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Hooglie-mooglie
Custom design arrangements for ail occasions...
Spring makes the sap flow
Full service
Florist serving
the entire
Portland
metro area
for 20 years
(5 0 3 ) 6 5 3 -8 4 4 4
w w w .m aryjean sf1 o w e rs .co m
1 3 8 2 2 S.E. O a tfie ld Rd. • M ilw aukee, OR 9 7 2 2 2
t’s that fertile time of year when nature
draws us out of our wintry cocoons, awakens
us with perfume of blooming daphne and
robins’ serenade and makes us want to linger
in the fnoming light when we step out to get
the newspaper, forgetting for one sweet
moment that we have no pants on.
Spring is here. Sweetie and 1 feel love in
the air, hut we’ve been together 14 years and
tend not to get quite as swept away as new
lovers do. Unless by swept away you mean
planning our weekend around gutter cleaning,
reorganizing the garage and, hubba-hubha,
washing the car.
Meanwhile, people all around us are falling
in love. Two very close friends of ours fell hard.
Intoxicated with sunshine and the pink petals
of flowering plums, they have become like the
trees. Their sap is flowing.
After a long dry spell, they started dating
and uncharacteristically cast caution to the
wind. They dove in head first— literally, as far
as we know.
We haven’t seen much of them lately.
I caught a glimpse of one the other night,
and she was glowing. O r that just
might have been the light shim
mering on her unwashed
face. She did Uxtk happy.
She also looked like she
hadn’t slept since Rosie
came out.
W hen
pheromones kick
in, new lovers tend
to forget their
other connec
tions. Sweetie
and 1 get an occa
sional phone call
or e-mail from
our enamored
friends when they
come up for air.
They’re in that
corny, hm glie-
mcx>glie stage where
everything feels all
shiny and new. Like a
vir-ir-inir-gen.
“She is so sweet! I never
knew I could feel so loved! This
is it!” They’re saying all those gixify
things new lovers like to think they’ll he
saying about each other for the rest of their lives.
Sometimes people figure out how to hang
onto feeling in love. Sweetie and 1 are still in
love, usually. But sometimes we get caught up
doing taxes, pruning roses and worrying about
making the house payment.
It’s easy to get distracted by our own little
problems, like weatherizing and who do we know
who can help us rewire the smoke alarms we
ripped, still beeping, out of the ceiling after last
winter’s power outage. We forget to prioritize
love. But because we have these friends who are
in the hot and juicy thrix;s of new romance, we
have a clear reminder close at hand, so to speak.
Their steamy love affair prompts us to set
aside habitual worries and remember how lucky
we are to have each other. We have found
unflagging loyalty and devotion. A nd I’m not
just talking about our dog, either.
I mean, we were newly in love once. W h at
ever it was that drew us to each other then is
still there now.
M o v in g
P a c k in g
I
PR
Locally Owned &
Specializing in Oregon & Washington
j
Full Time Professional Employees
We just have to remember to see each other
with loving eyes instead of that “it’s your turn
to take out the recycling” look. Luckily, our
lovebird friends remind us to commit random
acts of whoopee.
These two women— who have to remain
nameless now that I’m telling you all this—
inadvertently have inspired certain behavior
in our, shall we say, marriage bed. “Let’s pre
tend we've just started falling in love,” I sug
gested last night. Hoo-wee, that got us going.
Sweetie set aside the crossword puzzle, I took
off my wrist brace, and we turned on a Joan
A rm atrading CD. Even the cats went into the
other room.
W e said all kinds of hooglie-mooglie
things to each other. W e giggled, we
sighed. We forgot all about her
knee injury and my ten d o n
itis. N either of us m en
tioned the moss on the
roof or the crum bling
bathtub grout.
We focused on
each other like a
couple of newly
weds— or newly-
domestic-part
nered or newly-
civilly-unioned
or whatever.
W hat an anti
dote to lesbian
bed death!
Being close to
someone else’s
romance heated
us up like a
microwave pizza.
The question is:
Will it stay gooey?
Will this couple stay in
love? O r will they get dis
tracted by all the worries of
nesting and lose their desire for
each other? Will one of them fly home
one night and say, “1 have schlepped more
than my share of worms, and now I have to
organize a bunch of loose feathers and twigs”
and fly away?
I hope our friends make it. I hope they will
find a way to renew their love with the seasons.
I hope every spring they’ll be inspired by other
people’s budding romance.
It works for us. This morning Sweetie and I
both stepped outside to get the paper. We
heard the chickadee’s winsome call and smelled
the perfume of narcissi. We set our habitual
worries aside and, for one sweet moment, for
got that neither of us had any pants on. J H
SALLY S heklow has been entertaming the masses
as part of the Eugene improvisational comedy
troupe WYMPROV! for some years rune. Appar
ently regards herself as some kind of funny gal.
We've decided to see what she can do. You can
find her column every first Friday starting nght
now in Just O ut.
OPUC 142126
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