Valentines Day approaches

I have only had a girlfriend on Valentine's day two other times in my life, only one of those times notable. I was a bit younger then and a bit stupider. I was a freshman in college and when I asked my girlfriend what she wanted to do for the holiday to celebrate our love she told me:  "you don't have to do anything special for me. You can just come over here and hang out." Being that I was 18 years old and had little to no experience with women I took her statement at face value. This is where everyone reading this understands why I made a point of saying I was stupider then. 

Unbeknownst to me at the time there is some secret language that women (not all women mind you... but a very relevant segment) use. While I heard "don't do anything special" what she meant was "I don't want to seem like too demanding of a girlfriend... but I will be very upset with you if you don't do something special." Although I had no experience with women at this time I still had an inkling that we were not doing anything special on the 14th.  When I got to her dorm room that night I tried to put that feeling to bed by asking her "are you sure you don't want to do anything special tonight?." The response I heard was "no, let's just stay in and watch a movie." What she meant was "I can not BELIEVE that you showed up here tonight without some special romantic plan." So that was my first Valentine's day with a girlfriend- we watched CNN (her choice not mine) and ordered Pizza Hut. Needless to say the 15th was not pleasant and as I recall we were broken up sometime in the next 2 weeks.

This year marks only the third time I have had a romantic interest on what some call National Singles Awareness Day (the second time I was dating a girl that I could not get together with on February 14th for reasons I will not go into here). I have been dating TheLady for about 3 weeks now and I really do not want to see this relationship share the fate of the one that effectively ended that Valentine's day my freshman year. Fate has helped me quite a bit in this goal.

For starters I will tell you that my parents are going to Mexico this weekend and I will be condo-sitting for them. I will describe in full detail in some later post their living situation but suffice to say it is the most objectively cool living space I have ever been in. It has a great view of the Stone Arch Bridge and the Mississippi river, so it is a great place to host my date on the 14th. I will use that place to make TheLady dinner. My roommates will tell you that I don't cook but that is actually a misconception. I love to cook, but there are 2 reasons I do not do it that frequently. 1) I hate cleaning pots and pans afterward and 2) being a law student I spend most of my time in the library- far away from pots and pans. But I am actually pretty excited about the menu for Saturday.

I want to keep the menu a surprise for TheLady but because I haven't told her about this blog yet I will describe it. I making her This, with a side of This... oh and This too. I wanted to make her This but she claimed dibs on making dessert (I might make it anyways and just eat it myself).  I know this is a somewhat ambitious menu but I feel I am up to the challenge. "But TheHamborgler, you and TheLady have only been dating for 3 weeks, how do you know she will even like this food?" you might ask. All in due time readers...

I didn't know for sure what foods she liked the most so I needed to find a way to ask her what she would like without spoiling the surprise. So I asked her to make me a list of her 15-20 favorite foods so I could whittle the list down and prepare something she would love. She made me a diagram in the form of a food pyramid (I will get a picture and post it when I get a chance). Unfortunately I left the diagram at her place but I remember most of the important things. It was from this I derived my menu and I think that list will serve many menus very well in the future. 

So I am hoping that this year will be the best Valentine's day I have had yet. Honestly I don't think that will be a difficult goal to achieve. Part of the reason for this is that as you have read my Valentine's have not been that great in the past but a more substantial part of that is that TheLady is a special girl... and on Saturday my only real goal is to show her that I know that.  

*Post script

Dinner was awesome. Although I was sad I didn't get to make the cheesecake.  She made things called "scotcheroos" which are rice crispies with peanut butter and corn syrup covered in a chocolate butterscotch mixture.Her dessert was very good in theory but she needs a few more times practicing before she perfects it. Nonetheless the evening did live up to my expectations

Best. Valentines. Ever.