It has been noted several times here that I am a hopeless romantic.  I love it all:  candlelight, soft music, dancing, the sound of rain, the sweet scent of flowers, love letters, etc.  *SIGH*  I married the most handsome man I have ever met who is sincere but not what I would call a romantic.  So imagine my surprise when I found a perfect trail of rose petals going up our steps when I came home.  The “new age” music was playing on the TV, the lights were low, and the house smelled like gardenia.  I made my way up the steps and followed the fresh rose petals all the way into our bedroom where I found they were strewn perfectly across our bed.  A handsome guy greeted me there only he had bright blue eyes and not the deep dark brown my husband has.  If you look closer at the picture you will discover who my mystery man was.  It was Blue, our Siamese cat.  The little devil ruined all my flowers and pulled them one by one out of the vase.  Then, after deflowering them like some kind of a wild animal cleaning a carcass, he deposited all the stems in a corner of our formal dining room.  Upon closer inspection I noted he proceeded to hunker over them as he picked them up with his little teeth and then ferociously “killed” them over and over one by one.  I had left the TV on so the animals wouldn’t be lonely all day which explained the music and the gardenia scent was because I had changed all the wax in my candle warmers the night before.  The American writer and academic at Columbia University, Carolyn Gold Heilbrun, once said, “Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.”  Ironically she wrote mystery novels under the pen name Amanda Cross.  For several fleeting moments, the dust of my everyday life had taken on a golden haze.  But I still basked in its warm glow before solving the case of the mysterious rose petals.