Happy League of Women Voter's Day*

*Brownie point for those of you who get the reference

by Jennifer Harlow

When I was informed I was the person to post on this blog on Valentine’s Day I was a bit flummoxed. I mean, I’m the only one of our posters who has never been married or been in a long term relationship. I am one of the least sentimental, romantic women on the planet. I'm a fighter, not a lover. I've cried at exactly two movies in my lifetime. I'd much rather watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre than The Notebook, unless I want to fall asleep from boredom or see how many times I can roll my eyes in the space of two hours. When I read Romeo and Juliet I just wanted to smack the two teens upside their heads for being so stupid. I mean, hello! They were fourteen! So I was a bit wary about writing about romance, especially on Valentine's Day, as I am perpetually single and through feminism classes know that Valentine's day is just a holiday sprung from corporate greed and the only real reason all us female singletons feel bad about VD is the not-so-subtle brainwashing of females that we need a man to complete us and make our life worthwhile. (Thank you Disney).

I started on a post to reflect this, but since my last one about the West Memphis 3 was kind of aggressive and a downer I decided to embrace this “holiday” and do something upbeat(ish). So today I will pour some antifreeze in my veins to combat the ice and write about the romantic influences in my writing. Because I do believe in love, and do enjoy writing about it (as long as I get to kill a few things along the way.)

Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Titanic: This was one of the aforementioned movies that made me cry to this day (the other being Apollo 13 for some unknown reason.) The first time I saw it when my parents came to pick me up at the theater I was sobbing so hard they thought I'd been assaulted. It took a couple minutes for me to calm down before I could tell them what really happened. That I'd just seen the most touching love story ever. Not only is it a thrilling movie, the love story between Jack and Rose is wonderful. They shouldn't be together but find one another. They sacrifice for this love, him his life for her. And that last scene, when old Rose is on the boat, dies, then is reunited with Jack on the Titanic with everyone still makes me verklempt. Best epic love story ever.

2. Charlotte Bronte: Not her books, though Jane Eyre is a pretty decent love story especially considering something like it had never been done before. No Bronte's life is something that no writer could ever have come up with. Cliff's Notes version. A plain girl, she was born to a poor clergyman. Her mother and two older sisters died, leaving her the eldest girl. She had an isolated childhood with only her remaining three siblings and imagination to keep her company. As she got older she had to go to school to learn to be a teacher and she fell in love with her married teacher. He rebuffed her and she returned to the moors. Then she wrote a book, and it was a sensation. Of course within a year of it coming out all three of her siblings died, leaving her alone with her hard father. Then, out of the blue, her father's curate tells her he's been in love with her for years and wants to marry her. Her father goes ballistic, and though she's in her late 30s tells her to refuse. Curate then falls apart all over town, performing grand romantic gestures. She eventually gives in, and realizes on her honeymoon she's fallen in love with her husband. They're not even married a year when she dies of complications from her pregnancy. You can't make this stuff up.

3. Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie: This is one of my favorite books ever. I laughed, I got misty, I stayed up all night reading it. It's about two un-perfect people who try to stay away from each other but fate keeps throwing them together. It's how I wish love could be. Just read it.

4. Ralph Fiennes: Yes, I heart Voldemort. While all the other girls had Johnathan Taylor Thomas or Brad Pitt posters, I had Mr. Fiennes. From age 12 to 20 he was the lead of all my insomnia fueled imagination sessions. He was my romantic hero, and from The English Patient to Strange Days (I still melt in that final scene when he scoops up Angela Bassett, stares into her eyes, and kisses her) he gave me a lot to work with. I even decided to write my first book after seeing one of his movies, Red Dragon (it hasn't been published yet). He's still my favorite actor.

5. My grandparents and parents: Once upon a time there was a 19 year old girl living in Nottingham, England who attended an Air Force dance with her mate. There she met a dashing plane mechanic from New Jersey. They danced the night away, had two more dates, then she agreed to move to America with him. They are celebrating their 56th wedding anniversary this year. On the other side of the pond Jim and Ginny were introduced through friends. They married, had two sons, divorced, then ten years later realized they still loved each other and re-married. Right now he has Alzheimer's and she's taking care of him. From those two unions came Mark and Susan. They met on a blind date, dated for two years, then married 30 years ago. They've survived ten moves to four states, cancer scares, a sick possibly dying young son, raising four children, and having the snarky me as a daughter. This is real love. It's all about mutual respect. Loyalty. Compromise. Being equal partners. Theirs are true love stories.

