The Romance Doctors -- Labor of Love Day

First off, I’d like to thank you all for your overwhelming response to Monday’s blog, We. Are. At. War. I felt it was something I needed to say.

Since Holmes and I are not normally political, except in a very even-handed, sarcastic way, we’re going to change the channel back to our usual, lighter fare today.

a man with experience in intelligence and a bellydancer

As a man with experience in intelligence and covert operations and a woman who is a bellydancer, Holmes and I represent classic romantic archetypes. Therefore, we are Romance Authorities and qualified to dispense romance wherever, whenever, and however we see fit. In fact, you may even remember us as The Romance Doctors, since we assisted you with your romantic affairs during the Valentine’s season.

Holmes & I love you, dear readers. To prove that, we are going to use our authority as romantic archetypes to provide an extra Valentine’s Day for you. We would like you to think of this Labor Day as Labor of Love Day.

Now, this extra Valentine’s Day isn’t for just everyone. No! It’s exclusively for you and for citizens of countries that play well with the rest of the world.

For example, we are withdrawing the Valentine’s Charter from China. With 1.34 billion people in China, there are already plenty of Chinese. Between that and their recent poor behavior in demanding to own the mineral rights to the South Pacific Ocean, we’ve decided we don’t want to encourage the Chinese with an extra day of romance. In fact, we believe China needs a time out in Peace Place to learn to work with others.

We would expressly say that this does not include the Taiwanese people, who are not attempting to bully other nations out of their economic claims to the world’s oceans. The people of Taiwan are most welcome to participate.

image from sittershawaii.com

India also seems to have no lack of love with 1.21 billion people to its credit, but India plays well with others in the International Playground so we welcome their participation in all of our Valentine’s celebrations.

Pakistan, however, is excluded, because Pakistanis aren’t even being nice to each other. The last thing they need is more Pakistanis getting into the fray.

In spite of the constant misbehavior of the self-serving Mullahs who run Iran, we’ve decided that Iran should still be welcome to participate in the Labor of Love Day. That’s because the vast majority of Iranian people are actually quite reasonable. Since they are the ones who most suffer the insanity of their mullahs, we figure no one needs another Valentine’s Day more than they do.

We group North Korea with Iran because both countries have heartless, selfish bastards in charge who abuse their citizens ruthlessly. In fact, the average citizens in North Korea and Iran probably hate their leaders even more than we do. We hope these oppressed folks can experience the joy of romance during our special event.

As romantic archetypes, Holmes and I know more than a little about love and romance. For those of you who are wondering, . . . and I know you’re out there, . . . yes, Holmes and I are married. But not to each other, and not in a country-western song way.

image from goodenoughmother.com

I dated quite a few romantic characters before being swept off my feet by an adorable, sane, stable engineer who has a large collection of bicycles and talking frogs.*

And Holmes? He valiantly bested a number of gorgeous Russian women who attempted to use him to advance their KGB careers before he won the heart of a village girl with his linguistic charisma and his je ne sais quoi with houseplants.

We would love for everyone to be as happily engaged in romance as we are. So as we did with Valentine’s Day in February, we are offering you the benefit of our extensive experience and opening the floor to your questions as we lead up to Labor of Love Day.

These can be questions about yourselves, your friends, your characters in your books, or the neighbors you know only through the lens of your telescope. They can be as serious or as facetious as you like. Bring it on. We love it!

Are you caught in unrequited love? Do you think he’s cheating on you with the neighbor’s cousin’s ex? Are you afraid to tell him you’re actually your own mother’s sister from Arkansas? We can help.

image from notebookoflove.com

Please leave your questions for us, The Romance Doctors, in the comments section below, or email them to Piper at piperbayard@yahoo.com. We will publish all answers in the next two weeks, and we will send you a private email within the week so that you don’t have to continue in anguish as you await to see it in print. We look forward to assisting you with all of your romance needs as we gear up for this bonus playdate of passion.

Let the love begin!

Piper Bayard—The Pale Writer of the Apocalypse

Holmes—Student of Sex, C4, and Hollow Points

*An engineer rides up to another engineer on a new bicycle. The other engineer asks, “Where’d you get the great bicycle?”

The engineer answers, “I was sitting under a tree thinking about a new design for a particle accelerator, when a gorgeous woman rode up to me on this bicycle, took off all of her clothes, and said, ‘Take whatever you want.’”

The other engineer says, “Good call. The clothes probably wouldn’t have fit.”

There’s a similar joke about talking frogs and how they’re way more cool than princesses. Truth is that my husband only has one bicycle and no talking frogs. And he didn’t get his bicycle from a naked woman. I just enjoy telling the joke.

image from popularmechanics.com

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