There's a strange freedom in ignoring a special day

One of the things that I noticed when I emigrated to Canada was the fervor with which special days are celebrated. It might be the same back in the UK now; fourteen years bring changes, but it took a while for me to get used to consistently falling short of what was expected.

Take Valentine's Day. For me, this was an adult holiday, or for older teenagers and up, anyway. You were too shy to ever send any, but you still hoped and prayed that you'd get one, and when you didn't, you felt rejected, lonely, unloved: good times!

Then when you got a boyfriend you were sure of a card, but the magic was gone because hello, you knew who it was from. The whole point was to have a secret admirer.

By the time I emigrated, David and I had been married long enough that we'd lapsed into our own comfortable tradition of ignoring the day completely. No cards, no flowers, no chocolate, nothing. We're a revoltingly sloppy, smoochy, huggy, romantic pair 365 days of the year as it is and I consider the day to be a cynical marketing exercise and refuse to buy into it.

Then I got here and Eleanor had her first V-Day in Junior Kindergarten.

I discovered that I was expected to buy boxes of cards, weird little things, flat, smaller than a playing card, one for each kid, and stick a candy onto them, or a pencil, while Eleanor, laboriously over a period of two weeks, wrote her name on them and then the name of every child in the class.

Then I had to send her into school with money to buy candygrams for her friends (later at middle school, it was flowers: white for a teacher, pink for a frend, red for a crush.)

Not to mention the inevitable cupcakes for the Valentine Party.

My friends would tell me what they'd bought their kids for V-Day and I'd stare at them in aghast incredulity.

What the hell happened to the simplicity of waking up, waiting for the post, and spending the day moping? When did we start buying our children Valentine Gifts or making 5 and 6 year olds aware of a holiday that's basically all about romantic love?

Or maybe not. David mentioned to a friend that we don't do the whole gift/card/roses deal and his friend grinned and said, 'so you just jump straight to the sex, then?'

I won't make my children feel different by refusing to let them play along; that'd be mean. But as far as I'm concerned, it's just another Monday.

Nikita filming

I didn't walk over to the bridge -- too cold and it didn't look busy -- but another mom did and saw a stunt man get shot and fall back into the water -- get out and do it again. I was shivering at the thought. If he'd tried that two days ago, he'd have bounced on the ice because it was minus 20 and the Grand was frozen solid.

It's above zero now, but that water must be liquid ice :;shivers more::

If anyone watches it and they see a scene with this bridge in an episode, let me know? :-)