{"id":885,"date":"2012-02-14T01:51:03","date_gmt":"2012-02-14T05:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=885"},"modified":"2013-06-17T18:47:58","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T18:47:58","slug":"on-hearts-and-flowers-at-sea-02132012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=885","title":{"rendered":"On Hearts and Flowers \u2013 At Sea \u2013 [02\/13\/2012]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Of all the holidays that we celebrate as part of general North American culture, the most sensitive one to tackle while ship-side is Valentine\u2019s Day. Surprising isn\u2019t it? You would think it would be Christmas or something well\u2026religious, where you expect tension.\u00a0 But as it turns out, that pain you feel when you\u2019re the only one without a sweetheart at the High School Valentine\u2019s Day dance? It doesn\u2019t go away just because you\u2019re well past the \u201cassociated\u201d age group.<\/p>\n

The holiday is what it is, and there\u2019s not much you can do to change that. As with so many holidays, the card companies have won out on ownership of Valentine\u2019s Day (in fact I\u2019m shocked that those same card companies have not yet latched onto the potential market of Feb 13th<\/sup>, which is apparently unofficially known as \u2018Mistress Day\u2019, a fact I stumbled across while researching material for new onboard trivia sessions \u2013 seriously, who knew??), and we all know that everywhere you look in February you\u2019re going to see hearts and flowers and gushing \u2013 often overwhelmingly false \u2013 expressions of romance. A bouquet of roses costs more than double this month what it will next month or did last month.<\/p>\n

At any rate, all of this leaves us in a somewhat difficult position. We can\u2019t ignore the holiday, nor can we change it, but we also can\u2019t make it \u201call about couples\u201d (which is really challenging because lets face it, as every single in this world knows, Feb 14th<\/sup> is <\/em>\u201call about couples\u201d). We have guests on board who have sadly lost their loved ones, guests on board who are travelling with companions that they are not romantically involved with, and quite a few who are just plain single.<\/p>\n

So it is that we end up sitting in the office on Feb 12th<\/sup> trying desperately to think of some way that we can give out the prizes for the diplomatically named \u201cHearts and Flowers Ball\u201d taking place tomorrow night, that isn\u2019t<\/em> about who\u2019s been married the longest, who\u2019s been together the longest etc etc\u2026<\/p>\n

Nothing is said about the singles in the crew of course. We do our job and we go home as usual. Tomorrow night I will slide pearls into the curls of my hair and don shimmering smooth red satin with matching sky-high heels, I\u2019ll flirt and I\u2019ll dance and I\u2019ll giggle \u2013 and I might just drown my sorrows in champagne for once. Since I, once again, am the girl without a sweetheart. But that\u2019s neither here nor there.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve no doubt that the ball will be lovely, they always are, and this one especially since it marks the last Grand Ball before the BIG Black & Gold Masque at the end of the cruise (which is only two and a half months away I might add) \u2013 it just seems that no matter how old you are, or who you are, Valentine\u2019s Day remains a delicate subject\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of all the holidays that we celebrate as part of general North American culture, the most sensitive one to tackle while ship-side is Valentine\u2019s Day. Surprising isn\u2019t it? You would think it would be Christmas or something well\u2026religious, where you … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[40,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-world-voyage-2012","category-theme-events"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-eh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=885"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2241,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions\/2241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}