Celebrating Valentine's Day Without A Man

Who needs a man anyway? :) I'm not just saying this because it's Valentine's Day and I'm single; I'm actually happily married. I enjoy some Valentine's candy, and any holiday where I get chocolates is fine with me! There are, however, times when we just don't care about the ruffly hearts or want to look at the silly balloons. The stores around here are filled with them and, to be honest, sometimes it looks like a Strawberry Shortcake doll threw up everywhere. Either that, or the Kool-Aid man exploded. If you're having the Valentine's version of 'bah, humbug', going through a breakup or just don't care for red and pink, here are some ways you can celebrate (or muddle through) this over-commercialized randomness holiday.
Womensforum.com has a few fun suggestions:
http://www.womensforum.com/anti-valentines-day-party.html
I especially like the part about using pictures of exes as dart boards and burning love letters. The music selection sounds good too. In addition to that, you could-

• Go out dancing with your girl friends. Even if you don't usually go clubbing, sometimes it's fun to just hang out with the girls. If you want to involve men, you could always have a contest to see which one of your group can get the most phone numbers. :)
  
• If you really want roses, buy them for yourself. Some people I know will send themselves roses to the office so that everyone will think they're 'in demand', but not all of us can pull that off. For some people, it just looks sad. There's no reason at all why you can't just go to the floral section of the grocery store and buy your own roses and candy. Also, there's nothing saying that you and your girl friends can't give them to each other as a 'thanks for being my friend' gift, or to someone else who has been there for you through love's hard times. I'd suggest sending your ex black roses, but they're really expensive and he's probably not worth the time and money anyway. :)
  
• You could do what my parents did when we were growing up; gave us all candy for Valentine's Day. Sometimes it wasn't too festive-like a bag of Hershey's Miniatures-but, hey, chocolate is chocolate! It was also a nice way to remind us that we're loved, even if it's not in a romantic way.
  
• Get your girls together for a 'movie night', but make it more about movies that show hot actors (Johnny Depp, Gerard Butler, etc) than 'anti-love'. Few things make you forget about a breakup more than watching Christian Bale and Russell Crowe in 3:10 To Yuma or Heath Ledger in A Knight's Tale! Even if you're happily married or happily single, 'eye candy' is always fun!
  

• To quote my friend Vickie, “Get a bunch of ice cream, watch First Wives' Club and bitch about men!”
  

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to have fun on Valentine's Day that don't involve having a man in your life. While you probably already knew that you were a strong, independent woman who could stand on her own two feet, it doesn't hurt to celebrate it once in a while! Plus, it's a good excuse to have a 'girls' night out'!