Ahhhhh Romance!

Men:

Remember that time when you realized you'd been with your significant other for a long time, and wow, she was just as beautiful as the day you met her, except more? No? Do you want to know what to do when that happens? Because it will. Oh yes, it will.

You go find her where she is folding laundry, and when she looks up and begins to tell you about how the exterminator came this morning and was going to do something about that tree, you gently place your finger to her lips, quieting her. Because you know, you KNOW her life is hectic and full of fretting and managing details, and you want her to know that she is more to you than all of that. She is joy, and life, and creating, and loveliness. So you brush the stray hair back behind her ear, take her hand and motion to her to follow you.

She blinks her luminous eyes at you in confusion, and opens her mouth to ask where you are going, but you shush her with a smile. So she comes along, her face softening, the stress lines easing.

You guide her through the house, out the front door, and into the evening, where the sun is just starting to slip beneath silver limned clouds and shadowed mountain peaks across the lake. And a light breeze is wafting up, stirring grass and the leaves on the Willow Birch that sits in the front corner of the yard. It's a perfect night.

Your darling girl is relaxing, and you can see her enjoying the coolness of clover between her toes (not because you haven't sprayed the yard for weeds, but because you know she's a sucker for anything Irish, and clover looks like shamrocks.), and the tickle of Kentucky Bluegrass against her ankles. You see the quirky smile that made you love her begin to play at the corners of her lips, and you know you've got this right.

And that's when you play your card. You lead her to the grass boulevard beneath the River Birch. She looks at you. You look at her. Then you lean in, gesture to the ground, and say: "Can you believe all those dead bugs? There must be millions of them. They're all over the sidewalk, and over there on top of the utility box. Man. Those Buggone guys murdered 'em."

Yeah.

A piece of advice, male-type-readers: If you're taking your little chicita out to see bug cadavers, don't gaze into her eyes with a look that says "Pearls," or even "Chocolate pie." Give her the bug cadaver look. At least then you won't spend the night next to them on the sidewalk wondering what hit you. Sheesh.

(No. I don't know anyone who did this. Why do you ask?)

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