In my imagination, a beautiful woman is poised to surprise me with gifts and a surreptitiously planned super romantic overnight get-away to celebrate Valentine’s Day. In reality, however, I’m a single dad and life isn’t quite that exotic. There’s no beautiful girlfriend in my life at this point, so today’s actually all about my kids. And that’s okay.
It is fortunate that my youngest, now 11yo, has arranged for a small Valentine’s Day party, though, so I’ll have something to do today. She’s invited three of her friends to join us for the afternoon thru dinner, and while the original plan was to go see the film Paddington, when one of the parents said she preferred her child not go to a movie theater, the decision was made to skip the movie and replace that with a trip to the local mini-golf place: Gateway Fun Park.
My almost 15yo son? He’s heading to Kansas City with his Mom, hopefully via plane but she’s said she wants to drive. That’ll be a rather dull way for them to celebrate the day, in my opinion, but it’ll be good chance for them to catch up and talk about what’s going on 
with his sleep patterns [see my earlier article about teens, sleep and allergies]. I still need to wake him up and get him out to his Mom’s place in a few minutes, but I’m going to head to the gym on the way back: Health doesn’t take a day off!
And then there’s my 18yo daughter. She’s living much of the adult life and is in Florida right now, visiting her boyfriend and she wins Best Valentine’s Day Plans: They’re heading to Walt Disneyworld today before she flies home tomorrow. Yes, I’m jealous. And she’s quite excited. Who doesn’t like WDW?
Oh, and did you know, the history of Valentine’s Day is actually associated with an ancient Roman celebration called Lupercalia, which was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus. Yeah, the wolf twins and fields of corn.
Ah, romance.