Sophie & Richard Sittin’ In A Tree…

by Crystal Laramore

Edited by Deborah K. Martin


…F-u-s-s-i-n-g. First comes love, then comes moving in without an engagement ring, wedding date, promise or picture of one. Then comes Richard with a chain saw, cuts off her limb and there she is-on her butt on the cold, hard, damp ground-alone.

But enough about why you shouldn’t let him have the milk without buying the cow.

Anyhoo…my bff Sophia is dating Richard. Now, as I’ve expressed in previous articles, I do not have crappy, ugly, homeless, unemployed, mean, psychotic or dumb girlfriends; which, of course, means that Sophia is beautiful, smart, gainfully employed, mostly rational and is certainly not crappy.

One recent seemingly normal evening Sophia or Sophie as we call her crawled into bed and snuggled up to Richard for some warmth and coloring. Richard’s response was “What do you want”? Sophie: “Some attention”. Richard: “Well you don’t always get what you want. I have a lot of things on my mind and you are not high on my list of priorities right now”. End of conversation, no detail, no “I’m not in a great mood, but baby, it’s not your fault.”

Really? Are you kidding me? Now remember I said she’s hot! Oh, well I meant to. She’s hot as in STOP traffic hot and if that’s not enough, she’s S.M.A.R.T. in capital letters.. Makes her living with numbers for Pete’s sake!!

So anyway, being an avid fan of Sex in the Woods and a good student to boot she got up the next morning, formulated a plan and left Richard a note worthy of his behavior. It went something like this:

“Since you have a lot on your mind and I’m not high on your list of priorities I’ve decided to take the weekend and figure out what MY priorities are”.

THAT’s my girl! No ugly scenes, no ultimatums, no begging for his love. Nope. She wrote just this one incredible sentence and got the heck out of Dodge! Yeah! So what do you think happened when he read said note? Well, first he blamed her for the whole situation. Isn’t that typical? I know women do this, too, but right now we’re talking about men so don’t get on my case, okay? When crappy guys screw up, their first reaction is to point the finger anywhere but at themselves.

Will someone (a man preferably) PLEASE tell me what’s so hard about sucking it up and being a stand up guy?? Is it really THAT hard to say, “Baby, I wasn’t in a good mood last night but I didn’t really mean to take it out on you. Can you forgive me?” Listen, after we picked our outstanding selves off the floor of COURSE we’d forgive you. All you have to do is ask – and then never but NEVER do that thing again. If you keep doing that same crappy thing over and over the “Baby, I’m sorry” spiel gets to be kind of meaningless. Know what I mean?

Anyway, after she called him out on the blame game and he figured out she really was going to stay AWAY from home for the weekend (like she said she was going to do) her crackberry hasn’t stopped dinging! He’s burning up the information hot lines with txt messages, phone calls, pics of himself, etc. Push – Pull. The chase; the hunt.

According to the Bit#h books she is doing just the right thing. And he is responding accordingly. Richard was being a, well, a Richard and Sophie decided to be a bit#h. Now, Sophie is not good at this but luckily for her-her bff IS! Again, we don’t mean for you ladies to be a mean Bit#h, but a sweet, charming, fully capable and independent woman. In fact, Sophie has a number of friends who were ready to give wise counsel and help her hold HIM to HER high standards. It had to be done.

Remember what Dr. Phil said long ago when he was on Oprah’s show? I’ll never forget this incredible, powerful bit of information.. Ladies – read, study, learn, apply. Here it is:

“You teach people how to treat you.” If any of you Sophie’s out there are having trouble with your significant (or not so significant) other perhaps you have taught him how to treat you. Stop it. Do you hear me? STOP it NOW!!! You deserve to be treated well so don’t let ANYone get away with treating you like crap.

We don’t know the details of the final outcome b/c right now she’s still deciding if he’s worth her time and he’s showing her all the reason why he is. Richard did a bad, bad thing and he has to convince Sophie that he will not do that again. His reasons could be many but none are worthy. We cannot speak to our significant others in a less than respectful manner if we expect them to continue to love us. Will she give him another chance? We’ll keep you posted…One thing we know for sure:

Sophie decided she deserved better treatment so she did something really simple to get his attention – she walked out when he wasn’t looking. When he checked out she checked out. When he did the unexpected she did the unexpected. She stood up for herself. She put herself at the top of her priority list since clearly he had taken her off of his.

