I have to applaud my employer for making the segue back to work after the holiday shutdown so easy this time. In past years, I’ve spent the final few days of the break dreading its ending; fretting the thought of plowing through snow and ice on my monumental commute in this worst month.

Okay, I guess I still feel that way, but it’s better this year. For one thing, Owen and Isla had to go back to school today. I dropped off Emmett at my sister-in-law’s house to be babysat for the day, and Jennifer and I went out on a date. We tried to see a movie at Marcus Theater, but when we got there, there were no tickets remaining. The cashier explained that most people buy their tickets online now, that way they can arrive late and not have to sit through all the commercials. This begs the question of why there are so many goddam commercials prior to a movie, and since an online ticket purchase comes with additional fees, it gives theater patrons the added “convenience” of paying even more for already bloated prices. Actually, there were two seats available, but they were on opposite sides of the theater, and in shitty locales. We told the cashier how stupid we thought this was, and we left.

Then we headed to a restaurant in downtown St. Paul, but it turns out that, as of 2017, the restaurant is now closed on Mondays. So then we went to another theater, bought tickets, then raced to a nearby restaurant for a middling meal, then raced back to the theater. Looking at her ticket as we walked down the hall toward the theater, Jennifer remarked how pathetic tickets now look. “They’re really cheapening the whole theater experience nowadays, aren’t they?” she said. I concurred. Movie theaters, like Tonka Trucks and the Guinness Book, are one of those things that have gotten noticeable worse since my childhood. Manchester By the Sea was a well-acted, plodding, depress-fest. Upon the film’s completion, the quasi-old man to my left expressed that “That might’ve been the saddest movie I’ve ever seen.”

Today, though, I’m back at work. But it’s a Tuesday, and I work from home on Tuesdays. So I’m slowly easing into being a grown-up this calendar year.

January is the worst month.

It’s also the month for consumption.

The coldness, initially a welcome relief from allergies, has now gone on too long. And the freshly fallen December snows have crushed underfoot. Sure, it might snow in January, but instead of a gentle blanket on everything, it will be a whitewashed covering of grimy ice crusts and rock-hard drifts. In December, at least, I spend the first 20-odd days of the month looking forward to the plant shutdown, when my good days – and I count as a good day any day that I don’t have to get in a car – will hopefully outpace the bad. But in January…no. I mean, I don’t have to go to work today, obviously, but now I’m at the point during my break where I just keep thinking about the break ending. Maybe I should go to bed earlier, I think, so that I get back on schedule. Maybe I should put away the project that I know I won’t complete.

Actually, the year felt like it started last night. The five of us went to the Jayne’s house; they have a New Year’s Eve party annually. On account of sickness, we didn’t go last year, but this is our fifth time attended. We have yet to stay until midnight. Last night, with a record-high attendance, and half the attendees inexplicably standing around in the kitchen, and with some poor man’s Dick Clark blaring from the TV regurgitating clichés and showing off the worst that pop music has to offer, we only stayed until 9:45. We’re not really partiers.

Anyway, on the way there, I asked Jennifer, “So, do you have any resolutions, or goals, for 2017?” I had to say it in an overly-dorky manner, since we don’t really makes resolutions – they’re as artificial as Hallmark cards for Hallmark holidays – and I had to add in the synonym “goals,” since Jehovah’s Witnesses think new year’s resolutions are “worldly,” and thus “bad,” yet they encourage goals, which are the same thing. We’re not Witnesses, obviously, otherwise we wouldn’t be attending a New Year’s Eve party – especially not one hosted by a Minnesota Atheists board member – but I made the resolution-goal joke because it reinforced the silliness of using December 31^st as a day to make goals simply because it’s the last day on the calendar.

Jennifer reminded me that her primary resolution is to completely organize and back-up our photos and videos. This was our goal for 2016 as well, but it didn’t pan out. So she’s set it up as a goal for 2017. Then I mentioned the goal of installing a fence for our yard. Then she mentioned Disney World. Then I mentioned graduating from college, and then she noted that that’s not so much a goal as just something that’s going to happen. “Like have a goal of turning 42?” I said. She laughed. “Yeah, like that. It’s just going to happen no matter what we do.”

Well, graduating from college isn’t quite as inevitable as surviving until my next birthday, but I get what she’s saying.

I didn’t say this to Jennifer, but another inevitability has to deal with my Grandfather’s death. From my sister Diane, I’ve learned that he’s only marginally healthy right now. In September, she told me he only had a few days to live, and I said it would be sad if he died on our grandmother’s birthday, which is on September 19^th. Despite being Jehovah’s Witnesses – Witnesses don’t celebrate their birthdays – I agree, it would be sad to lose your husband on your birthday. But he had a couple operations, and they sent him home from the hospital in late September to die in peace with his family. Diane had plans to visit Florida soon after, and she worried he would die before she got down there. But, even with a flight delay due to a hurricane, she still got down there and visited with him for, presumably, the last time. He was still alive on the fifteenth of December, which marks my grandparents’ 70^th wedding anniversary. Witnesses do celebrate their anniversaries, though I don’t know if my grandparents were well enough to do anything special for that milestone. Nobody would tell me, anyway. Regardless, he’s still alive. Now I’m wondering if he’ll make it to his ninetieth birthday, which is in April. More than that, I wonder if I’ll go to his funeral. Or “memorial service.” Whatever it is Witnesses call funerals.

