“Why can’t WE be friends?”

My husband and I have many things in common, but certainly not everything.*

It’s the same way with most of my friends, and yes, he’s one of them – en fait, he’s my best friend. We believe that being each other’s best friend is not only possible, for us it’s pretty much imperative. Despite our “Mars/Venus” natures, we talk to each other, listen to each other and do things together.

And – we laugh with each other. Just like friends do.

Being each other’s best friend doesn’t mean we each don’t have other close friends. It also doesn’t mean we always communicate well, or that we always treat each other the way ~~friends~~ we should.

But we do keep trying.

Way back before we knew what we were getting into, we became friends (I kept telling him, “We’re just friends,” but luckily he didn’t take me seriously.) It was the 1970s, and a popular song was “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” by the group WAR. We’ve sung the chorus to each other many times since then:

Why can’t WE be friends?

Why can’t WE – EE be friends?

WAR

And we laugh when we do.

We became more than friends, but friendship is still a solid basis for our relationship. We like to hang out with each other. We encourage each other’s interests, whether we share them or not. Yes, we sometimes take each other for granted, criticize and even hurt one another – but we always forgive. We count on each other, and together we’ve faced more than one crisis.

What about other friends? And other family? Friends are people I met, got to know, and with whom I somehow connected – we accepted each other as friends. We talk, we listen, we do things, and we laugh. We don’t criticize, we don’t boss each other around, and we don’t (normally) offer unsolicited advice.

Family members (besides mon mari) can be, well, not exactly like friends. Yes, we met and got to know each other, but we may not have connected as friends. Because we’re related, we’re sometimes together. Hopefully, we accept each other, talk and listen to each other, and maybe we share some laughs. We probably interrupt each other more than friends do, though. Ideally, we don’t criticize or tell each other what to do.

But when things aren’t exactly ideal, I often wonder why we can’t be friends. Why we can’t just treat each other the way friends do.

The answer is, we could if we wanted to – it would be much more fun than WAR.

* Another one of our oft-repeated song lines is from Bob Dylan: “We like the same things. We wear the same clothes.” Well, we don’t anymore…

May 25, 2013 1

May in France, and fluency

“Le joli mois de mai, où on ne travaille pas beaucoup!” – mon prof de français

In my novel MAKE THAT DEUX, Jenny’s goal is to become fluent in French. She prepares for her final exams – often the only grade given in a course – by working hard in May, not noticing much about what happens in France that month. When she takes a (final) oral exam, she….

Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out.

During the month of May in France, due to several holidays in quick succession, almost every week-end is a long weekend (on fait le pont). Mais ici, we only have one of those (Memorial Day Weekend), and it happens after all of the French ones.

Yesterday May 1st was la fête du muguet, porte-bonheur et la fête du Travail (Labor Day). Next Wednesday the 8th is la fête historique armistice (WW II Victory in Europe Day). Thursday May 9 is a religious holiday (fête religieuse catholique), l’Ascension, though tout le monde celebrates it, même si they aren’t religious. Ditto for Monday May 20, which is Pentecôte (Pentecost).

Le muguet (lily-of-the-valley) is la fleur du bonheur: in France, you give loved ones a little bouquet of it for good luck (porte-bonheur) and to celebrate the arrival of le printemps (spring). I suspect that today through Sunday, on fait le pont (everybody takes a long weekend), or maybe just tomorrow through Sunday.

Le muguet

Next week, with the 8th and 9th falling on Wednesday and Thursday, I’m not sure what on fait/one does. Perhaps one takes a very long weekend, working only next Monday and Tuesday, in a kind of work-reversal week (2 days on, 5 days off). Sounds very French, I dare say.

The following weekend, one celebrates Pentecôte by taking a third long weekend.

Three long weekends in a row! Quelle bonne idée! On the other hand, could that be exhausting? Peut-être, Monsieur!

First, there’s only so much relaxing one can do; staying busy (working) may be less tiresome. Second, if one travels during a long weekend, it could cost more than staying at home. Even if one visits family (for free), one’s routine is interrupted. Third – well, my husband and I have a saying taken from a WSJ article dated some time ago: “Work is Home, and Home is Work.”

