We took a mini-break this weekend. This is what we didn’t do. Didn’t clean house. Didn’t do laundry. Didn’t cook. Didn’t shop. In other words — no chores. It was totally self-indulgent, and felt like Spring Break without the whirlies.

This is what we did do. We did eat about town. Great food! No dishes! We did see two films, Vantage Point, which I mentioned in a previous post, and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and two DVD’s — Becoming Jane and Michael Clayton. There wasn’t anything we didn’t see that I wouldn’t recommend.

However, the most delightfully entertaining film was Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. Great setting, great character acting, great score. Fun. Entertaining. Great. Okay. Elen loved this movie — a lot.

And, watching the body language of my fellow film enthusiasts — they did, too. It was a five o’clock show on a Friday afternoon, so the house wasn’t packed. But, it wasn’t empty either. Going to the movies at dusk on a work day feels a little bit like cutting class — flirting a bit with the inner bad girl. In a dark theater, we could pull up the arm between the seats, snuggle up, and throw our feet up on the rail. Home Sweet Theater.

Halfway down the row was a woman who had come to the theater with herself. I liked that about her right off. I could tell she was really into Miss P. After the big E-N-D, I decided to flirt with her just a little. No! Not that way. This was flirting according to Steve Santagati in The Manual : A True Bad Boy Explains How Men Think, Date and Mate — and What Women Can Do to Come Out on Top, a blog for another time.

Suffice it to say, Santagati, self-confessed bad boy — I love that about him, too — has a broad, intriguing definition of flirting, which I decided to embrace in that moment.

Putting on my jacket, I leaned over some empty theater seats and said, “Wasn’t that a truly delightful film?”

She looked at me with a big ol’ happy grin. “Oh, it was. It was thoroughly charming.” There was a pause, and then she said, “It doesn’t matter that you know everyone is going to live happily ever after. It just makes you feel good.”

And I realized — in that moment — with crystal clarity — why I choose to tell the kinds of stories I do — It doesn’t matter that you know everyone is going to live happily ever after. It just makes you feel good. That. That, right there, is at the core of the romance genre. I believe it’s why authors write it. I believe it’s why readers read it.

I can’t think of a greater privilege than to entertain readers in such a way.

I’m listening to George Strait sing That’s My Kind of Woman. How appropriate. That’s my kind of story. Thank you, Mr. Strait, honey. You do some of the finest storytelling in the music business.

Elen