The least noble item on my Ultimate To-Do list (the list most people call their “Bucket List,” an appellation I despise) is: Read a Smutty Romance Novel.

Last week, I fulfilled that laughable life-long goal. I read Wedded, Bedded Betrayed.

Before you judge me, let me explain. Then, by all means, please judge me. Label me, too. I don’t care.

For over two years, when I was a high-school student, I worked at the public library as a shelver. That meant I took books that were returned, organized them onto a cart, then wheeled the cart out to the shelves and placed the books back in their proper places. The paperback fiction section had its own room and, besides segregating by age group, the books were also separated by genre. The romance section was the largest section, and the majority of the books had a certain uniformity to them. They were just under 200 pages, white and red dominated the covers, and a photo on the cover was usually framed inside a circle or oval and depicted a heterosexual couple just moments away from ripping off each other’s clothing. Lots of skin – the man was often shirtless, and the woman’s dress/skirt/gown featured a slit that went practically to her waist. They were either on a bed, or foregrounded by fireworks, a medieval castle, or a luscious countryside. Their limbs were intertwined, with the racier images skillfully placing the limbs in such a way to cover revealed flesh that, had it been shown, would have landed the book in the porn section instead of the romance section. Nearly all were published by Harlequin Romance.

I loved putting these books back on the shelves. Not, as you might think, because I was a hormonal teenager who liked the pictures, but because they were so uniform in size (and dominated by a few authors) that putting them in order and dropping a half dozen onto the shelf at once was a very speedy, satisfying job.

They were also very popular. It was easy to fill a cart with nothing but romance novels, and there were always middle-aged women standing in the section gobbling up the books – ten at a time, in some cases.

I decided I just had to read one at some point in my life.

But like my insistence that I read A Christmas Carol in mid-December, I likewise had some stipulations. The book had to:

*Be the same size as the once I remembered from my shelver days

*Be published by Harlequin

*Feature a racy photo on the cover

*Have a hilarious title

*Be obtained from the public library

*Be read by me while on a vacation, preferably one featuring a beach

Okay, so on August 11th, I checked out Wedded, Bedded, Betrayed from my local library. From August 15th-17th, I read the book while on vacation at our family’s cabin on a lake. I read most of the book while sitting a few feet from the beach.

The cover wasn’t quite as racy as I had hoped. I wished that woman’s dress was unzipped, or that the guy’s shirt was off. I mean, look at them – you can sometimes see people embraced like that at a mall or a park. Still…it’s not exactly asexual.

The title, likewise, isn’t quite up to snuff. I was hoping for a book title consisting of a pun, such as Inside Her Heaven, or When He Comes, or The Long, Hard Voyage Around the Curves. Okay, I made up that last one. Still…this title did make me laugh.

More than that, I laughed at the other stuff on the cover.

First, notice the blurb directly under the title. It’s from Lynne Graham. Who the hell is she? I don’t know, but there’s also a call-out circle just below it informing me that “Lynne Graham Recommends” this book. Yeah, no shit – I see her blurb right above!

But there’s also more Lynne Graham. Check out the last page of the text:

Right after telling me that the author, Michelle Smart, has some other books I might like, the page then tells me to be sure not to miss Lynne Graham’s 100th book! A hundred books! Holy cow! Oh – and the book is available this month!

Okay, but back to the cover. Here’s the back:

“The man she loves to hate.” God, that’s great.

Here’s the plot: A multi-billionaire breaks into his adversary’s mansion to steal documents that will clear his name and implicate his adversary’s. On the way out, though, he spots Elena, who is gagged and handcuffed to a bed. He rescues her, realizes she’s the daughter or his foe, and says he won’t go public with the information he has just obtained if – and only if – she agrees to marry him, pretend she loves him, and has child.

This is difficult for her not just because she thinks he’s a criminal who hates her family, but also because, despite running the family’s auto business (the European section, at least), she’s been very sheltered. Unlike her four older brothers, she was homeschooled. She was never allowed to leave the mansion. And, though she’s in her mid-twenties, she’s a virgin.

Of course they fall in love.

By about the halfway point in the book, I wondered what, exactly, made this book different than, say A is for Alibi, a book I read in which Detective Milhone falls for a man who has an impressive “knot” between his legs (when she sees him in his briefs), and with whom she has good – not great – sex. Or what made it different than Angels and Demons, in which Professor Langdon ends his romp around Italy and the Vatican by having mind-blowing sex with a Yoga master.

Here’s the difference: The book never looks away from the sex. So often in books and movies, the couple kisses, they lie down in bed, and then we cut to the next scene. Or, maybe we read of them having sex, but were just told they did it (such as in the two examples above). In this book, in which the couple has sex at least four times, every details is provided. Elena’s train of thought – especially during her first experience – never ends. Even once they’re done, and she rolls over fully expecting him to fall asleep, we still follow her train of thought as she’s pleasantly surprise that he gently puts his arm on her waist and snuggles with her through the night.

A very corny, unbelievable story but – since I’ve also read The Old Man and the Sea and On the Road – certainly not the worst work of fiction I’ve ever sat through.

I’ve now moved “Read a Smutty Romance Novel” from the “Things I Want to Do” column to the “Things I’m Glad I’ve Done” column.

I don’t plan to read another Harlequin.