Dear Diary: A Two Tears In The Bucket Motherf**k It List

"All your romantic dreams are falling neatly into place, so now is the perfect time to pack up all your troubles. You're on the brink of a brand-new era of your life. Wonderful adventures await and exotic locales beckon." 

. . . read my horoscope on what was, instantaneously you can imagine, a #GoodMorning!

Of course I scoffed at the idea of my romantic dreams falling neatly into place.  Neither currently entangled in a lover's embrace, nor EVER the sort to wish for an entanglement that could be described as *neatly in place,* the very thought amuses.  I prefer amicable disagreements and fierce make ups, knowing but never quite figuring someone out, a chess game that nears completion but fails to entirely arrive.  And I don't fancy any of that'll be neat.

But "Wonderful Adventures & Exotic Locales" beckoning?  Yes please!  This would require a list.

To Do: Wonderful Adventures & Exotic Locales

* Write something that changes the way people think - Bonus points: behave.

* Eat New York pizza for supper & drink Roman Cappuccino for breakfast.

* Gaze up into Bortle class one skies.

* Feel the sunrise warm my skin after a night spent asleep on Cumberland sand.

* Belly up to Matt's Bar for a Jucy Lucy.

* Seaplane!  Put me on 'er.  Fresh-plucked oysters?  Yes please!

* Get caught in the rain - handsome gentleman required.

* Ride a bicycle in Bali before gifting it to someone with kind eyes.

* Peacock bass fishing & Denys Finch Hatton hunting.

* Skinny Dippin' - obviously, not in relation to (above).  Piranha = no bueno.

* Water someone's plants, in Scotland, and for no less than one month.

*Sleep in the car.
(Let passion take the wheel, throw caution toward the tailpipe, and end up somewhere that (financially) I can't afford to be but (spiritually) I can't afford not to be.

That last one's pretty near and dear as it's one of but two that might actually be feasible in the near future.  Not to mention that it pairs quite nicely with the other.  I'm a two-birds-with-one sort of rolling stone.

As for romance, let me say this: perhaps I was premature to dismiss my blessings.  You see, there are two men in my life who bring it.  Neither in a caught-in-the-rain fashion, but both in spades.  

Number one sends me gifts, and Love notes, and pays me compliments to a degree that dating relationships, I suspect, will be ever in pursuit of.  "I cannot live without your friendship" he writes.

And number two makes me think about romance in ways that I've never in all my days thought about it.  *This* is very romantic, he explains.  I can see how *that* would be romantic, he tells me.  And, somehow always contrary to anything I've ever thought of as romantic, I find myself translating the word as if it were a foreign inscription on an ancient tablet.

They're both . . . well . . . they're both pretty "neat."  One showers me with an heirloom brand of chivalry and the other has taught me to find an intoxicating charm in the most unlikely subjects.  Certainly they're doing most of the heavy lifting for the courier of my next smooch.  Something tells me that he won't mind a bit - I brake for smart fellows.

And, after all, I've always believed that good things come in threes.  As did Violet Gordon-Woodhouse and Lou Andreas-Salomé, perhaps they were on to something.  And by that, I reference divvying up the demands of your personal relationships more so than wielding a crop against Paul Rée & Friedrich Nietzsche.

Wonderful adventures and exotic locales?  Made a list.  Romance?  Checked it twice.  Loose ends?  To pack up my troubles.  But I'd say that box is hardly missing an affirmative flourish.  Or did you find the title of this post elusive?

To The Stars!

The bucket is for my tears.  The list, for my years.