Valentine's Day

I am taking a brief moment away from cleaning to explain why I am not a fan of Valentine's Day. Did you know that not only is Valentine the patron saint of love, but also of the plague? I'm not making this up. I googled it.
Not one time in my entire school age years did I ever have a boyfriend on Valentine's Day. When you add in all the people getting countless deliveries to school (a practice I am firmly against) with general teenage angst you get a special kind of depression that tends to color one's outlook. My senior year in high school was especially bad because we had a really bad ice storm and my family ended up having to take in a relative that was a chain smoking, foul, and generally nasty person. No one in the house even realized it was the 14th until a couple of days later when we got to go back to work and school and the relative had left.
I can not go into too much detail about some of the worst ones I have had because they fall under my 10 year rule. I refuse to hold on to any anger, bad feelings, or resentment past 10 years. I try not to at all, but 10 years was sort of my "it is silly to still carry this around" point.
The highlights from those years would be Rocky standing me up for the better part of our first Valentine's (completely unintentional), the year he forgot and dug a deeper hole trying to make it better, and the picnic year- freezing cold, chased by geese, and getting lost to name a few of the things that went wrong. It hasn't all been on him though. I've had some serious stomach troubles go on that killed the day. JD had strep for a month and the doctor kept trying to tell me it was a stomach bug. After throwing up his lunch yet again they finally called to tell me the long culture came back positive and called in a prescription that he turned out to be allergic to. That was the second worst one because my kid was so sick. The all time worst for us was the year I was pregnant with JD and had been put on bed rest because of food poisoning. I was hurting, afraid that my baby was going to be born too early, my mother was there helping out but my father couldn't come so they were apart. We really spread the misery around that year.
Last year we went to help Rocky's parents move. To be totally clear, I did not mind that even a little. I was happy we could help them. Goodness knows they have helped us enough over the years. The only mistake we made was in trying to go out to eat that night any way. Rocky's mom set us up with dinner reservations and they watched the kids for us, which was really thoughtful. Sadly, after a long day of moving we were both so exhausted that I could not even guess at what we ate that night or if it was good. We couldn't even keep a conversation going, and if you know Rocky and me then you know that talking is never a problem for us.
This year we are skipping it. We'll get the kids a little something and maybe a card, but that is it. No presents, no flowers, and most of all no plans. Our anniversary is only a month away. I'd much rather spend the time and money on a day with real meaning and happy memories.
On a side note, I am also displeased with how having reservations that night just means you have reserved the right to wait on a table and how flowers that usually cost $15 suddenly cost $150. Getting flowers is my favorite thing, but paying Valentine prices for them sucks all the joy out of it. How are these things romantic?