Getting Prepared

OK, complete this sentence: "It is __ days until ________."

If your sentence reads: "It is 55 days until Major League Baseball opening day," you are correct.

However, if you are half of a couple, a more timely fill-in-the-blanks sentence might be: "It is five days until Valentine's Day."

Keeping the advent of Valentine's Day in mind could mean the difference between spending Saturday night basking in the warm glow of your one true love's affection and spending the night shivering out on the tundra with the ice weasels, which, you will recall, is what happened that time you forgot a red-letter day on the romance calendar.

You may think that five days out is way too early to be thinking about what you should do to make your sweetie feel special. On the other hand, you could look on this reminder as an opportunity.

For one, it's a chance to put both you and your sugar plum at ease. If he or she has any reason to think that you may forget to acknowledge the day (see ice weasels above), letting your snookums know that you know Valentine's Day is on the way will give him or her one less thing to fret about this week.

That, in and of itself, is a thoughtful gift.

It will also let you relax. If you wait until Saturday, you're going to be fighting crowds at Iris' Floral Creations or Lester's Bait & Tackle. Besides, everything may be picked over by then. Why wait when you could shop at leisure and have your pick of the hand-tied flies?

Plus, if you don't act while Valentine's Day is on your mind, you run the very real danger of it slipping your mind. How many times have you remembered something well in advance, said to yourself, "Oh, I have plenty of time to deal with that" and given no more thought to the matter until the last minute, forcing you to rush around?

It makes you really irritable every single time, doesn't it?

Forgetting this year shouldn't be a problem for me because I have Sparkle Girl and Doobins to remind me. Their mother, Garnet, and I got married in August at the magistrate's office in Davie County.

Although we had an appointment, we had to wait for the magistrate to deal with a man whom two deputies had brought in. For Doobins, a shirtless man with tattoos all over his torso and his hands cuffed behind his back was a significant bonus.

The shirtless man didn't faze Garnet. I added that to the list of things l like about her.

But I digress.

A fringe benefit of doing something sooner rather than later is you can spend the rest of the week smugly congratulating yourself. Few sensations are as intoxicating -- and as hard to come by -- as righteous self-satisfaction. Why pass up the rare chance when it comes along?

Here's another thing: You can get way more return for your investment if you start early and stretch it out. Imagine the if-looks-could-kill glare you would get if you tried to get away with giving only five pieces of chocolate as a gift on Valentine's Day.

But buy five pieces of gold-foil-wrapped Godiva chocolate now, put out one each day with a note and see what happens.

In our family, we like the "What I Like About…" game in which we pick one person to be it and the rest of us take turns saying something that we like about the person. That approach would work well for the notes. We have found that being specific is the most fun:

"What I like about you is the way you show me a comic whenever one makes you laugh so that I will be sure to have a laugh, too."

"What I like about you is the way you always make sure to cook the bacon so it doesn't have any undercooked fatty parts."

One last thing. As powerful as the simple, drawn-out approach is, you will still need to throw in something extra on Valentine's Day itself. Along with a Big Finish with the notes, you could start the day by serving your beloved breakfast in bed. Sparkle Girl and I may make those bake-yourself cinnamon rolls that come in those tubes you pop on the edge of the counter.

I already asked Garnet whether she was hoping for something big for our first Valentine's Day as a married couple.

Not at all, she said.

I added that to the list of things I like about her.

■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at kunderwood@wsjournal.com.