What about you? What is your definition of romance and love? What movies/books/songs make you feel the love?

So anyway, Happy League of Women Voter Day AKA Valentine's Day! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a date with a box of chocolates I bought for myself and Leatherface.

Happy Valentine’s Day! =P XXXOOO

Hearts and Flowers and Cupids… not.

It’s Valentine’s Day, when flower and chocolate company CEOs rub their hands like Scrooge drooling over his bank book.

Don’t get me wrong. I love it when my husband brings home flowers and pays me sweet compliments while giving me a neck rub. However, all that frolicking through the fields and sappy poetry and watching the rain slide down a window while mooning over your lover’s absent face? Blargh.

In the interests of full disclosure, I think I did read a romance… once… when I was snowed in and had already gone through every other book in the house.

I’m a sexual tension kind of gal. I love it when the “couple” isn’t. When they bicker and tease and steal a kiss, but an hour later are making pointed comments about the other’s choice in blind dates. Maddie and David in Moonlighting, for example. Their dialogue was enchanting. Booth and Brennan in Bones. How I want those two to get together, yet the writers keep finding new ways to ramp up that tension.

Of course there are the classics: Bringing up Baby and His Girl Friday. Cary Grant was a master with both Katharine Hepburn and Rosalind Russell. I didn’t care if Grant and Russell locked lips as the closing credits rolled, because getting there was an hour and a half of bliss.

Then there are two of the classics: Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac and Congreve’s Love for Love. I’ve loved both these plays since I was a swooning over David Cassidy. (What? It was the 70s. The pickings for pre-teen girls were slim.) Only when I started writing did I realize that I’ve been a fan of sexual tension longer than I realized. Poor Cyrano never gets the girl, and Valentine only gets Angelica after five convoluted, witty, sometimes-frustrating acts.

So, fellow readers and writers, what’s your choice for The Day of Romance? The traditional Romance-with-a-capital-R or the “will they or won’t they” kind? Perhaps a mix of both, depending on you and your ssweetheart's mood? Whatever it is, Happy Valentine’s Day, and watch out for heart-shaped arrows--unless they're made of chocolate.

A Valentine's Public Service Announcement

Many years ago, my husband David was visiting his friend Fred Bramante up in New Hampshire when the subject of D-I-V-O-R-C-E was broached. I don’t know HOW the conversation came up, and I don’t want to know WHY the topic surfaced, but I suspect the boys were feeling pretty frisky as they buzzed around in Fred’s sleek black BMW. Both men are music merchants, with David owning “Steinway Piano Gallery of St. Louis” and Fred owning (are you ready for this?) “Daddy’s Junky Music Store,” a chain of 20 guitar shops. It might seem like the guys are worlds apart, but they have a shared history as entrepreneurs in a tough business. And at the time, both were fathers to demanding toddlers and husbands to tired wives.

“Ever think about divorcing your wife?” asked David.

“Sure,” said Fred. “The thought crosses my mind. But whenever it does, I get this vision. I see the sign over my flagship store.”

“The sign?” said David.

“Yeah, the sign.” Fred sighed. “Mommy’s Junky Music Store.”

So with Valentine’s Day approaching, I’m delivering this Public Service Announcement to all you husbands out there: “Don’t blow this holiday. Take a tip from Fred. The stakes are too high. You do not want to get divorced.”

Especially in this economy.

You can talk about your stock portfolio taking a dive, you can curse the name Bernie
Madoff, you can worry about the solvency of your bank, but if you want to stay financially sound, you do NOT want to make a trip to divorce court. According to research scientist Jay Zagorsky of Ohio State University, divorce reduces a person’s wealth by 77% compared to that of a single
person.

Furthermore, according to Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher in their book The Case for Marriage, staying hitched is good for your career, with married men getting more promotions and receiving higher performance ratings.

So if you haven’t done your Valentine’s Day shopping, you need to get busy--FAST. Allow me to assist with some simple rules for pleasing that special woman in your life:

1. Buy her a dozen red roses—hang the cost. And count them before you hand the suckers over. I once received eleven and set up such a howl the neighbors called the cops. “You only love me ELEVEN roses worth?” I moaned.

2. Buy her chocolate. A few pieces of the best you can afford. It’s the luxury that counts, not the calories.

3. Stay away from Victoria’s Secret. Oh, I know what you think—“I’ll get her something sexy.” That’s for YOU, pal, not for her. Besides, you’ll probably buy the wrong size. Their clothes only fit anorexic pre-teens with implants. (If you married an anorexic pre-teen with implants, all I have to say is, "Oooo. Yuck. You are a sick puppy.")