Yes, that’s right: we often feel “at home” when we’re at work (and since I actually work at home, it gets complicated; happily, I have a home office). But when we are at home, we may feel like we are working. Working on our house, our chores, our projects, our parenting (though we’re almost out of that business), our marriage…and beaucoup de choses!

That doesn’t mean that being at home (and not at work) is hard – but it can be, whether that’s ~~evident~~ admissable to others or not. Which brings me to fluency: the ability to speak a language smoothly and with apparent ease.

Some people have a gift for languages; others claim to be truly fluent when they aren’t (quite). I speak French, though not as well (yet) as I speak English. Fluency in another language can be hard to achieve, unless you learn as a small child. But if you work at it – practice it until you feel at home, no matter how difficult or confusing it may be – at some point it doesn’t feel like work anymore; on ne travaille pas beaucoup!

At least, that’s ce qu’on me dit! (what I’m told!)

May 2, 2013 0

Encore: “From the Author, and Behind the Scenes”

My friend Rachelle Ayala featured me and MAKE THAT DEUX in her BookChat post of April 9, 2013 in Rachelle’s Window…

Two sections in particular offer some insight about why I wrote the novel, and what was going on in my life while I did…

“From the Author:

A new world of adventure and romance opened up to me during my junior year of college when I was an exchange student in the south of France. Instead of living with a French family, however, I shared a beach apartment on the Mediterranean Sea with two other American girls, and I left my boyfriend behind in the U.S., unsure of whether our relationship would survive the time apart.

We three girls bought mopeds (mobylettes) to drive to and from our college campus in Montpellier, France, and we spent the year learning French, traveling and doing everything else that college girls do…

The year we shared made a big impact on me, and the three of us have stayed in touch since, even as our lives have taken different turns. When my children began growing up and moving out, I considered my long-held dream to become a writer. I decided to draw on my memories of my experience in France and write a novel set in the time I was there.

I felt that Jenny – with her innocence, naiveté and idealism (and that of her two roommates) – could be a fresh character in a literary world sometimes crowded with cynicism. While not everyone would identify with the girls’ belief in “The One,” many would relate to Jenny’s feelings dealing with a long-distance relationship, especially when other appealing men enter her life.

Through Jenny’s story, I wanted to show that even (and maybe, especially) for young people on the threshold of adulthood…

…love is possible and important, and that it’s okay not to want to “do life” alone, and to want to go through life with – and to love – another.

Behind the Scenes:

Lots of things happened while I wrote the book…

I got lots of feedback on different drafts of the story from my Writers Critique Group, several beta-readers, and some interested literary agents. I took all their advice to heart and revised the novel many, many times. I connected with one of the readers, who turned out to be the most helpful, through the friend of a friend.

Before I finished the novel, though, I took a break from writing/revising because one of my sons, age 19, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in May 2010. He had two surgeries and 5 weeks of radiation therapy and was able to go back to college as a sophomore that fall. His second surgery was performed at Duke University Hospital by the renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Allan H. Friedman.

My son faced his illness with courage, strength and hope, and cheered me on in my writing. He is now cancer-free and involved with raising funds for cancer research at his university, and he will graduate later this year.

Just before I published MAKE THAT DEUX, I traveled to France to celebrate a milestone anniversary with my husband.

We did a tour of the south of France, visiting Montpellier and Palavas, where I had studied and lived, as well as other lovely spots, then spent several days in Paris. I was thrilled to go back to visit the place where I had spent my year in France and to show it to him.

When we returned, my mother was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma. She moved in with us and had chemotherapy and radiation last fall, and she shared my excitement about publishing my book. Her cancer responded to treatment and she moved back home (a few miles away). She is now cancer-free.”

Mom and me at her college reunion in fall 2011

April 18, 2013 0

Letting Go of Fear

Life is unpredictable, and sometimes scary.

My family and I usually attend Relay for Life at the University of Georgia with my son, a brain cancer survivor, Relay volunteer and UGA student. One year, greeters gave us purple and white balloons and markers, and asked us to write on them something that we wanted to let go of.

After months of worry and anxiety about lots of post-treatment MRIs – all of which were “clean” – I knew exactly what to write on my balloon:

Later, after the event’s kickoff, we were all asked to let them go:

At our first UGA Relay event, my son had been cancer-free for only six months. As the final leg of the actual relay to kick off the event, he ran in the torch:

In a few days, we will attend this year’s Relay for Life at UGA. My son got involved with Relay in the fall of 2010, weeks after he recovered from brain surgery at Duke and finished radiation therapy at Emory. He has told his story numerous times and helped raise funds for cancer research, serving on the executive board this year to help with corporate donations.

