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Carla Gypsygirl's Valentine's Day (there's not much mushy stuff, so don't be scared to read on!)
If you are a regular reader of this fabulous web page, you will be aware of one thing: in her single days (which, so far, was her whole life bar four months), Carla Gypsygirl HATED Valentine's Day with a passion. It wasn't, unlike the sentiment of most Valentine's Day haters, because it was a crass commercialisation of love (etc etc), but because it made her feel yucky for being single. This crankypants attitude towards V Day was made even more horrid for Carla Gypsygirl when she began to work for Myer, formerly known as Grace Bros. As she worked in the books, cards and stationery department, every January and half of February for four long years, Carla was FORCED to stand in front of a big, red stand full of big, red, corny, "I love you icky-wicky-smoochy-poochy" cards. Miss Gypsygirl often expressed her poopiness towards Valentine's Day by kicking the aforementioned stand, as well as reading aloud tacky poems in goofy voices. Two years ago, on February 15th, Carla marched into work at Grace Bros and declared, "Har HAR, Valentine's Day is OVER, no more torture for ANOTHER YEAR! DOWN WITH VALENTINE'S DAY!" Unfortunately, her manager heard her, and called Carla Gypsygirl over for a chat. Carla Gypsygirl threw her shoulders back and pretended she wasn't scared; anyway, that particular manager always thought her name was Claire. But hurrah, Carla Gypsygirl did not need to be afraid, for her manager uttered these golden words: "Can you please take down all the Valentine's Day signage?" So Carla got to rip up all of the stupid lovey-dovey signs, stomp on then and throw them in the bin.
Cut to the present time. Carla Gypsygirl had learned to love Valentine's Day, because it gave her an excuse to mail her friends presents, and also buy chocolates for her family and eat the rest. Ironically, 2005 is the first year she is not working at Myer, and for the first time, she is CRAZY about Valentine's Day...mostly because she has a nice boyfriend called Geoff. Carla misses her Myer friend Erin, who also felt icky about the yucky cards (until Erin got a nice boyfriend). As Carla Gypsygirl is also suffering from a slight bout of Girlfriend Anxiety (summary: her boyfriend likes Tool; she likes Britney; sometimes Carla doesn't want to listen to yucky shouty boy bands and she feels bad about it), so she decides to become a Super Girlfriend. She buys a heart-shaped cookie cutter, a silver box, red tissue paper and cookie ingredients, and embarks upon making delightful biscuits for her affectionate and sweet boyfriend. Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a moment of Super Girlfriend cookery spirals into Stepford Wife-style TORTURE. The cookies take half a day to make, and instead of looking elegant, the cookies end up looking demented and goofy. So Carla throws a whole lot of hundreds and thousands over the formerly elegant mint chocolate heart bickies, and tries to remind herself that Geoff likes going out with a punk rocker girl who maybe isn't the best cook but is probably adorable.
Then Carla spends most Valentine's Day in an office. It proves to be an interesting experience. Instead of being in denial of V Day (like her single friends at Myer were), everyone in Carla's office eagerly asks each other if they got any Valentine's. It is quite nice. One of the ladies looks up people's names in the Valentine's announcements in the Daily Telegraph and reads aloud the funniest ones, and that is nice and silly too.
Finally, Carla Gypsygirl gets to see her special boy. They go to have take-away Thai in the park, which sounds romantic, but alas, the park is full of pigeons that poo and couples making out on picnic rugs. Carla Gypsygirl and Geoff end up facing the road to avoid the seeing the action. But they still have a nice time, because they like each other and make each other laugh. Carla hands over her biscuits; Geoff gives Carla a small furry cream bear called Ice (because it smells like vanilla...Vanilla Ice, geddit?) PLUS Baci chocolate. Hurrah. Then they walk down the main street and see couples who are earning more money than them eating outdoors at nice restaurants, and Carla makes immature comments like "Oooooh-eeeerrr, lovers, hubba hubba, looooooooove!" It is funny.
Carla Gypsygirl and Geoff like Valentine's Day. But they still fancy each other every other day of the week. At least they can hug in public on Valentine's Day without people getting cranky at them...or so they thought. There is always someone else out there who wants to say something funny-yet-mean. Hmmmmmm. Well, at least they weren't wearing matching red outfits...right? Right? |