4. Buy her a beautiful card with lovely, romantic sentiments. (Hint: If there’s a dog or a golfer on the front, it’s not going to make her happy. Trust me on this.)

5. Make reservations at a special restaurant. A quick swing through Mickey D’s will not cut the mustard. Let her know in ADVANCE that you’re going out to eat. See, part of the joy is anticipation. (Review the song by Carole King a couple hundred times for help with this concept.)
6. Resist, resist, resist, resist the urge to buy any of the following: lawnmowers, garbage disposals, snowblowers, weed-whackers, drills, sanders, car parts, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, clothes dryers, clothes washers, tools (even pink ones), and especially big screen TVs.

7. Buy her a copy of Paper, Scissors, Death and pre-order Cut, Crop & Die, the second book in the series, from Amazon or your local independent bookseller. That way she'll have a gift for now (plus a code for 50 free digital prints) and a surprise from you later. (And when the book arrives in June, you can smile and say, "See? I love you twelve months a year, darling. I don't need Valentine's Day to show you how much I care.")

And it goes without saying, you should tell her you love being married to her. Repeat after me, "Honey, I love you. I adore you. And I wouldn't want to be married to anybody but you." (Practice looking at her soulfully as you say this. It won't work if you are in the midst of changing channels on your big screen TV.)

Because you do love being married to her, you really do, especially given the state of the economy.

As Well He Should: A Valentine's Day Cautionary Tale

There’s nothing sadder than the grocery store at eleven p.m. the night before Valentine’s Day. Grown men throng to the florist’s coolers. They push and shove each other, hoping to find an overlooked bouquet. Men clutter the greeting card area. They reach over each other to pluck up any pink or red card. And then they sprint for the checkout lane, clutching their meager purchases to their chests.

My dear husband has been one of these. One memorable Valentine’s Day he handed me a “rose” that was a dyed carnation and a card with the words “Sorry your cat died” scratched out. Underneath he wrote, “I love you.”

That didn’t cut it.

I’ve been recycled: that is, this is my second marriage. You couldn’t tell it by looking at me but I lost 350 pounds of ugly fat: I divorced him. I ran into him the other day. I had to jump a curb with the car, but I did it.

So, I survived the trauma of divorcing Mr. Wrong went on to marry David, Mr. Right. Mr. Always Right, that is. Every once in a while, I wake up in the middle of the night and look over at the back of David’s sleeping head and wonder, “What awesome power of love and lust brought me to THIS? And why didn’t I guess THIS would have male pattern balding?”

God knows neither of us are perfect. One day my dear spouse was flipping through a magazine. He came upon a photo of Demi Moore after all that surgery for her movie StripTease. (Movie? More like a box office bomb, but no matter…back to my story.)

David tapped a finger to the photo. “You know with a little effort, you could look like THAT.”

I took the magazine away. I flipped to a photo of Bruce Willis, her then-husband. I pointed to his photo. “You know never in your dreams could you look like THIS. And this marries THAT.”

We have a mixed marriage—I’m a Southerner and he’s a Yankee. He’s younger than I am by five years. But he’s also taller and greyer. So that evens out. He’s lovely, really he is, but like most husbands he’s needed a bit of training to reach his full potential.

For example, there was the time he went on a long business trip to California. Since he sells Steinway pianos, his January trade show is a music lovers’ orgy. Our phone call went like THIS—

David: “It’s 75 degrees here. Bono performed at our sales meeting. I was just walking along Rodeo Drive. Guess who I saw? Eric Clapton. He’s playing at our concert tonight. Oh, and Sheryl Crow was in the Gibson booth. How’re things there?”

Joanna: “It’s 10 below zero. We had an ice storm. The power is out. Our garage door is frozen shut. The car is dead. Our son has strep. The dog has diarrhea. Your dad called and wants to know why we never visit him. Snow is on the way.”

David: “Gotta go! Love you!”

Joanna: “As soon as the ice melts, I’m buying a gun.”

Ah, yes. I love that man of mine. And he's really become a wonderful spouse. He's trained a local florist to drop a dozen long stem roses by his store on Valentine’s Day. They set the bouquet on his desk so he can't forget them. (And he knows to COUNT the roses. The year he brought home eleven I burst into tears. "Does this mean you don't totally love me?" I asked. "You only love me eleven roses worth? Not twelve?") He’ll get me a lovely card. We’ll go out to dinner or he’ll make steaks.

Because, he loves me. He really loves me.

As well he should.