Just three years ago, I had no idea what was in store for my son and for our family. I’m a worrier by nature, a trait that sometimes went into overdrive while I was raising my children. I worried about things that might happen to them…but I never feared that any of them would get cancer.

Then one day, one of them did.

Before it happened, I began writing my novel, MAKE THAT DEUX. The protagonist, Jenny Miles, is 19 years old, the same age that my son was when he was diagnosed; he learned he had a brain tumor on his 19th birthday in May 2010.

After two surgeries, setbacks, despair, pain, suffering, and recovery, he started back to school as a sophomore at the University of Georgia in August 2010. In October of that year, he learned that he was cancer-free.

I know that at times, he was afraid. But he didn’t let fear overtake him. He lived through his illness with courage, strength and hope, and through his journey, he inspired me to let go of fear.

One of my favorite authors is Charles Dickens. Here’ a quote from his novel David Copperfield:

“We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!”

My son’s gold survivor handprint and my purple caregiver one at UGA Relay for Life 2012

April 12, 2013 0

Relationships: être ensemble – “to be together”

An article published today in the Wall Street Journal, Find a Man Today, Graduate Tomorrow by Emily Esfahani Smith is sure to spark some discussion.

The author (a member of Generation iY, or maybe just Y – and married) quotes her mother as telling her a few years ago: “You’re in college…There will never be a better time to meet someone…so start looking.”

Like Jenny, the main character in my novel MAKE THAT DEUX, I tend to like people who are direct – as long as they aren’t unkind or insensitive. I also happen to agree with that mom, who’s a member of my generation.

The Wedding Cake of a bride and groom

who met in college and got married last year

I know – declaring that I agree with her may not be wise. I’m sure that there are plenty of people who disagree – or, at least, who find that mom’s ~~instruction~~ advice ~~distasteful~~ ~~offensive~~ somewhat objectionable. I’m not fond of confrontation…but I think there’s more to college life than academics, and more to life afterward than career, for women – and for men.

In a word, relationships.

I suppose I’m biased, because I met my husband when we were in college. Many of my friends met their husbands years later, either at work or through friends. Some married after going to graduate school, after beginning their careers, or both. I wonder sometimes how difficult it was for them to find the right man.

A few of my friends met their husbands (and got married) younger than I did; I found “The One” – my One – in college. It was (and I’m sure still is) a great place to meet guys, and to get to know them. When your biggest stress is writing a paper or studying for an exam (or both), well, it’s not like having the responsibilities of adult life, even single adult life. Normally, when you’re in college, you have a lot more time available for friendships, fun and dating.

I didn’t set out “looking” for someone when I arrived at college, but I did look for relationships with friends – male and female – and I can’t imagine why young people today would not. You can have ~~your cake and eat it, too~~ relationships and achieve your academic and career goals, too. And sometimes, male friends can develop into something more…one of mine did.

I don’t apologize for finding the love of my life – or for him finding me – in college. Yes, we were both immature, but we matured together. I wanted company, and so did he. Turns out, initially, you’re going to be a rookie at adulthood. You can either do it alone, or do it with someone you love.

Perhaps because I did it with him, ça me fait en colère (it makes me mad) when I sometimes hear others say (self-righteously?) that it isn’t smart to do so… or that (since they did not?) no one should. Jenny in MAKE THAT DEUX (and her friends, and basically, her whole generation) believes that it’s just fine to find that special someone in college.

Pourquoi pas?

April 5, 2013 0

A Pat o’ Butter in a Sea o’ Grits

Growing up in Atlanta in a family where the father did the cooking, I never realized that grits were a southern dish.

My parents were born and raised in southwest Virginia, went to college and got married in Tennessee, and “moved away from there” as young parents, before I came along…to Indiana, Texas, Massachusetts, Missouri and finally, Georgia.

But everywhere they lived, la cuisine chez nous was distinctly southern. Tomato Gravy, or Sausage Gravy, and Buttermilk Biscuits, made from scratch. Apple Butter. Country Ham and Red Eye Gravy. Potato Cakes. Chicken and Dumplings. Cornbread. Sweet Tea. Fried Green Tomatoes. Sweet Potato Casserole. Sometimes, Breakfast for Dinner.

