Valentine's Day in Pensacola ...

Well here it is Valentine's Day again. It's so funny, I've never really gotten overly emotional about the day - whether I was in a relationship or not.

To me Valentine's Day is a day for chocolate. Just like one looks forward to their birthday in expectancy of cake and ice cream - Valentine's Day, for me, has always conjured up more images and expectancy of chocolate than outright romance (I never did mind a little jewelry either).

...Today, Valentine's Day 2012, i actually found myself quite happy that I had the day to my self. It felt nice to be outside of all of the hubub and hoopla that comes about with this day of love - girls freaking out and spending hours to get the perfect Valentine's Day look, guys freaking out over what kind of roses, gift or display of affection to dish out - so many decisions to make depending on what stage of relationship you happen to be in when the day of love arrives....

Guys are hoping for their own sorts of things i suppose, and girls are hoping, i guess, to get a rose, roses or some other outlandish display of affection, maybe an "i love you," - I've always been contended with CHOCOLATE!

So as it were this year, I found myself quite happily outside all of the concerns of the day, but I did decide ahead of time that I would celebrate in my own little way - I wore my favorite pink, corduroy pants in celebration of love, and..... of course, I made my own plans to head to the store for a special chocolate treat.

The day wore on quite quickly and I found myself preoccupied with rearranging my bedroom and office - Seemingly mundane activities, but I was actually enjoying myself quite well.

Not wanting to let the day slip away before celebrating with some sort of chocolate treat, I just now ran out to the local gas station - without even looking in the mirror....

There I am, alone on Valentine's Day evening, buying a Hershey's Dark Chocolate with Almonds candy bar, happy as can be - and blissfully unaware of the fact that in the process of cleaning, my eye makeup had smeared and apparantly run down my face.

I got home, looked in the mirror and exclaimed Omg! The eye makeup had run down my cheek in such a way that it looked like I had been crying quite hard. Omg! I exclaimed to my sister who I was on the phone with at the time...

I have to laugh thinking of it - here I was happier than I've ever been, even than on the V'ti days when I was with someone, but to the gas station clerk, I'm sure I appeared to be the stereotypical sad Valentine-less girl - alone, crying, eating a chocolate candy bar to console herself...

It's funny how looks can be deceiving - I look back at pictures of me when I was with various boyfriends - and in those pics I look so happy, but I remember how miserable I was inside.

This Valentine's Day, I am happy that I am really happy!

So here's to a celebrating Love and Chocolate - two of my favorite things in the world!!!

Happy Valentine's Day all!