It’s that time of year again….
I explained the difficulties with Valentine’s Day and ship-side living last season, so going over it again is probably pointless. Needless to say we’ve had two staff meetings this week, and they’ve both centered on the same bittersweet Hallmark holiday.
There is simply no getting around the fact that Valentine’s Day is all about couples. You can spin it however you want, you can say it’s about love of all kinds, love of all stripes, but it is, at its core, about couples, and nothing we do will ever change that.
This year we’re cannibalizing 90+ decks of playing cards so that we can use the heart cards as a means of giving out prizes. A total waste of playing cards honestly as the rest of the deck has to be disposed of (who needs a deck of cards that’s missing an entire suit?!) but one of the only ways we can come up with of giving out the prizes that works without piling the focus onto the “who has been married the longest” side of things. That said, we do have a couple on board who’s been married 75 years! So they will be getting some kind of honorable mention I’m sure.
In the meantime all the quizzes in the library are ‘sweet’ themed, something I did on purpose as I thought it somewhat appropriate given the holiday. And there are hearts and flowers…everywhere.
As always, I approach this Valentine ’s Day with mixed emotions. The jaded part of me that has been officially single for a very long time has long since convinced herself that this is a piecrust holiday, created by commercialism out of whole cloth and that the only thing good about it is the chocolate sales the day after. My inner feminist stands true in this belief and looks down at the whole thing from her lofty perch with a carefully adopted sneer of disinterest. Then there’s the rest of me…but we won’t go into that 
I had hoped that the inevitable pang of being the wallflower on valentine’s day would be eased by my being able to sing in the afternoon variety show – as there had been some rumblings in that vien.