Living a Life Long Love - Fifty Shades of Bacon

One of the earliest things I learned about keeping a relationship work is to NEVER buy your lady a bouquet of flowers as an apology for a screw-up.

Men – don’t do it.

You might get away with it once or twice – “Oh look,” she’ll say. “A beautiful bouquet of flowers.” – but sooner or later she’ll figure out that the moment she sees you with a fist full of dead American beauties that you’ve gone and done something stupid.

Honey, I burned the house down.

Here’s some flowers.

Honey, I left the children at a construction site.

Here’s some flowers.

Honey, I slept with a squadron of cheer leaders.

Here’s some freaking flowers.

Listen, lover-boy – here’s a freaking newsflash for you. Women aren’t as dumb as television would have us believe they are. They can add two plus two together and sooner or later they’re going to stop seeing all of those pretty little blooms and instead of seeing a bouquet of happiness they’re going to see a red flag of warning.

He fucked up again.

So save those flowers for those unexpected surprise moments when you just want to let your lady know that she’s the most special being in the entire universe.

THAT’S when you give her flowers.

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Let me tell you something else about love.

Love isn’t supposed to be a moment.

Love isn’t just on Valentine’s Day or her birthday or on your anniversary.

Love is an all-year-sucker – sweet for 365 days out of the year.

If you don’t hug her and kiss her and tell her you love her every day you’re missing the boat, sonny-jim.

Let me tell you about my wife and my big date yesterday.

It started in the morning with a man-breakfast of bacon and eggs.

I’m an early riser. I have to be. I write in the morning. That’s when I get my best work done.

But – every Saturday morning I make an exception and get up and hit the kitchen for a a good old-fashioned man breakfast – usually bacon or eggs.

Only I don’t make it for myself. I make it for my wife, Belinda.

Belinda is a professional dance instructor. She also teaches Zumba professionally.

For her that means teaching dance and Zumba six days a week.

This week it’s seven days – because she is performing at a gig this afternoon.

So come the weekend she needs some serious nutrition for breakfast – so I’ve fallen into the habit of making her a hearty Saturday breakfast. This Saturday I kept it simple. A couple of strips of bacon, some fried onions and some fluffy scrambled eggs.

See.

That’s how you do it.

Hey honey – I love you – here’s some bacon.

Forget about all of that flower foolishness – nothing says I love you like bacon.

She climbed into her car and drove off to teach for a few hours. I wrote for a few more hours. Come noontime she got home and I said – “Hey, let’s go and get the groceries together. I’ll treat you to some mac and cheese and fried chicken at the grocery store grill.”

It was an impulse.

So off we went to the grocery store and had some good and greasy grub.

We bought the groceries and come on home

Then I told her to forget about cooking supper. Said we were going out for supper, my treat, and then I was taking her to the movies.

Why?

Why the hell not!

I chose a place to dine. A restaurant we hadn’t been to – the Flip Burger. One of those gourmet burger joints that have been sprouting up across Halifax over the last year or two. Kind of like a Burger King where you have to hold your pinkie finger out while you chew on your cheeseburger.

You want a peek at the menu? Here you go –  http://www.flipburger.ca/pdf/flip_web-menu.pdf

Belinda had a healthy Big Fat Greek and a bottle of water.

I had a Nutty Professor Peanut Butter and Bacon burger along with a tall cool Peanut Butter Banana Bacon milkshake.

We shared a large onion rings.

Whole thing cost about twenty five bucks.

We sat together and chowed down and giggled over jokes and grinned until our teeth hurt.

Highlight of the supper was me fishing out a full-length strip of Oulton’s Double-Smoked Bacon out of my milkshake cup.

Hey – I didn’t say this was a HEALTHY blog entry.

I’ll exercise tomorrow, dammit.

Then we drove to the Bayers Lake theatre and I took her to see Billy Connolly and Maggie Smith in QUARTET.

Let me tell you – if you’re in your mid-fifties or older and you want a good giggle go and see QUARTET while it is still in the movie theatres. A lot of the gags would be lost on a young person – but to folks in their fifties or older are going to get every gag and innuendo. It is a beautiful love song that reminds you that – as Bette Davis once said – “Old age is not for sissies”.

And I’m not saying that fifty is old.

What I am saying is that it is GREAT to see a movie aimed at an older-than-thirteen year old demographic!

We got home afterwards and Belinda thanked me for a day-long date and a day without cooking. I spent about forty bucks on eating and about twenty-five at the movies. Belinda bought the popcorn. None of it was hugely expensive but we had a wonderful time.

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So, in closing let me just say this.

If you want to live a life long love – forget about the flowers and take your wife on a day-long date.

She’ll thank you for it.

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon