Love in a bottle

Hollywood is filled with romances. The men are always ruggedly good looking with just the right amount of suaveness and the women are always wide-eyed beauties with flawless complexions and sweet dispositions. The stories mostly take place in New York or some other amazing place with a hip vibe and stunning visuals. Both the man and the woman in the story have jobs the rest of us dream of having. All they are lacking is to recognize who is the other perfectly shaped half to match them.

Then there is reality for the rest of us. I don't consider myself ugly but I have my moments. I was blessed with thin lips, beady brown eyes, a pronounced chin and long nose. One guy I dated gave a compliment I will never forget, "You are like a Picasso… each individual feature is odd but all together you are beautiful." Some complements are best left unsaid.

So what is real romance and love for the rest of the world outside of Hollywood? I know what it is because I live it everyday. It isn't glamorous and eye catching. It doesn't happen for me in a desirable location with a dream job and my choice of top-notch restaurants. My dream man isn't suave or ruggedly good looking, but then again I do not have a flawless complexion and I am not very sweet!! But what I do have is real in a way that nothing in Hollywood ever is.

I said to my husband weeks ago that I couldn't find a good water bottle to take to the gym or use around the house (currently I am pregnant and have issues with water flavor and temperature). Each one I used had issues I didn't like: This one sweated, that one wouldn't hold enough water, it was hard to keep going and drink from this other one, before too long this one would be warm and my least favorite of all the one with the lid that would hit me in the eye while drinking. I said nothing more and accepted the situation as unfixable. Then one day a package arrived at our house. My husband excitedly opened it and pulled out a large orange bottle. He filled it up with water and ice and handed it to me. Little did I know that he had listened to my grumblings and decided they were worth solving. He did the research, paid the money and gave me a gift. I didn't ask him to help but he must have, at some point, asked himself, "What can I do to make her happy?" I don't think even now he knows how romantic that gesture was.

Rebecca Adling started life as an Air Force brat and is now enjoying life as a mother raising her own pile of adorable Air Force brats.