BELLE CHIMES IN

Heartfelt

Valentinus is not only the Patron Saint of sweethearts and love, he is also the go-to guy for bee keepers, epilepsy, fainting, plague, travelers, and young people.

In the Middle Ages, young men and women drew names from a bowl to see who would be their Valentine. They would wear this name pinned onto their sleeves for one week for everyone to see. This was the origin of the expression “to wear your heart on your sleeve.”

The Italian city of Verona, where Shakespeare’s lovers Romeo and Juliet lived, receives about 1,000 letters addressed to Juliet every year.

In South Korea, the 14th of every month is a romantic holiday of some sort. Candle Day, Valentine’s Day, White Day, Black Day (for singles), Rose Day, Kiss Day, Silver Day, Green Day, Music Day, Wine Day, Movie Day, and Hug Day.

220,000 people get engaged on Valentine’s Day every year.

Happy Irony Day: King Henry VIII declared February 14th a holiday in 1537. He also killed most of his wives for not giving him a son.

A fourth chocolate, ruby, now officially exists. The innovation of Swiss confectionery company Barry Callebaut, its pink hue comes entirely from Ruby cocoa beans found around the world. Ruby beans provide pink color along with a fruity berry flavor no other chocolate type possesses.

The 80 million bacteria exchanged during kissing helps boost your immune system—it’s good for your teeth, too.

Americans spend $700 million on Valentine’s Day gifts for their pets. And 15% of American women send themselves flowers.

In Russia, the Ukraine and former Soviet Union countries, if you plan to give a woman flowers, make sure you give her an odd number (not an even dozen typically given in America). Even numbers of flowers are reserved for grieving and funerals.

“Unity” I Can Appreciate

Without expressing my opinions about the current national conversation that focuses on unity (mostly because this magazine only has limited pages), I do want to take a stab at some stuff we maybe already had in common.... ‘cause we’re human ‘n all. Whether it’s kettle chips or kale chips, we all have those precious half-dozen-or-so things in the pantry that we never allow ourselves to run out of.

If you don’t say “wed-nez-day” in your head when you write it out, you’re totally lying. Admit it, there were a few times in life you peeked around the shower curtain to make sure there was no one in the room. Modern day... you probably (or should) have a sticky note covering your webcam, just in case.

We fall asleep on the couch and decide to stay there all night because, if we walk to the bed, we lose all our

“sleepy.” It’s really annoying that everyone in the neighborhood knows when you’re trying to sneak one of the danishes in those covered plastic, impossibly tight grocery store trays. We all have that friend or relative we need only look at, when someone does something stupid, to know,

“Yeah, we’re totally going to talk about that later.” Most people want to be told “Happy Birthday” but most of us don’t want to have to actually tell anyone that it’s today. Maybe one of the reasons we don’t use much cash any more is the mild panic attack we have when people are staring and rolling their eyes while we try to put away the bills and the coins and the receipt without dropping it all over the place. Or, when you give the cashier exact change, you have to say, “I think that’s right...” We all have at least a partial pile of t-shirts we don’t wear but won’t throw away. The only time I’m good at math is when I wake up in the night a dozen times and calculate, to the minute, how much more sleep I can get if I fall back to sleep immediately. Open birthday card, in front of gifter. Try really hard to focus on the nice message. Do not be obvious about trying to read the amount on the check. Am I the only one wishing I could be a child and someone would tell me to go to my room when company arrives?

That awkward moment when you insist someone hear/ see/read something that changed your life, and, a minute in, you have to awkwardly say, “Wait, it gets better.” Admit it, you’ve Googled yourself and, perhaps, thought the page 1 results should have been different. When you feel like you typed the password incorrectly, you have to delete the whole thing because you have no idea which character might have been wrong. How often have you clicked the “Public View” of your social media profile to see what you look like to strangers?

For dog and cat people... no matter how many pets you have in your life, there will always be that one perfect pup/kitty by whom all the others are measured.