It may come as a shock to some, but I know plenty of girls who would rather not get flowers on Valentine’s Day, or any other occasion for that matter. I understand their reasoning-flowers don’t last long and are very expensive, especially in February.

They want something more permanent, like a picture frame or jewelry or something practical and mundane like a gift certificate for a free oil change or kitchenware. Chocolates probably fit into the same category as flowers-wonderful things that you wouldn’t buy for yourself-along with gift certificates to massage parlors and other popular Valentine’s Day gifts that have little chance of lasting longer than a week.

I love flowers and heart-shaped boxes of chocolate and everything that comes with Valentine’s Day. Anytime that I have received flowers, I have hung them upside-down from the shelf in the laundry room-like it says to do in magazines, if you want to preserve them properly-where they hung for several weeks, until my mom thought that I had forgotten about them and promptly threw them away. It makes little difference to me, because they look absolutely terrible dried, all shriveled and black. But it makes me happy just to have received them in the first place.

I will probably spend this Valentine’s Day watching romantic comedies with some good friends, if I can find the time in between completing a two-hour project in the computer lab for statistics class and writing a one-page composition for Spanish. I’m not the type of girl who would want to go to something like the highly publicized “Bitter Babe Bash,” and I find thoughts of the accompanying “Wet Boxer Contest” a rather disgusting mental picture. Valentine’s Day is really just like any other day of the year, and seeing as to how I’m up for watching a chick flick pretty much anytime, I’m looking forward to it (minus the aforementioned homework, of course).

I received a Valentine in the mail from my grandparents today, which was a really nice surprise, and an awesome care package from my family, complete with enough chocolate to share with my entire floor, and a sparkly card. I hadn’t been expecting anything at all. In return, I mailed my little sisters all Disney Princess Valentines, with which I enclosed some random, official-looking SLU document for my Dad, which he will probably appreciate more than he would have a Sleeping Beauty card that said, “Hope you feel like a Princess this Valentine’s Day,” anyway.

Pink is my favorite color, so I have been using Valentine’s Day as an excuse to wear it every day this week. I have saved the one with the little red hearts on it for tomorrow, because it’s particularly festive. I don’t know how dressing for Valentine’s Day is going to help me at all on my physics of the human body test tomorrow, but I think that I may have spent more time so far trying to decide which pants to wear with the shirt, now that I spilled marinara sauce on my jeans, than I have studying the basal metabolic rates of various farm animals as compared to humans and the like.

Personally, I enjoy listening to my guy friends talk about their plans to impress their Valentine’s dates. It’s great to know that they really care and that chivalry isn’t dead, even if I can’t be the one enjoying the candle-lit dinner or picnic-on-the-beach myself. I know that thinking about Valentine’s Day can be really depressing for some people, who would rather go around tearing down the hundreds of hot pink signs put up by the Sig Eps advertising their sale of roses for the holiday, but it’s just one day. You can spend it watching chick flicks or at a fancy restaurant or hiding in your dorm room, but whatever you decide to do, it will be over in 24 hours, and all of the cupid decorations, candy hearts and flowers will disappear.

Mulligan Stew:

A stew made of odd bits and pieces

Annie Mulligan is a freshman studying communication.