If you ever find yourself in this situation and don’t know what to say to Richard, I’m gonna go with last weeks closing remarks:
“Feelin Froggy? Jump”.

Prince Charming MARRIES Cinderella…

by Crystal Laramore Lutz


…in an enchanted land far, far away.


Through all the moaning, bellyaching, griping and general bitc#!n& I did last year about Richard; after all the Big A$$ Shiraz in the Continental U.S. was consumed I must admit: it was all worth it to stumble into the arms of my true Prince Charming; the real Prince Charming; the one who DOES what the imposter promised.

My sister, Jacqueline, used to be a big-wig-banking-executive and her analogy for most men she dated was “The real man never shows up until about 3-6 mos. into dating. Nope, until they have you where they want you, they send their representative”. Snicker. Doesn’t this ring true! (BTW, she found her Prince Charming too!)

But when you Cinderellas out there (and we are ALL Cinderella!) meet your Prince Charming (and know how to keep him b/c you’ve been reading the books) he WILL marry you! That is what Princes do. It’s the frogs that kiss us, woo us, whisper sweet nothing’s in our ear, buy us flowers and chocolates and dump us (or prepare us for the dumping) via a text message. But, I’m not bitter.

Now, to be fair, if you are Cinderella and he is kissing and wooing and being generally superficial about the relationship yet you are sleeping in his kingdom without the keys or coloring in the fairy-tale book with his colors-you deserve to be dumped. There is too much coloring going on these days and not enough talking. Oh, shut up frogs!

Cinderella-if he is a Prince-he will want to talk to you. He will want to know your needs and desires (sometimes he’s trying to figure out if he can handle them so don’t have diarrhea of the mouth pls.) He will want to KNOW so he can ACT on this information. Action is the key here. Words mean nothing. Any old frog can croak out, “I love you.”

But, the REAL prince will woo you beyond your wildest imagination. He will listen to what you say. He will pay attention. He will respect your boundaries, so have some! He WANTS to know them because frogs and even princes will test the boundaries. But he also wants to know so he can fulfill your desires. Princes like doing that. They (the princes) get a kick out of making us happy! Anyway, like I said a minute ago – boundaries - get some! And keep them.

And if it’s a commitment you want, he’ll search his kingdom over until he has just the proper jewels to bestow upon you. But, you must have standards and make them known. Prince or frog; neither can read your lovely mind.

When my last frog (oh, I’ve been through many frogs and made ALL the mistakes) showed his ugly warts my Prince Charming Husband was hanging around waiting to pick up the pieces. I did not immediately warm up to him b/c I still had some ugly warts from the frog but, he was persistent. I gave him all the reasons I was not interested in him. I made him read the insanity that had been my life-yes, the same insanity you all read! Still, he was “all-in”. Why? Because he knew a Cinderella when he saw one. He knew how rare they were to find. And being a Prince and all he wasn’t afraid of the big, dark, scary, frightening word “commitment”. No, on the contrary he embraced the thought of happily ever-after with the princess he saw before him.

And let me tell you-I AM his princess. A year later, after an incredible courtship, wedding and honeymoon he is STILL treating me with all the love and respect and admiration a woman could ever hope to wrap her mind around. He IS my number one fan!

Just last night he gave me a hot oil treatment for my hair. (HIS IDEA LADIES) Since the magic potion had to sit for 15 minutes he rubbed my feet with exfoliating lotion and buffed my heels! Oh yeah! Now listen, HE lit the candles and incense and HE channeled Barry White and Aaron Neville through the iPOD.

Amazingly enough, he did all of this KNOWING there was a football game on that he could be watching in HD on the new LED! Oh yes he did! But wait-there’s more. After the hair treatment he poured me a glass of French wine, brought me Belgium dark chocolates, gave me an hour long Swedish massage and whispered sweet nothing’s in my ear.

At some point I vaguely remember asking him “How’d I get so lucky to marry such a good man”? He replied, as any Prince would, “Because you are a good woman”.

So the next time some guy is jerking you around, I have three tiny words for you to say to him: “Feeling froggy? Jump”!