Jon Holato

My Valentine’s Day festivities began at around 1:30pm yesterday. After finishing my half day of work, I departed for the closest general store, which is 1.5 miles away from my apartment. So, upon layering up and strapping on my waterproof hiking boots (recall that there was a blizzard yesterday), I headed out into a blanket of horizontal ice and snow on a mission in search of candles and rose pedals.

I arrived at the store in about 30 minutes. Typically, when the streets aren’t covered with 5 inches of snow topped with ice, this walk takes me approximately 15 minutes. Upon arrival I rummaged through the aisles in search of candles, knowing upon entering that the flowers were placed near the register counter. I stumbled across the candles in the middle of aisle 4, but not before my boots thudded around on the floor of the store like I was the guy Sylvester Stallone was going after in the beginning of Cobra. I purchased the items and began the trek back home which took an equivalent 30 minutes as the initial expedition.

When I got home the real fun began, as I had to setup my plan so that it would be perfectly executed. The plan, you may be wondering, was to blow Carin away with overwhelming romanticism and provide her with the best Valentine’s Day ever.

I had been planning to make a candlelit trail of rose pedals around my apartment that led to numerous items and ended at the grand finale, hence the need to trek through a blizzard to purchase candles and rose pedals. I bought 18 candles and a dozen pink roses to use for the pedals (I had already bought a dozen red roses the night before to give to her as normal flowers). When you open the door to enter my place the first thing you see are stairs, so I put two candles on the first step (one on each side), and then a candle on every 3rd step to the top of the staircase. At the top of the staircase were a dozen red roses.

After the roses the flower trail continued to the bottom of my TV stand, where there lay a small picture frame from Nieman Marcus. After that, the trail flipped back around onto a small table where my rice cooker typically stands, and here lay a card that I had written for her. Then the pedals continued down along the side of my apartment to a corner where all of my DJ equipment sits, and on top of one of my record cases sat a teddy bear with 3 velcro blocks that had interchangeable messages on each, and I had set the 3 blocks facing out to read “I love you.”

After the teddy bear the candles and flowers circled around the futon and ended up on the main coffee table, where I had covered the tables in rose pedals and had a bottle of wine, two wine glasses, and two bottles of mountain dew (our favorite drink). There was also one candle in front of a picture of the two of us, which was the second candle on the coffee table, thus signifying a hidden meaning. When she reaches the table she will see both candles and the wine and assume that is the end. However, the second candle signifies something additional, which is this case is her main gift that is lying under the table hidden from sight.

I was rushing up until the last second to get everything situated properly. Between cleaning my apartment, getting ready myself, and setting up the plan, time was definitely not on my side. Carin finally arrived and I was vehemently rushing to finish everything, literally sweating from running around trying to light all the candles before she walked in. I met her at the door just after I had finished lighting all the candles and everything was in place and I told her not to turn on any of the lights, “just follow the candles and rose pedals,” I told her.

She followed the course I had laid out exactly, and just as expected, she didn’t catch the significance of the very last candle on the coffee table. By the time she had reached the coffee table she was glowing with all of the goodies she had picked up along the way. We sat down on the futon and I began to open the wine while she opened her card. When I finished opening the wine and poured two glasses for us I looked over at her and she had just finished reading the card and was fighting back tears. Next she insisted that I open her gifts to me. I started by reading two cards from her, one funny, one cute. Then I opened up a bag and saw a pair of red Hershey’s Kisses silk boxers, my first ever pair of silk boxers and certainly fitting for the occasion. Next I opened up a medium-sized present and it was a “you & me” heart-shaped piggy bank. Carin and I have longed saved our spare change in a container laying around my apartment and she’s been saying for so long how we should get a piggy bank that we can both add to and save the money for a vacation. The piggy bank is a heart that splits in two with one half saying “you” and the other one saying “me.” A wonderful gift as it fulfills the V-Day requirement and a long-term goal of ours. The final gift I opened was a shocker. Upon picking it up I thought and said aloud, “well this is clearly cologne.” However, to my surprise I unsheathed the wrapping paper to reveal an iPod Nano, something I had been longing for since my 3-year-old iPod stopped working (after Carin dropped it) last November.

After I finished opening my gifts I went to grab the wine glasses for us and was just about to hand her a glass when I said “oh, wait, you missed something.” Of course I knew she would miss it, but I just thought I would be a little sneaky so I informed her of the significance of the second candle on the table and reached under the table to pull out her main gift: a heart necklace from David Yurman.

She opened it with the biggest smile I had ever seen come from her and it made me feel so good knowing she was so happy. After that we finished a bit more wine then had to leave for the restaurant, noticing that we were running a bid late due to all of the excitement.

We went to an Italian restaurant called Mezza Notte. I have no idea what that translates to, but the food was pretty good. I got the fried calamari appetizer, with the surf and turf (filet and lobster) for my main course. Carin got a mozzarella, tomato and onion platter for her appetizer, and the lobster ravioli for her main dish. Naturally we both shared with each other on all items. When dinner was finished we went back to my apartment to grab the bottle of wine and the goodies we had left behind then left for her place where we would be staying the night.

Upon arriving at her place we finished off the bottle of wine, played a little bit of Wii, and went to sleep to the sound of the wind howling. When I woke up this morning the wind was still howling, but I was delighted with the sight of a four-legged chihuahua.

All in all it was a pretty amazing Valentine’s Day, despite the blizzard, and I accomplished both of my goals as Carin’s romance-o-meter was overloaded yesterday and she confessed to having the best Valentine’s Day ever without question. And that’s how I showed my appreciation to the woman behind me kicking my butt to succeed in this world.