And Grits.

I married a Yankee who had never heard of them, and whose talents as a chef (later on) ~~rivaled~~ surpassed my father’s. Mon mari grew up in a big family where the mom had a weekly dinner menu: Monday was hamburgers, Tuesday was spaghetti, Wednesday was hot dogs, Thursday was chicken, and Friday was grilled cheese and tomato soup.

So, when he was in college in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and his uncle sent him the cookbook Fearless Cooking for Men, he decided to learn to cook.

With simple, tasty recipes, the world of cooking opened up to him. He enjoyed the benefits of making dinner in his dorm room and off-campus apartment: it was cheaper than going out, and convenient on the weekend, with his weekday-only student meal plan.

And it was a great way to ~~a woman’s~~ my heart.

Over the years, he’s evolved into a gourmet chef. His cookbook library has grown to include a variety of cuisines, including all of Julia Child’s recipes – she’s a favorite, and we both love la cuisine française. He’s also become acquainted with southern dishes, and introduced me to “northern” ones and their accoutrements.

Creamed Onions. Turnips. String Beans. “Southern” Fried Chicken (I always thought it was just Fried Chicken, but they add a qualifier.) Corn Fritters. Rolls (in place of biscuits, and store-bought). Ketchup on Scrambled Eggs.

I’ve adopted that last one, and for family birthday meals, “Southern” Fried Chicken and Corn Fritters are a tradition, but at least I don’t put maple syrup on mine. The rest of the above dishes are just, well, not me. At my urging, my husband has tasted grits, but he doesn’t love them and has never cooked them (even though they’re great with butter*).

Which brings me to the title of this post: another name for Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

I didn’t hear the Southern Part of Heaven** described that way until I met him, just after I turned eighteen. But “a pat o’ butter in a sea o’ grits” seemed perfect: if North Carolina (my second favorite state) is the grits, then yes, Chapel Hill is the pat of butter in the middle, dressing it up and making that tasty, buttery difference.

Other than my first Christmas break, the next summer, and ten months in the south of France – the experience on which my novel MAKE THAT DEUX is drawn – I spent as much time as I could in Chapel Hill between 1977 and 1981. My year in France was wonderful, but the tradeoff was missing a year in Chapel Hill and UNC, the most beautiful college campus in le monde…

My daughter just found out she’s been accepted there as a freshman this fall, and she’s thrilled to be a Tar Heel. I’m not sure if she likes grits as much as I do, but I know she’s a big fan of butter.

* See my post of October 3, 2012: What would Julia do? Faire la cuisine française.

** also known as a little slice of heaven…

March 26, 2013 0

A (baker’s) dozen little-known facts – about me

Look for my BOOK TRAILER to be released soon for MAKE THAT DEUX!

While I wait for the finishing touches on it, here’s some trivia about me. My family (and relatives) know most of these faits peu connus (some of which are a bit embarrassante), but the rest of the world may not:

1. When I lived in France for a year as an exchange student, I didn’t (yet) have a driver’s license. But it wasn’t necessary to have one to drive a moped (mobylette). Phew!

Not my mobylette, but the same color mine was. (Why didn’t I take a picture? Because cameras – and film – were expensive!)

2. Since my birthday is October 20, I was always one of the oldest in my class growing up (when I started 1st grade, you had to be 6 years old by Oct. 1). In 9th grade, I set out to finish high school in 3 years, which I did, tying with another girl for 1st in my class. When I started at UNC, I was 17.

3. I was 2nd-runner-up in my high school beauty pageant (“Miss Tiger”).

4. I worked at the Carolina Coffee Shop on Franklin Street (and other restaurants) when I was a student in Chapel Hill, and I once waited on Alan Alda. I don’t remember getting a big tip…

5. I didn’t get my ears pierced until I was 26 years old and pregnant with twins, & I’ve never had another ear piercing (or any other kind).

6. One of my sons is a brain cancer survivor and was operated on by a renowned Duke neurosurgeon.* My son is doing terrific now & is involved in Relay for Life at UGA, which helps raise funds for cancer research.

