One of my best friends just called me puppysquishycakes. Yours truly, the sarcasmo dilettante who’s used to kissing the boys (on the cheek) and then running off and maybe making them cry. Yours truly, who has lengthy conversations with her belly in the shower. Yours truly, who writes about flatulence and dorking out playing Warcraft. Yours truly, who speaks fondly only of three men in her life: Dad, Brother and Jesus Christ.

Yours truly is a puppysquishycakes. Because yours truly is in love.

Who’d-a-thunk-it. After years of running amok, making fun of my puppysquishycake friends and simultaneously bemoaning my lack of puppysquishycake action, I would stumble headlong into my own state of puppysquishycake-itude.

After all, was it not just last year when I wrote that real love involves a certain tolerance for grossness? Like shaving the back of your boyfriend or, as my parents were wont to do, scrape out the earwax out of each other’s heads.

And here I am in a situation of grossness in which I make the best efforts not to nauseate those around me. I am in love. With a really nice guy. Who does things like send me flowers when he’s away on a business trip “just because,” and doesn’t think it’s totally awful when I neglect him for hours on end to level up my Paladin. Plus, would you believe he actually is quite good about nudging me to get my writing done on time?

Hallelujah!

And we even just got back from church together today. Does this break your head, dear reader? That I might be a churchgoer and be un-single? It sure breaks mine. I still keep pinching (the boyfriend) to see if this is a dream. So far he just says, “Ow,” and he’s still here. 

Trust me, I’m amazed.

Years ago (OK, maybe only a few months ago), I used to mark off a list of qualities I’d want in a fellow. They were so puerile, but I know I’m not the only one guilty of such checklists. Things like height, eyes, zodiac sign, birth order, blood type, body type, shoe size, dance skills and proximity to favorite bakeries. At least I omitted things like brand-name sensibilities, automobiles and musical skills from my list. But still, nothing and no one quite matched me. 

I would wrangle through a few awkward dates with people who sounded perfectly fine — and are indeed perfectly fine people — but just weren’t right for me. I had even struggled through dating a gentleman who was perfect on paper but failed to inspire bad poetry out of me. Because if you can’t inspire bad poetry out of me, then there’s something seriously broke in the relationship. It just wasn’t right. I didn’t even mourn or cry about the breakups. Am I heartless? I hope not. Cynical perhaps, but not without a romantic inkling (I still cry hard enough at movies to pop out a contact on occasion). But while fellows might drunk-dial me or whimper softly on my couch, I would turn my phone to silent or walk them out the door with a handful of toilet paper for their nose.