How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days (Or, How I Found This One)

In Review: Romance

Rating: Two propeller umbrella hats up

My notion of romance has changed a lot since the days in elementary school that I spent dreaming about a handsome prince riding up on a white stallion and, shaking out his beautiful blonde locks, offering me his hand and a lifetime of riches and candlelit dinners. Or maybe that would have creeped me out just as much back then as it does now, but my memory isn't very good, so I will assume the worst.

Here's a not very well kept secret (and I'm sorry, former partners, that I didn't make this clear enough): I suck at traditional romance. I am awkward and far from elegant. I have a near clinical inability to accept compliments ("Hey, your hair looks really nice today." "No it doesn't. What are you playing at?"). I don't particularly like flowers and my unrefined palate makes it difficult for me not to prefer Big Macs to filet mignon. That doesn't leave much with which potential suitors can attempt to woo me, so it's really in everybody's best interest that I am no longer on the market.

But I don't want to leave the impression that I am not a romantic idealist. My ideal is just a little different. So when Asa proposed to me last winter (during a snowshoeing quest in the mountains 100 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska, in a repurposed plastic water container with a hole punched in it, perched on top of a mountain overlooking Denali, in -30 degrees Fahrenheit) by passing me a thermos lid full of tea and asking, "So, wanna get married?", it was absolutely the most perfect proposal that anyone could've come up with. Maybe putting "get married" on my to-do list this morning wasn't exactly reminiscent of your favorite fairy tale, but then, you didn't see Asa come to the car window when I was on my way to work just to give me a kiss and say, "we're in love!" And maybe our last fancy restaurant date was back in our "courting phase," but I think we'd both take a long walk in the snow with our dogs over candles and sea urchin quenelles with raspberry coulis foam any day (yeah, I don't know what that is, either, but I think I had it on a date once). There's nobody I'd rather be unromantic with. And that's the most romantic thing.

And I'd like to add that my brother got married at city hall while wearing sweatpants and an umbrella hat with a propeller on it (though he claims he was wearing relatively clean jeans and that his umbrella hat did not have a propeller -- I will once again assume the worst in absence of a clear memory, though). Blame my genetic predispositions.