Valentine’s Day has always sucked.

Every girl in kindergarten didn’t want to be my Valentine, and 50 years later it hasn’t gotten any better.

But this year there will be no fake, presumptuous and expensive presents. No gold, no candy, no overpriced dinner in an overcrowded restaurant. Not even a little fucking card with a heart on it. No rejection.

This year, the Bear decided her Valentine’s present was going to be a new floor. There’s nothing wrong with our current floor, but she has always hated it.

I promised her I would go to the tile store without crying like a baby or complaining that I wanted to leave after 3 minutes of “shopping.”

Last weekend we went. I didn’t cry, and she didn’t kill me. Win-win.

Row upon row of ceramic and porcelain and every kind of bullshit inbetween. No vinyl. That’s what we bought 15 years ago when we redid the floor, and she hates it.

Looks good where it sticks. But it doesn’t always stick. It peels up or back or shakes loose and just looks like the thin cheap shit that it is.

This year it’s going to be real tile — fired in a kiln and laid down by a professional. But it won’t look like tile; it’s going to look like wood.

Why not just a wood floor?

“Don’t be silly,” she said. And that was the end of that.

Samples were carried around the store, bought, brought home and laid all around the house.

“I like this one, but it could be kinda crazy,” she said. After 35 years together, I have learned a thing or two. I said nothing. That’s thing one. Anything you say, can and will be used against you. Doesn’t matter if you do or do not have an opinion; keep that shit to yourself.

The boy’s girlfriend came over Sunday night. She liked the “crazy” wood pattern too. “It goes with the cabinets,” she said.

Sold.

That’s thing two. If two “Savage” women agree on anything, so let it be written and so let it be done.

We will be getting 1500 square feet of the crazy-colored-speckled wood “done”. They may be doing it next month.

“Won’t that be great,” the Bear said, with the kind of pre-set enthusiasm that tells me she has been planning this gift for years and just told me about it this week.

“Don’t worry honey, you can afford it,” she said.

Well fuck, I must be richer than I thought. Thanks honey. Truth be told, we have talked about home improvements. She has a list that I only inquire about on a need to know basis. I don’t need to know until she wants to make me move every stick of furniture in our house to make way for new floor.

Ohh and new baseboards. She hates those too.

Don’t really know what’s next. But she will probably bring it up next Valentine’s — she knows I will say yes to almost anything as long as I don’t have to shop, worry about how that present might “smell,” or go to a store to pick it out on my own.

Fuck, maybe next year she will want to buy a boat. You never know. Happy Valentine’s to you poor schmucks who still want to keep the “romance.”

I’ll be celebrating my Valentine’s present by spilling beer and chips on it every weekend for the next 30 years.