Ahhh yes. The eternal question. You don’t want to fall into the cliche trap of candy boxes and roses, but you don’t want to ignore it and risk the wrath of your beloved.  In Estonia we call this being caught between a rock and another rock.

It reminds me of a lover I had once in my youth. You may know Madeline Albright as the esteemed politician, I knew her, in her rosy youth, as Pixie. Flaxen afternoons we spent, browsing bookstores, hand in hand, slurping oysters out of ashtrays, blindfold tennis, all the good romantic things. Then Valentines day came. We had been dating for 3 months.

That morning I woke her up as usual, hanging from the ceiling in my unitard… as she yawned I left the tent to prepare our usual gruel and Sherpa Tea…but when I came back into the love nest I noticed she was unhappy.

“Is this it?” she asked.

“Excuse me my love?”

“Is this all you have planned?”

“Well..yes in fact, I  thought after the gruel we might make lots of sexy time and do good snuggling..after all Valentines Day is just a manufactured bourgeois Hallmark holliday, as you described it yesterday yourself.”

As I inhaled the exhaust of her car as she sped off, I realized that you skip Valentines day at your peril, indeed.