It was 2002, two months and a week before we broke up. I always took my wife out to a little Italian place in Lakewood CA on St. Valentine's Day and before she got home from work I arranged the kitchen table with a huge vase of two dozen red roses, two dozen long neck bottles of her favorite beverage, Coors Light, and a pretty assortment of heat-shaped candies.

I tied three mylar balloons to a few of the bottles. They were all inscribed with colorful Valentine messages.

She came home and out to the kitchen. After a kiss she put the bottles in the fridge, checked the roses, and then announced that she was tired and wanted to pass on going out to dinner, something we had done for twenty years.

Then she went to my office and got on the computer to chat with her "friends."

I never went to that restaurant after that. But one day during the divorce I did giver her roses, six dozen, in an attempt to get her back. Unfortunately I had not yet discovered the cheating that had been going on or I would have saved so serious cash.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Yesterday I walked through Kroger's flower shop and saw the line of men waiting for service. I felt very good that I wasn't one of them. Besides, I need the cash for more important things like kitty litter, coffee and Paxil.