a woman will typically hate valentines day because she's got nobody to buy her ridiculously overpriced chocolates and flowers, and take her out to a ridiculously overpriced, overcrowded, and more often than not totally SHITE restaurant for the customary VALENTINES DATE, no doubt planned months in advance. if she HAS got a man, the possibility is great she'll STILL hate the holiday cos her significant other isn't a total eejit and didn't spend as much on her as her mates' beaux did on THEM...or she didn't THINK he did, anyway. even the old biddie who's been married for 70 years and has 50 great-grandchildren with a man will be all hot under the collar when her alzheimer's-ridden hubby FORGETS valentines day. the old man's forgetfulness will of course piss her off every year, even though she's long since become accustomed to his getting lost every time she sends him out for a litre of milk.

yes, even if there is no conceivable reason why a lady should become cross, pissed-off, and/or depressed on valentines day, you can bet your ass she will, even if it's for a bizarre reason like my eldest sister's favourite...every year her husband goes out and gets her a bottle of baileys, a box of godiva chocolate meltaways, and two-dozen red roses, and THEN takes her out to some fancy-ass expensive restaurant. and you know how SHE usually thanks him? by accusing him of trying to make her FAT and calling him something like "you crazy mad chubby-lovin' son of a bitch"
now i don't get the man's logic here at all. i REALISE my sister is basically (well, besides her insane anorexic tendencies anyway) a female version of ME, and if THAT ain't a reason to walk across hot coals for a gal, i don't know what is, but still i've told the BOTH of them many a time she's lucky i'm her brother and not her husband (hey, we're kerry people. it's not impossible) or else i'd fix it so she'd never see another piece of chocolate as long as she lived, make her persona non grata in every godiva shop in the country. if she pulled such a stunt on me, she'd be out one day on one of her binge attacks, walk into one of the places, and find the soup nazi behind the counter roaring, "SKINNY GINGER BITCH! NO CHOCOLATES FOR YOU!"

heh. but i'm really one to talk, fuckin' hypocrite i am. like my sister, you see, my fiancée is basically a good woman (she ended up with me, did she not?) but valentines day, it drives her a bit potty. i'll never forget our first valentines day as a couple...we'd been seeing each other since late october, and christmas went off beautifully, but then came the second week of january. "you know", she said, just like that, out of the blue, "this will be the first valentines day i'll actually have a boyfriend." i immediately began to sweat, cos i know what this comment REALLY meant..."i'm young, volatile, and romantically deprived...SO YOU BETTER NOT FUCK THIS UP, BOY!" but how could i not? i am a man. i am programmed to fail. and of course, the constant reminders of how few days i'd left to think up something brilliantly, romantically, creatively, fantastic weren't really helping either. so i wasn't a bit surprised when the week before v-day, after 110 calls to booked-solid restaurants, i had a passable gift, a silver bracelet, but noplace to present it to her.
i considered my options :

1. i could take her out to one of the myriad pubs on my block and give it to her there...after a few pints she'd be guaranteed to appreciate the present more. OR she'd think i was just looking for another excuse to slack off and get plastered. bad idea.
2. mcdonalds! i could take her to mcdonalds, buy her a happy meal, and stick the bracelet in where the toy's supposed to go! yeah! and then she'd probably think it really DID come for free in her $3 lunch and refuse to believe me if i told her otherwise! no...no...that i'd save for the proposal.
3. aha! i'd fix her a nice quiet dinner at my place! how much more romantic could you GET? yeah, i'd microwave up a coupla packets of pizza rolls, give her the damn bracelet, and then drag her into the middle of the livingroom where we'd proceed to shag like a pair of jungle animals till my eternal bachelor of a flatmate returned home at 7.30 and demanded we get the hell out of his way so he could watch hollywood squares. ahh...feck. not romantic by ANY account.