Valentine's Day. In honor of martyred saints we buy flowers, chocolate, and Hallmark cards. It's the scourge of the single and the responsibility of the hitched. Is Valentine's Day overdone? It depends on your perspective: If you're a woman and you've got a man, of course not! It's a wonderful holiday of love and romance. If you're that man (and she's still in the room), of course not! It's a wonderful holiday of love and romance. If the significant other in your life has four legs and drinks out of the toilet, then certainly it's overdone. No store should be decorated in pink.

But trying to convince your wife of approximately 45 days that Valentine's Day is overdone is a losing battle. And so I resign myself to the fact that I have to come up with something, and on February 13th I realize that procrastination has already taken its toll.

I listened while the guys at work plotted their romantic days. Reservations for dinner were being made, a ring had been ordered, another guy bought earrings for his wife. And all the guys traded the phone number of the flower shop across the street to put in their last minute orders. We even chuckled at the present one of the women in the office already received--Pillsbury Valentine's Day cookies, still sealed in the vacuum packed cylinder, waiting for someone to bake them.

And I turned back to my desk wondering what I was going to get my wife. You see, I'm a cheapskate. I set up the budget in our household, and there's just not room for extravagance. There's hardly room for poverty. So I'm not too keen on spending large amounts and padding the pockets of some retail rat. And my wife understands this, which certainly saves me a lot of grief.

But as every guy knows, that doesn't mean you're off the hook. You have to do something. Flowers are nice, but everyone does flowers. Chocolate is easy, but it's more of an afterthought. And so what do I get? I thought maybe something practical. I'm a practical guy. Of course that goes against the entire notion of Valentine's Day, the day of romance and love. Practical does not equal romantic. Then I started thinking of good gifts: CDs, books, pictures, games--a bunch of really good ideas I wish I had thought of in December. But there's something about Valentine's Day that makes the normal gift seem inappropriate.

It seems that Valentine's Day is the holiday of extravagant excess. It's romance, it's love, it's enchantment. There's no place for practicality or gifts that on other holidays would be a success. You're expected to give something that in any other context would be worthless. Flowers die. Chocolates get eaten. Cards get buried in the bottom drawer. It's the holiday of waste. Why else would we deck the halls with pink and red and naked babies with arrows?

And maybe that's just the point. Sometimes love is wasteful. One summer I racked up nearly 3,000 miles on my truck just from driving back and forth from Green Bay to Chicago to see my girlfriend. Sometimes love is expensive. One month I had a $90 phone bill from too many conversations with my girlfriend. Sometimes love is just plain nuts. On more than one occasion I've crawled into bed at 5 a.m. because I was up talking to my girlfriend all night. Now she's my wife.

As much as I don't like it, perhaps the point of Valentine's Day is to remind me that love is not simple and easy and neat. It's complicated, it's passionate, it's messy. Perhaps the point of Valentine's Day is to remind me that love is not something to be taken for granted. It's not something you get automatically. It's something you have to work for, something you have to preserve, something you have to relearn every day.

Love doesn't always fit in a budget, it's not always on time, and it's not perfect.

So what am I going to get my wife for our first Valentine's Day as a married couple? I don't know. And that's okay, because love doesn't have all the answers either.