Single in Sandpoint:

By Scarlette Quille
Reader Columnist

I’ve written this column for around 10 years, which means I have had this column longer than any job, lover or car in my life. I’ve had this column longer than FACEBOOK or my smart phone. The part that I can’t believe is that I still like coming up with funky ass shit like every other week (intentional Snoop Dogg reference). That being said, I’ve written a lot of columns about snow and Valentine’s Day. I don’t love either one.

The reason I don’t care for snow or Valentine’s Day, has nothing to do with either one conceptually. It’s more about the people who live for snow and focus on Valentine’s Day that make this time of year annoying. Let’s examine this…

I wake up Monday morning. I’m sick, because there are people who go around all winter hacking and snotting their way through life, infecting even the most diligent hand sanitizers. The air is putrid and hanging with germs in all public places because the Arctic temperatures necessitate limited access to fresh air flow. I look outside. My car, my driveway, and essentially my escape, is covered in three feet of snow, two feet having magically appeared overnight. The snow plow has diligently kept the road clear of snow by creating a two foot-by-four foot berm in front of my driveway. This means that I will have to back up, possibly get stuck, shovel my way out and hit the berm Dukes of Hazzard-style to make it on to the road and to work.

I’m so happy for you powder worshiping snow bunnies who get to go to your place of worship, AKA Schweitzer, on these days. I will not hate on you. Winter ends. You haven’t had a “good” one like this in a couple of years. I don’t know if you are funneling money to the sadistic groundhog or what. Well played, snow bunnies.

If there is something sexy and exciting about winter, I haven’t figured it out. I’m guessing that’s why the holiday puppet master plunked a celebration of love—Valentine’s Day—in one of the more depressing and cold months out of the year. I think the idea must have been that it would be a therapeutic endeavor for people to focus on love instead of freezing their asses off. You know, be thankful for your lover, even though they are pasty white and sniffling and infecting you with germs from their workplace for the third time this winter. What if you don’t have a lover? That’s OK, don’t be depressed. You can focus on getting one or getting some instead of snow-covered misery.

The way I see it, there are three ways to handle Valentine’s Day.

The first, and most common way people celebrate this holiday by forcing young children to give tiny love-themed cards to their classmates. My six-year-old son is extremely nervous about this. He has been telling me for months that he has to “run for his life” at recess in order to avoid the advances of some of the more amorous female kindergarteners. He doesn’t want to encourage them with a suggestive card. The only thing worse than attention from girls would be not having attention from girls, or being the only kid in class who didn’t have cards to hand out. So as a parent, it is our duty to supervise this task until completion. There are just some things in life that don’t make sense, kid.

The second way, is to lavish your lover, spouse, partner—whatever we are calling them these days—with romantic gifts and dinner. This practice is typically carried out in new relationships, setting up unrealistic expectations and future disappointment in the later years of the relationship. I will tell you something, here and now. The last thing I want to do after I eat a box of chocolates and go out to steak dinner is squeeze my bloated, pale and frigid body into an ill fitting lacy nighty for a night of love, but that’s just me, I suppose.

The third and final way to experience Valentine’s is to pretend you can ignore it by:

1. Treating yourself to a night at a local watering hole with other loveless souls.

2. Listening to the “love song” station on Pandora—or better yet, to the mixed tapes you have saved from high school for such an occasion— while drinking a bottle of your favorite libation and pining over what could have been.

3. Or maybe you take up religion, get your ass up to Schweitzer and snag yourself a bunny.

The choice is yours.

I’ll be your Valentine,

Scarlette Quille