Man Flowers

The other night The Man mentioned that he hadn't bought me flowers in quite some time, and he needed to get on that.  I heartily agreed.  Then I realized something: I've never really bought him man flowers.

Now, I'm not talking about those bacon bouquets or anything; I'm talking about the female version of buying flowers to tell her man, "hey, I appreciate you and I think you're pretty rad.  Here's something you can look at daily to remind you of my feelings."  Growing up I always heard that the men need to continue courting the women past marriage; what about the other way around?

I mean sure, I try to look nice and smell nice, but that's also because I need to be professional at work.  I also clean up the house from time to time, but that's because when things get too messy I just shut down totally and I can't get any work done at all.  I tell The Man he's handsome and I allow him to pay on dates, but gosh dangit I wanna get my man some flowers.

In my quest for man flowers (wow, this is sounding a little racy...) I tried to think about the times when I make The Man happiest.  Besides the obvious (making cookies - get your mind out of the gutter), he always gets really happy when I clean up the house.  I had my goal.

Well, I got home from school around 5:45 and got started.  I was tired from teaching and grading and planning and next-to-no sleep, but I pushed through.  By 8 I had the oven cleaned, the microwave spotless, the kitchen looking awesome, the living room re-organized the way he wanted it, the bedroom re-organized the way he wanted it (we were kind of on a re-organizing roll this weekend), the bathroom deep-cleaned (the landlords decided to not install ventilation so we get mold ALL THE TIME), and the apartment just looking all-around great.  We'll ignore the fact that I shoved everything I didn't want to deal with into the second bedroom.  And you know what?  It felt great.  Kinda like how flowers brighten up the house for anyone living there, the cleaning made our house feel all the better.

Man Flowers for the win.

I did leave an empty vase in the middle of the kitchen table.  I mean, I'm not a saint.