Be Mine.

If you're relatively new to this blog or haven't read in a while, you may not know that last year I had the opportunity to live with two of (who became) my best friends in an apartment appropriately nicknamed "The Love Shack."  We started our days together, ended our days together, and spent most weekend hours together, consuming any and all brunch food & ice cream available.  It was a dream.  To commemorate the wonderful year we spent together, we took our senior graduation photos together, and the photographer got some great candids...I mean, look:

To those of you familiar with this blog and on the verge of rolling your eyes or thinking "why on earth is this woman talking about college graduation again," just keep reading.  No, this is not a post about college graduation-though the pictures are from it-rather, it is a reminder of all of the things & people we hold dear to us on this special day that comes but once a year.

You've probably seen this one a million times, and for good reason - it is the best picture we took all year.

Homegirl to my left was really into this TV show called Parks and Recreation, while homegirl on the right and I were more into Amy Poehler's old work on a show I still regularly watch called Saturday Night Live.  While despite her brilliant efforts to try to get us to watch P & R, I could never really come around to watching it because I have commitment issues with TV shows that I don't otherwise already know about or are super long in terms of seasons & episode count.  Despite THAT, I do know a thing or two about P & R, one of them being the glorious (faux) holiday we ladies know as Galentine's Day.  I'll spare you the details, all of which are covered in this blog post that I read.  It didn't take me long to realize that despite being a (faux) holiday, our apartment lived every day like it was Galentine's Day - we often ordered waffles during weekend brunch dates, exchanged the occasional gift here & there (usually in the form of ice cream or M&M's), threw parties (for Halloween, Thanksgiving, & sorority formals), took trips (to Disney, on a spring break cruise & the once a semester visit to Fort Lauderdale for good ice cream), and volunteered (surprisingly, the weekend of Valentine's Day) with our sorority's reading partnership at a local after school program.

Yesterday was Galentine's Day & today is Valentine's Day, the more-commercial-and-socially-acceptable of the two holidays.  In doing some research, I learned that ~190 MILLION Valentine's Day cards are sent each year (not including ones given to and from kids at elementary schools) and the average spending has gone up $23 per person over the past three years.  Not to be technical, but that's pretty (statistically) significant.  Despite it being a line from a Christmas movie, nothing fully captures (what I feel is) the essence of the holiday quite like Hugh Grant in Love, Actually:

Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport.  General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that.  It seems to me that love is everywhere.  Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends.  When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love.  If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.

Pretty powerful for a rom-com, am I right?  Despite being single on this commercial holiday, I cannot help but think of how perfect its timing is right here & right now.  If Galentine's Day is a celebration for the ladies, then Valentine's Day is a celebration of all the beautiful components that make up love; whether that's a bouquet of roses and a bottle of champagne, a pint of Ben & Jerry's and a sappy rom-com, or anything & everything chocolate (& I mean everything - I got a chocolate man this year and it was delicious!).  It's a celebration of the fact that we are here and we have gotten this far; a celebration of & for each other in a world that never seems to stop.  I mean, if there's a million things we all disagree on right now, can we at least agree on love?  The magic, the power, the glory of love?

So, to all of you out there, I ask of you to spread the love.  Spread it as best you can, to everyone you can.  Tell someone you love them; tell someone you miss them; tell someone you want to get to know them or reconnect with them.  Smile.  Eat a donut.  Or two.  Eat a bad box of candy hearts & go buy the 75% off discount candy at CVS tomorrow.  Remember that no matter where you are, who you are, or what you do, you are loved. So. Very. Much.

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody.