Valentine's Day

It is just another Friday, really, but it started off well. I walked out the door, still greeted by my reversed Welcome mat.

My apartment has interior hallways, and one time after they vacuumed, they set my Welcome mat in reverse. I have decided to leave it this way. Now the world welcomes me every morning, and it starts me off on the right foot.

Anyway, as I left the parking garage, there were two deer walking across the road to the grassy area near my building. I had just reset my phone, so there was no chance for a photo, so I just paused and stared at them for a moment. They were still, but ready to move if I did. So I didn't. I eventually drove on, my heart rate down just a bit.

Not a block later, I reached the apartment office where they were handing out donuts and coffee. The managers had mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, but one small bonus of a bad memory is you get to be surprised more than most. I hadn't even left the complex, and a Valentines Day with no expectations was starting off well.

I reached for the iPod to choose a podcast to listen to on the way in to work. I had seen this great Google Doodle when I turned on the computer to catch up on things over breakfast.

When you click on each candy heart, you are treated (treated, ha!) to a different short story about love produced by Ira Glass and This American Life. The doodle changes each day, but I think this (link) is a more permanent one so you can check it out whenever you wish. I only had time to click on two of them before heading out, but This American Life was on my mind when I reached for the iPod, and I found a Valentine's Day episode waiting for me.

The intro segment was a repeat of the segment I wrote about six years ago in a post Never tell me the odds. In it, the authors present a picture of what a long shot it is to find your special someone, with a spin on the Drake equation. When I originally heard and wrote about the story, I was part-way through marriage counseling that would ultimately fail. Even though I don't subscribe to the theory that there is only one person out there...the odds were long back then, and now, well...

That said, Valentine's Day is not a bummer. Sure, it would be wonderful to have a special someone in my life again, but I still feel like a not-ready-for-prime-time-player. I am caught between feeling like I am and would be a better partner, and being unsure that I have enough to give just yet. So I am not really looking. Of course, so many of these stories seem to say that it that is exactly when you find love.

But what are the odds of that?