valentine's day

While some people were out having picnics and exchanging with their date vague sentiments about each other's apparently lovely and loved graces, I was trying to woo my poor, heartbroken and limping coriander and basil plants back to life with some sun and some water.

When I left for Toowoomba on Friday, I had bid the herbs goodbye and they seemed happy and well-kept enough, but I returned this afternoon to find them failing miserably at being green and upright. But just as one can drown in too much love and frivolity, I fear that I may have been overzealous in my attempts to revive my beloved, now-sopping herbs, and I have since spent the evening researching handy hints for amateur herb growers in the hope that I can rectify the situation and cease to feel like an idiot. Happy Valentine's Day to me.

Of course, that's not to say that in my other reality I wasn't somewhere classy. Perhaps outdoors – alfresco we might say. Maybe some ducks nearby, but not being too ducky and noisy. No mosquitoes. A candle.

Date: Why, Tegan, you are more beautiful than Rachel McAdams.
Me: Why, thank you. I’m going to have the steak. Maybe even two.
Date: Yes, my darling girl, you go ahead and fill out that marvellous dress you’re wearing. The one you look so smashing in.
Me: But perhaps you should settle for one (smiles wickedly). If you want this to go any further, that is.
Date: Oh ho! Tegan, love, don’t make any more jokes or I’ll never have time to breathe! Oh ho, you are as witty as Tina Fey.
Me: (Giggles shamelessly; pushes delicate, finger-waved fringe to side of face).
Date: My apologies, Tegan, I must confess I made a mistake. You are actually more akin to Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Me: Hmmm, they are equally appealing. Salad or vegetables?
Date: Why, Tegan, you could have both if you pleased. As well as some ice-cream and a fresh peach. Why I’d pick it for you myself, straight from the tree.
Me: But I do not wish to be greedy.
Date: Tegan, dear, do not concern yourself with such a thought! For you are as benevolent as the sun is with its rays on a mid-February’s day.
Me: Such as this one?
Date: Such as this one. The one that you get to share with me, Jake Gyllenhaal.
Me: But you don’t really think I look like your sister do you?
Date: No, of course not. You look like you.

And this is where the date promptly ended.