Ten reasons to be grumpy on Valentine’s Day

1. Your child’s Paleo Diet will be sabotaged by an avalanche of waxy, crisped-rice chocolate hearts and sugar candies reading “so fine” and “text me.”

2. Science has ruled out parents’ most time-honored excuse to opt out, with the BBC reporting that sugar doesn’t actually make kids hyperactive. Worse, placebo studies find the problem is actually parents who judge their kids’ behavior more harshly after watching the kids eat something sweet.

3. Last year, Valentine’s Day spending topped $13 billion — a little more than JPMorgan’s infamous settlement with the U.S. Justice Department. That money could give over 108,300 people a free ride to a private four-year university.

4. There is no friendly “happy holidays” equivalent for Valentine’s Day. You’re either in on the goods, or you’re not. Unlike with Easter, Rosh Hashanah, Kwanzaa, or the Fourth of July, neither race, nationality, nor religion provides an excuse to ignore the whole thing.

5. It’s just sick the way these posers think love is all about silk bathrobes and roses purchased on one day in the middle of February. Yeah, yeah, you got some nice new PJs. But does your partner ever scrub the bathtub or carry out the mousetrap on the rare occasions that it works?

6. You think it might be nice to go out for dinner, but then you remember that everyone else is going out too and at least a third of them will be at your favorite restaurant and they made a reservation three weeks before you even began to weigh the pros and cons of having a bad V’attitude this February. So you’ll probably just stay home and cook, and I’ll bet you $13 billion that your boyfriend will feel absolved of the dishes because he bought you a Whitman’s Sampler.

7. Your partner is not psychic. You can fantasize about the spa gift certificate or the Eagles tickets all you want, but your love won’t know it unless you drop plenty of hints, and you don’t need the added stress of strategizing and calibrating those.

8. When you haven’t been dating very long, the first two weeks of February are nothing but a maelstrom of anxiety over whether it’s too soon to make special plans, and whether a conversation about this will lead to a Talk that will dash all your hopes quicker than Walgreens replaces candy corn with candy canes.

9. According to all the commercials and advice columns, if you’ve been dating for at least two years, are over the age of 25, and are reasonably enamored of your partner, it’s time for a diamond ring. Because naturally, a holiday spawned with the sole intent of collecting $13 billion from consumers is the perfect impetus for making the biggest promise of your life — or deciding that all is ashes when your finger is somehow still naked on February 15.

10. Have you ever seen marketing campaigns stoop lower? I got the winning e-mail this morning, from the makers of a health supplement: “Do you have a date with a UTI this Valentine’s Day?” What’s worse, being reminded of a painful bladder condition, or realizing that not having a heightened risk of a UTI means other people’s lives are way sexier than yours? Thanks again, Valentine’s Day.

However you mix and match, friends, I hope we’ve taken the hard part out of hating Valentine’s Day. So order that pint of General Tso’s chicken, and be done with it. See you next week.