RANT

I've never had a Valentine (except for my Daddy), but I've always sort of liked Valentine's Day. I like wearing pink and red and heart-shaped earrings or necklaces. I like giving candy to my classmates, co-workers, and friends. I like giving greeting cards to my mom and my grandmother. In my psuedo-angsty teen years (which, let's face it, weren't really all that angsty) and in college, I called it Singles Awareness Day, or SAD, and wore black because, as a singleton, I wanted to be "anti" V Day in support of other singletons who don't fare so well with this Hallmark holiday.

This year, as V Day approached, I found myself a few weeks back in the middle of some emotionally charged emails which, had they continued, might have prompted me to send some sort of Valentine's Day greeting to this person. I am purposefully being vague, because as I hinted in the previous sentence, this correspondence stopped. Well, alright, that's fine, I've never had a Valentine before and it's never bothered me, so why should this year be any different? Then this same person, in a completely unrelated conversation, tells me that I can't not have plans for tonight. That I should go out with a cute boy or have a movie and manicure night with the girls. Firstly, he has no right to tell me what to do, and second of all, if he hadn't said anything I would have been totally fine staying in by myself, but the power of suggestion got to me. So last night, I was out for sushi, and a couple of my friends mentioned that they didn't have plans tonight, and they invited themselves over to my place for drinks and board games. Something to do, the pen-pal would be appeased.

This afternoon, I travelled downtown and sat with Neil in the cold for two and a half hours to get $22.50 rush tickets to RENT at the Cadillac Palace. He had asked me to wait in line with him as a favor because the other people going (there would be 4) were unavailable and you can only get 2/person. At least 5 times within those 150 minutes freezing my butt off, I was offered a ticket (there was a man only buying 1), but I turned them all down because I had plans with the girls tonight.

So we get the tickets and go to meet Neil's friends at Encore next door. We're finishing up eating when my phone rings and I'm told that plans have changed because tonight is a "school night" and it's already so late. It was 6:30pm. Not exactly scandalous. Not even that, one of the girls isn't even working this week! And one is my roommate who is still not home and it's 9pm which leads me to believe that they are just hanging out without me. And being left out, as we all know, feels really great, right?

At that point, it is too late for me to get a ticket to RENT, spend more time with Neil and my new friends Alison and Julie, and see my new friend Jed play Mark. There are no more tickets to be had. So I wade through the crowds of couples holding hands and flowers and pink or red balloons in the theatre district on my way to the redline and take the train home.

It's a terrible feeling to be stood up for a date, but to be stood up by your friends on Valentine's Day is simply wretched. I passed up a party in Milwaukee and tickets to see the last Equity tour of RENT tonight to have a fun night with some friends and they waited to stand me up at the last minute when it was too late for me to do anything else but go home alone.

I am seriously pissed right now. And sort of sad. And I'm probably going to plant myself on the couch with a box of cookies and watch The Notebook, A Walk To Remember, and Titanic (which is exactly what I said last night that we shouldn't do) because that's sort of the mood this put me in.

I wish I'd gone to Milwaukee. At least there I'd be having fun.

I hope everyone else had a better V Day than this.

/end rant

(Addendum: I did not watch sappy sad movies. I watched Clue. I did, however, eat some cookies.)