What could have been a righteously crumbtastic week was much improved by the appearance of these at my doorstep:

Kindly ignore the hot mess that is my living room! Look at the pretty flowers!

Long distance roses! Hoorah! I don’t often get roses, so this was a very special treat to come home to after having single-handedly drowned the entire city of Lawrence.

This is not a dig at the boy, nor a snide implication that he has lately been derelict in his floral-administration duties; no, the reason why I don’t often get roses has to do with the other male in my life. He loves roses, possibly more than I do, albeit in a very different way:

El Chunko missed the memo in the last post, and shows no restraint towards edible objects.

Back when we started dating, the boy inundated me with all sorts of beautiful flowers - roses, daisies, even pansies (we had a running in-joke about them that I barely remember). I’d bring them home, arrange them dutifully in vases and admire their pulchritude; the following day, when I’d return home from school, colorful petals with little feline teeth marks were all that remained. I know cut flowers can only be enjoyed for a short while, but this was a little ridiculous. I tried putting them high up on shelves, but once they were out of the cats’ reach, they also disappeared out of my line of sight (I am short), and I would forget to water them. Then the petals would shrivel up and fall to the floor, where the cats would promptly eat them and regurgitate them later. Thanks for recycling, cats!

Still life with rose, gee-tar and feline blur.

Once, when we went to a Ren Faire in Wichita (nerd alert!), we passed a stand that sold roses dipped in wax. The boy bought me two flowers, coated in white wax with light blue shading, encased in a protective plastic box (class). I set these roses down on my dresser, trusting that surely, the cats would not be stupid enough to eat a WAX-COVERED object, even though the wax apparently enshrined their feline equivalent to crack.

You know how this turns out. I came home to discover a crime scene: busted plastic box, little chunks of white and blue wax, shriveled dried leaves. Both culprits survived. Five years later, they have remained happy, healthy and spoiled, with wax-free digestive systems.

It’s rather difficult to hold the camera while attempting to shoo a persistently avaricious critter.

I know these roses won’t last long, so I am going to enjoy taking silly pictures of them while I can. Before time and/or the cat eats them. What they stand for has lasted longer than any silly flower, be it wax-covered or gold-dipped; and for that, they are quite dear to me.