7. I don’t wear bracelets or turtlenecks (though I used to wear both, but only once in a blue moon).

As a college freshman, wearing one of the two turtlenecks I remember ever owning.

8. I’m a slow reader, and always struggled to make A’s in English (which I did in high school, but not in college…Oops!)

9. Maybe because I’m very nearsighted (and my parents didn’t realize that until I was 12), I didn’t learn to ride a bicycle until I was 10 years old. I couldn’t see the ground in front of me!

10. I don’t get seasick, but I do get migraines occasionally.

11. My hair is naturally curly, and while my kids were growing up, I experimented with many different hairstyles and lengths.

Me when my third child was a toddler and my twins were in 1st grade

12. I left the promising field of computers and technology in the mid 1980s to stay home and raise my 4 children for 20 years, during which my family moved across the country 4 times.

13. I don’t know how to cook (much)…actually, that’s a well-known fact about me!

* Dr. Allan H. Friedman, Neurosurgeon-in-Chief, Duke University Hospital; the same doctor who operated on Senator Ted Kennedy several years ago.

March 20, 2013 2

Les amis de longue date: old friends, and 5 reasons why I love them

Like many people, I enjoy making new friends. But I love keeping (and seeing) those that I’ve known for a long, long time.*

Nurturing friendships takes time and effort on both sides. Sometimes, despite our intentions, it’s just not possible à continuer. For different reasons, we move on….and not always because we want to.

We relocate to a different community, city or state. We develop new interests that some of our (old) friends don’t share – so we necessarily spend less time with them. We start new jobs, have more (or different) commitments. And maybe sometimes we move on because we realize that we weren’t that close to begin with.

In my novel MAKE THAT DEUX, three young girls become friends. When their experience as roommates in France is over, they’re sad about it – they don’t want to move on. (A sequel is planned…)

In earlier times, it was difficult to stay connected with friends when I moved somewhere new and started a new chapter in life. Phone calls were expensive, and letters took more time and effort than the short messages we send now. Traveling to visit each other wasn’t easy, even for weddings; on the other hand, they were ~~cheaper~~ easier to attend then than most “destination” mariages of today. But everyone (or at least, I) seemed to have a lot less money back then. So we did what we could.

Happily, I never lost touch with certain old friends. I did with some others, but in recent years, it’s been wonderful to reconnect. Sometimes we’ve discovered that we have more in common now than we did before: we share new (or old) interests, or we just have more time to spend with each other.

Which leads me to the reasons why j’aime les amis de longue date:

1. They “knew me when” – back before either of us had much experience with life and love, and were filled with hopes about the future. We went through some thing(s) together, or at the same time. Somehow that “me” and that “them” haven’t changed all that much, despite our separate joys, trials and sorrows.

2. They’re constant. They’re still around, whether we were always in touch or not. The reasons why we became friends in the first place (usually NOT because our kids are the same age, or that we worked in the same office) are still the reasons why we like to get together.

3. They’re flexible, forgiving, encouraging, accepting and empathetic – all things I try to be, too. No matter what we do separately and no matter what our different interests are (or become), we understand each other. We learn from each other, laugh together and are there for each other when times are tough.

4. They don’t have an “agenda” – we’re friends because we like spending time together. We may have some shared interests (we often do) but we’re friends for more reasons than that. We’re in each other’s network of friends, but we aren’t networking.

5. They care. We’re supportive of each other, and we don’t have to know the details. We want the best for each other, and we’re troubled when the other is sad, unhappy or unwell.

One of my (old) friends often says, “Friends are the family that we choose.” Some of my dearest friends aren’t the oldest ones; I met them sometime more recently along life’s journey. But for inexplicable reasons, we may feel as if we’ve known each other for a long time. We hit it off – we just connect.

I think they’re going to become some of mes amis de longue date.

* Especially my best friend, mon mari – the family that I chose, and who chose me.

March 4, 2013 2

“The Funny,” part deux (two)

I’ve never lived in New York, and I’ve never been a nanny – though I had a friend at UNC who was an au pair in France the summer after we both spent our junior year of college there.

But I did raise four children of my own, sans nanny or day care. So when the book THE NANNY DIARIES by Emma Mclaughlin and Nicola Kraus came out 10 years ago, I loved it, not because it was about bringing up ~~someone else’s~~ a child, but because it’s hilarious!

