook her something fancy.  I had secretly planned to move the table to the balcony, string up some lights, and have dinner outside.  Once again, it was a good idea in theory.


First off, I got home from work around 6:30 and then had to go to the store to pick up some last minute items.  I raced as fast as I could to make dinner and get the lights up, but it got to be 8pm and I figured she was probably getting pretty hungry.  So I called and told her to come on back, but after I hung up I realized something horrible....our table doesn't fit through the door to our porch.  After standing there defeated for a moment...I tried to salvage what I could of the situation and made a make-shift table out of a couple chairs.  I knew that it wouldn't be sturdy enough to eat on, but I figured she would at least get the idea.

In the end, it was probably better that we ate inside, since it was really chilly and the food was already getting cold.  After that we were both too tired for anything else, and that's when we realized the counterintuitive nature of what we had just done.  In an effort to have a really special day, we somehow spent most of it apart.  A good life lesson I'll try to keep in mind for next year...I'm thinking of doing something more like what she made for me.

Cute, isn't it.


P.S. Raspberry white chocolate cheesecake does not equal a plain cheesecake, with some white chocolate, and a raspberry sauce...trust me on this one.