Yesterday my Facebook feed was abuzz with adorableness on Valentine’s–people publicly declaring their love and celebrating their flowers. As a manifestation of how old and mature I’m becoming, many of my friends posted pictures of their new Valentine’s–little babies covered with smooches, or pregnancy announcements clad in pink and red.

And honestly, it truly was adorable. I enjoyed it. I clicked the like button many times! I was happy it was Valentine’s Day!

But I was also a little bit cognizant of how much I would have hated my Newsfeed on Valentine’s Day five years ago–in the most cliche way of course. And though it was cliche and perhaps unnecessarily bitter, I don’t want to delegitimize the loneliness one single girl can internalize while scrolling through a Facebook Feed Full of Love.

So, remembering my former self, I decided to chronicle my 2015 Valentine’s Day here, where people actually need to CLICK to see, to choose to imbibe this particular love potion.

But before I do this, I want to acknowledge two truly horrible Valentine’s Days I’ve had in years past–not by way of saying I deserve Valentines 2015, but more so to say, hey! You hate Valentine’s Day? I feel you.

Valentine’s Day 2006.

I was 17, and was also  basically a giant cocktail of hormones and and self-consciousness. And this Valentine’s Day, I was both stoked and shocked to HAVE A BOYFRIEND. You could say I was a tad overbearing about it. I wouldn’t say I campaigned for it, but I was genuinely excited for everyone to know I was dating a cool upperclassmen, and so when it came time for the school to vote for Cutest Couple at the Sweethearts dance, I may have held Jimmy’s hand a little more tenaciously than usual that week, so people could be entirely certain that we were, in fact, “Cute.”

We won. It was terrible. That week at the Sweethearts assembly, we had to play three-legged dodgeball with the other Cutest Couples in front of the entire school. I’m not an adept dodgeball player, even on my own two feet.

John Snelson called the experience “Watching Jimmy drag my flailing body pathetically around the court, while I hid behind him and he did all the throwing and winning.”

I’m pretty sure that experience  (along with all the hormones and self consciousness and borderline campaigning to win Cutest Couple) was what put the nail in the coffin for mine and Jimmy’s relationship. The dance the next night was so horrendous, filled with Jimmy knowing we were breaking up and me in my sublime ignorance trying to enjoy our “cute little manufactured moment in the sun.” And while I don’t remember the exact timeline for the break up, I do remember we did not make it to Valentine’s Day. I think I was dumped the night before. Truth be told, I deserved it, if for nothing more than my terrible dodgeball skills.

And then there was…

Valentine’s Day 2008

I’d resolved to wipe away Valentine’s of year’s past and start afresh. And somehow I finagled a day date with a crush who was way too old for me and seriously out of my league, and a night date with my Gal Pals. This year was going to be different, this year was going to be good!

I rearranged my shift at work so I could have time for my day date. I made myself exceptionally cute. I wore pink on purpose.

Our date started at 12:00. It was supposed to anyways. By 12:30 I was nervous, and by 1:00, I was pissed. By 1:30, I went to work for lack of anything better to do, fuming like a broken radiator.

Several hours later I received an apology text that went something like this: “I’m so sorry! I accidentally sent a text to my ex and it made her really mad so I had to go over an apologize and it took a really long time.”

All I’m saying is that “Apologize” was used euphemistically.

But now it’s time for a tonal shift from self-deprecating to jubilant!

All those horrible V-day (D-day…) experiences led to…

Valentine’s Day 2011 
That’s a link, you can click on it!

ENTER JEREMY PENROD!

And Valentines 2011 led to Valentine’s Day 2015, and finally we’ve arrived at the present, where I can claim myself A VALENTINE’S DAY SURVIVOR and even, dare I say it, a genuine Valentine’s Day Enthusiast. I fell in love with Jeremy on Valentine’s Day 2011, and as cliche as that is, it’s not just a day for cards and candy for us. It really is the day we fell in love. It’s the anniversary of our affection.

Valentine’s Day 2015

The day started with me knowing I wanted Hufflepuff to be a Valentine somehow. She was a little shy at first.

And then she was being kind of a booger.

But we got there in the end, and now I’m seriously contemplating selling this design to Hallmark.

I suck at Selfies, but I really wanted to take a good one. I did my hair extra special for the evening, and none of the pictures did it justice.

 

You, dear reader, are going to over look the shameless vanity of this photo. What happened was… I was tired of feeling ugly in my selfies, went to the mirror to figure out what was wrong, and noticed, hey, this tacky underlighting for some reason has a pleasant effect. So… Selfie!

 

This is me discovering that I liked the way I looked in these selfies. Finally.

Jeremy got home from a busy day of helping around the house, and gave me the first clue as to what our Valentine’s adventure would entail. “It’s a heavenly motif!” he told me.

We started our evening at the MOA, at this seriously cool exhibit reaching up towards the Heavens.

 

 

We also stopped at this very interesting exhibit on the Art Deco Style in Japan.

 

We went to Gurus for dinner, in continuation of our theme. This picture does neither us nor the restaurant justice.

See? Heavenly? I stole this picture off the internet.

Jeremy then drove me about 100 miles south of Provo to get away from the light pollution and surprise cloud cover. I went to pull out a blanket for star gazing out of the trunk and found THIS BABY! instead! Jeremy had charted out the planets and while the clouds prevented us from getting at Saturn before it dipped back into the sky, we had a very nice time with Jupiter.

At this point in the evening, the hair had long since decided it was finished being agreeable. Also, while we didn’t decide to look this derpy on purpose, I treasure our failures as much as our successes.

Jeremy let me do a lot of the planet finding and focusing, which made for a really fun night of science. I really love our new toy.

We came, we saw, we conquered. Sort of. This was right before some person decided that they’d had enough of us telescoping on their property and started shooting a rifle at us (near us?).

I guess if you were to take anything away from this post, I would hope it would be the following:

A) The worse your Valentine’s Day is in the moment, the better the story.
B) Valentine’s Day was always destined to suck until you find the exact right Valentine for you.
C) Until you find the right Valentine, celebrate with your Galentines, and buy a pet.
D) I’d take 20 more terrible Valentine’s Day if that was the requirement for finding my Jeremy Man.