My copy of THE NANNY DIARIES

I love to read anything that makes me laugh, and I don’t know why others wouldn’t. I call it “the funny;” it’s a necessary ingredient in some types of fiction and non-fiction. (But not all: the book I’m currently writing is a Thriller, sans badinage, mais c’est une autre histoire…)

Some people have a different sense of humor than mine, and some don’t have one at all. C’est dommage (that’s a shame), à mon avis. For me, being able to laugh with others has been essential, especially during life’s trials.

In my novel MAKE THAT DEUX, Jenny (the protagonist) is 19 turning 20, just a few years younger than Nanny, the au pair in TND. Like Nanny, she’s dealing with a world very different from the one she’s known: une culture étrangère. Jenny does the best she can, under the circumstances, and (I hope) with a sense of humor. Her story is quite different from Nanny’s, but in a way, Nanny’s story influenced the way I tried to tell Jenny’s: through the eyes of a 20-something young woman who tries to keep her sense of humor while dealing with stress.

Stress isn’t easy, and we all face it now and then, or maybe, continually. Il vaut mieux en rire – it’s better to laugh about it than cry – even if we don’t feel like laughing. But I’ve found that a little levity helps, even in the worst of times.

One of my sons is a brain cancer survivor. He was diagnosed almost 3 years ago, on his 19th birthday. The next 6 months was the most difficult period in our family’s life – and we’ve been through some other serious trials. He underwent two surgeries, one them incredibly scary, and five weeks of radiation therapy. His first “clear” MRI was done that fall, two days before his grandfather, my dad, passed away peacefully at the age of 83.

My son has been cancer-free since then, and when he and I look back at that time, we don’t just remember the shock and fear that we both felt, the tears that we shed. We also recall – and still talk about – the funny things that happened in the midst of it. We thank God – and the talented doctors at Duke – that he survived, and we remember being afraid that he wouldn’t, that he might lose his young life. We weren’t looking for “the funny” then, but somehow we recognized it when we saw it: some of the things that happened made us laugh – out loud. And they still do, today.

Life is precious. Laughter is necessary. My father made me realize that when I was young. His quirky sense of humor was terrific, and he was a great joke-teller.

And he could always find “the funny.”

February 11, 2013 0

Why is that funny? and why le rire (laughter) est important

Impropriety is the soul of wit.

– W. Somerset Maugham

I always thought it was brevity…at least, that’s the saying in our house. But this version put a new twist on how to be witty, something I like my literary characters* to be, even if when I’m not.

W. Somerset Maugham

William Shakespeare

We all know that humor is important in life: Laughing makes us happy, and even provides health benefits. Being quick-witted is admired, though we don’t have to be quick – or really smart – to be witty, or witty, to be smart. But looking for humor in life (and finding it) seems necessary and very important. Through it, “joy happens,” I dare say.

Inside jokes aside, I like laughing about things that others laugh about, and I don’t find it fun to laugh at another’s expense. Maybe because I’m a mom, sarcasm is out, too. I prefer the positive side of humor, not the negative. I love it when something unexpected and silly – maybe just a phrase or a word – makes me laugh uncontrollably (and may even bring tears)..and I love it when others join in. Typically, after several minutes – afraid that I’m going off the deep end – one of my kids brings me back to reality (“Okay, Mom, it’s not that funny.”)

So – why is “that” funny? Different people might have different views: some like slapstick humor, and some prefer the sophisticated kind. But there’s a lot in between. Take Carol Burnett, my favorite comedienne: watching her television show in the 1970s, I knew I would always find her funny, and some synonyms of the word “impropriety” remind me of her humor (goof, gaffe, inelegance and faux pas).

When I started dating (later), if a guy couldn’t make me laugh, I couldn’t stay interested. It wasn’t that he had to crack jokes or never be serious. But he had to not take himself (or life) too seriously – especially since I ~~had~~ have a tendency to do so. Eventually, I found a partner whose sense of humor was the one for me, and it’s been a vital part of our relationship: I don’t know how we could have gotten this far in life together, without it. Fortunately, he doesn’t need me to make him laugh (though I do, at times, which is a bonus), but he still likes to make me laugh.

And usually without too much impropriety…

* for example, Lisa, one of Jenny’s roommates in my new novel MAKE THAT DEUX.

February 6, 2013 0