UPDATE: I just sent Doreen an email and almost immediately received this message in return:

Automatic reply effective 01/05/06:

Doreen has received your email and enjoyed every minute of it. She will
be responding to your communication outreach as soon as possible. Thank
you for sending her email.

Yeah, it's impossible not to love her.

*****

Dear Generic Advice-Giving Columnist,

Signed,
Non-repliance sucks

Dear Sucks,

I seriously considered not responding to your letter, just to fuck with you. However, you raise an interesting issue and one to which I'm sure my readers can relate. Rest assured that you have every reason to be perturbed. In the fast-paced world of email, not replying within three days to an email that deserves a response is considered rude. If a full week passes, I recommend you put the person on your shit list and move on with your life. However, if you feel there is some shred of friendship worth saving, you might consider sending the person a gentle reminder. This is probably best done by lying. For example, you might write the person another email and tell him/her that you have recently been alerted to the fact that several emails you sent were never received and since an email you wrote to him/her was sent during the same timeframe, you are re-sending that message to ensure its delivery. The recipient will most likely recognize this as your polite way of saying FUCKING WRITE BACK ALREADY, BITCH and will appreciate not only your restraint but your patience as well. However, if this drastic measure is not effective in eliciting a response, then that person has proven him/herself to be unreliable and unresponsive and should be removed from your address book and your life. And cursed to an afterlife spent burning in hell.

Yours,
Generic Columnist

One of my dearest friends has just fallen in love. Her life right now is filled with the romance of a love fresh and new, a whirlwind of pink roses and champagne and just-because gifts like a cashmere scarf.

Last night while we were making stuffed shells for dinner, Rob commented that this dish always turns out a bit bland. He wondered what we could add to spice it up a bit. And I was slightly taken aback (and okay, slightly defensive) because I had never found our shells to be bland. And he was the one who suggested we have this for dinner and why the hell did he even suggest it if he felt they were too bland? If he didn't even like the damn shells? And of course I said as much to him and he shot me the Sheesh, woman look as he reached for the basil. And as I tried to regain perspective I realized that while he was just talking about the shells, I had transposed his comments to more than just dinner. The champagne bubbles of my friend's love life were going straight to my head.

Established couples often lament the loss of romance. It makes sense, I guess, that with the day in and day out, the zsa zsa zsu fades a bit. That with the laundry and the lawn mowing, a little of the lust is lost.

But Rob and I never had it to lose. Not romance in the traditional sense, anyway. When we met, we were too young for champagne, too cheap for cashmere, and I'm not sure he ever gave me roses. Maybe once. Perhaps his most romantic gesture in those first few months was letting me wear his hat to class. Which, take it from me, is a surefire way to sweep a smitten teenage girl right off her feet. Sure, there was lust - we were high schoolers with hormones, after all. But mostly we were innocent. I remember us getting tipsy on wine one time when his parents weren't home and rolling down the hill outside his house. Over and over and over, laughing until our bellies ached. There was an innocence, and a romance, in being content to just be together.

Last night after dinner we sat around for over an hour, catching up on several issues of Reader's Digest. Rob always reads the jokes to me. Maybe we really are as boring as the stuffed shells, I thought. But soon we were laughing hysterically (more so at the really bad jokes than the good ones and probably even more so at each other) and it occurred to me that this was actually a really nice way to spend the evening. And I thought about how I had teasingly flipped him off during dinner and he had said, "I'm not sure if I should be delighted or concerned that we often flip each other off in this relationship" and I had grinned and said, "Definitely delighted." And I thought about how, while making dinner, we'll sometimes slow dance in the kitchen. And I realized that for us the romance is still in being content to just be together.

I figure when we're 80, we'll still be reading Reader's Digest (large print edition) to each other, we'll still be flipping the bird at each other, we'll still be slow dancing in the kitchen. Hell, we'll probably still be bickering over the stuffed shells recipe. And maybe some people would find that bland. But I think it's incredibly romantic.