Valentine’s Day (part 1)

So what did I do for Joyce on Valentine’s Day?

I knew the thing I didn’t want to do: take her to a restaurant where I’d be surrounded by a bunch of dudes looking totally miserable because their girlfriends were making them jump through a bunch of stupidass hoops. I did that last year. Y’all can go back to the beginning of my blog to read the whole story of my Valentine’s Day disaster last year.

I wasn’t doing that again.

So what was I going to do instead?

I had some money to play with, since Mrs. Andrews pays me very well for being Lucas’ baseball tutor. That means I didn’t have to start saving up for flowers and chocolates and bullshit right after New Year’s like I had to last year.

I also wanted to do something “romantic”. Ok, I had to do something romantic – or at least something Joyce would think was romantic.

So I did some research, and decided to go with a Valentine’s special they were having at the Langham, which is a super nice hotel here in Pasadena. It goes back to when rich people used to come to Pasadena to spend the winter. I knew how nice it was because me and Joyce had dinner there once and we walked around in the gardens after we’d eaten.  Super nice and elegant.

Of course you can’t just take your girlfriend to a hotel room on Valentine’s Day. That would be kinda gross. I was going to need to create romantic atmosphere. I reckoned the best way to do that would be with a whole mess of candles and some rose petals. Joyce always decorates the house for holidays, so I figured this was a good way for me to decorate for Valentine’s Day. You see the candles and rose petals thing in movies all the time, and I gotta admit it looks nice. It’s an idea I’ve been saving up for the right girl and the right occasion. I reckoned I had those this Valentine’s Day.

So what I needed was a whole mess of LED candles and rose petals. (I didn’t even ask at the desk if I could use real candles. I’m sure they have a rule, and, besides, I needed for all the candles to be on when I got Joyce back to the room, which would be hours after I got everything set up.)

Ok, so where do you get LED candles? I didn’t have a clue. But guess who did.

You’ll never guess.

Keaton.

I told y’all that he got all the stuff for his apartment at the Pier 1 right across from where he lives. Turns out that Pier 1 makes all kinds of LED candles…and Keaton knows all about them. Get ready for this: he even owns a couple. He may pay for sex, but even badass Keaton Penner likes a little atmosphere.

So we went over to Pier 1. The totally gay dude in the store must have thought we were crazy when I said I wanted 2 dozen LED candles. I think he thought that Keaton and I were a couple…which I thought was hilarious…and made Keaton literally growl until I explained I needed the candles for my girlfriend.

So now I needed a shitload of AA batteries. Keaton knew where to go for those too: he says that Home Depot has the best prices on batteries. I could tell he felt a lot better when we got there: he said nobody at Home Depot would think we were a couple.

Candles…batteries…now I needed rose petals.

That meant a florist, and that meant getting ripped off. Melanie Kate worked for a florist back home, and she told me that they used to double their prices when it came to Valentine’s Day. It’s one of the reasons why dudes are always in such a bad mood on February 14^th.

I was lucky about one thing: I know what Joyce’s favorite flower is, and it’s not roses. It’s calla lilies. She says there’s a whole thing about them in some old movie she likes, and I gotta admit they’re kinda cool looking. I was sure they’d be a rip off too, but you gotta get your girlfriend flowers…and I needed to get in good with a florist so I could get the rose petals I needed for the hotel.

For rose petals, I got a small box of them for…are you ready for this?…thirty-five bucks. For things Melanie Kate says they pick up off the floor. Still, I was over a barrel. Florists have very dude in the world over a barrel on Valentine’s Day. (And we know whose fault that really is…)

For chocolates I did what I’ve been doing on Valentine’s Day since I was old enough to have someone to buy them for: I went down to the Rite Aid and got a big heart-shaped box of Whitman’s Sampler. I know they’re not fancyass, but I like ‘em, and, if they’re good enough for Maryville, they should be good enough for Pasadena. I know Monica made a bitchass face when I gave them to her last year, but that was on her. Since Joyce likes to buy ice cream at the Rite Aid (Thrifty is her favorite brand), I reckoned that she’d like chocolates from there too. And, if she didn’t, she could write it off to my being an illiterate redneck lol. (I think she liked ‘em. And I’m not sure how good the illiterate redneck excuse is with her anymore.)

So I had my flowers and my chocolates and my candles and my batteries and my rose petals. I was all ready to go by 4:30 in the afternoon (one of my bosses is a chick and she liked it that I needed to leave early so I could get my Valentine’s Day surprise ready for my girlfriend.) I drove over the Langham to get the room set up, and was real pleased when I saw it. It even had an awesome marble bathroom with a big bathtub that I had plans for…

It took forever for me to get all the batteries into the candles (I should have done that sooner.) When I got them arranged, I liked how it all looked. It was almost like in the movies. Maybe someone gay like Adam would have done a better job, but, for an illiterate redneck straight guy, I think I did pretty good.

Then it was time for the rose petals. I knew you were supposed to turn the bed down and put them there, but I wasn’t sure where else to put them. So I scattered some in the sink and made a little path of them from the front door to the bed. Then I hated how that looked, so I picked them up and just concentrated on the bed and around the candles.

Oh yeah, Tatiana from the store is a big fan of Joe Malone fragrances (Joyce likes them too…especially how the Vanilla & Anise she buys for me smells on me.) Tatiana’s favorite is the one that really smells like roses. I was running my plans past her and some of the other girls at the store (never hurts to ask chicks what they think about something you want to do for your girlfriend) and she got me a sample of the roses fragrance so I could squirt some on the rose petals. (It was an awesome idea that worked out perfectly.) She also gave me some of the red roses bath oil she has; that worked out perfectly too. See? Told you it’s always a good idea to ask a chick about what chicks like.

Once I had my special Valentine’s Day boxers stashed in a drawer for later, that was all set. (Don’t worry…I had another different pair to wear to dinner. Neither pair had little hearts or anything gayass like that. They were the joke kind. Like the pair I wore to dinner had long chili peppers on it. Y’all get the idea lol.)

Then it was home to shower and get dressed. (Open blue shirt with the necklace, khakis, church shoes, an extra shpritz of Vanilla & Anise, and a jacket, since it was California cold.) When I got to Joyce’s , she looked real nice, too, in what I reckon you’d call valentine colors.

I gave her her chocolates and flowers and waited for her to get those in water. I told her earlier in the week that we’d be spending the night somewhere, mostly because of stupidass Moomoo and Numnums. I half expected Joyce would get a cat sitter, but she said they’d be ok overnight. So now the dumbass cats have one more reason to hate me lol. Joyce had a little overnight bag ready (one more reason to tell her we were spending the night somewhere…Joyce doesn’t wear a ton of make-up, but I was sure she’d want her make-up things with her. It’s so much simpler being a dude. Like y’all may remember, I keep a spare toothbrush in the car…just in case.)

I could tell Joyce was excited to see what I had planned. Since this was my evening, I decided we should take the shitbox. I kept where we were going a surprise.  I could tell Joyce was enjoying that.

And y’all still don’t know where I took her for dinner.