Obligatory Valentine’s Day Post

Valentine’s Day.

Tomorrow is a day where half of the couples in the US spend their time showering each other with services, cards, gifts that cost as much as the mortgage, dinners that cost as much as a car payment … and the other half of the couples spend the day fighting because society and social media have made us think that these extravagant gestures = love. Hey, if the extravagant life is your jam – I am not here to knock you for it. I have read all about these so called “love languages” and that some people really are big into receiving gifts as their love language. I’m just going to say that it isn’t for me, I’m more of an acts of service throughout the kind of year kind of gal, personally.

I want everyone to drop their romantic comedy dreams of how Valentine’s Day is supposed to look and focus on what works best for you and your situation.

Right now, my situation is that we are short on time – between me stepping back into doing weddings and installing extensions, my husband being a full-time student that is determined to keep on crushing it with his A+ grades, various appointments, and taking care of three very busy teenage boys, it gets hard trying to sneak in fancy pants romantic stuff in our down time. Most of the time, we are so pooped by the time we have an evening where there is nothing on the books that my husband and I put on our loungewear and just sit in silence on the sofa and our heads hit our pillows before 10pm.

Going on a trip or doing anything that requires a lot of mental bandwidth isn’t in our cards and probably won’t be for a few more months. So, what do you do when you have no time, and you can smell your brain burning as it short circuits? You get creative and of course, you figure out what you can do to make time.

Yesterday, we decided to buy a nice looking, inflatable hot tub for our backyard. I’ve already got string lights for the yard. Foam underlayment that looks like wood has been ordered. A bag of sand or two is on the grocery list. I’ve even put in an offer for a couple of large, fake (because I kill every-damn-plant I touch) plants to put around the area. We may not have the time to skip off to the Dominican right now, but we can turn our backyard into our own budget oasis and use it to spend more time with each other, while turning our brains off.

And because I have taken this post to the land of the serious, I need to let you know that I have already told the one child that knows about the arrival of the hot tub that he can’t pee in it.

Isn’t she lovely? LED lights. Head rests. And a motor that we hopefully don’t kill.