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“I’m going to Virginia in a couple of weeks on a car club drive,” Paul informed me last month. “And then I have to go to France the week after.”

“OK,” I said.

Because our relationship is like that. There is no, ‘Whaddaya mean, France? What are you going to France for?”

When Paul and I first met, we were stand-up comics in Los Angeles with heavy touring schedules. We might see each other for a couple of days here and there, and as our relationship grew serious, I often wondered if we would still enjoy each other’s company when actually spending a ‘normal’ amount of time together. Sending faxes (remember those??) was the height of technological achievement and the way we stayed in constant communication, although I just KNEW that snobby receptionist in New York read the ‘love letter’ that awaited me at check-in. (I decided to test her by replying to Paul’s romantic missive with the first sentence being ‘Where did you hide the body?)

But I did say, “I wanna go!”

“You can’t go because someone has to take care of the 11 animals you insist on having, and besides, this is work. I’m meeting the owner of that chateau whose garden I’m restoring. And besides, you’ve been on vacation to France twice in the last couple of years.”

“That wasn’t a vacay,” I replied, peeved. “That was work!”

My better half barked with laughter. “You went to look at a horse.”

“And it took a lot of work!” I argued, although I knew my case was lost.

And so as Paul wings his way across the Atlantic to the south of France, I shall remain on farm watch, mucking stalls at 6 am and singing along with either Joni Mitchell, Don Henley, or whomever else is on my phone’s playlist. Then I’ll muck out the cat litter box and yell at the dogs to complete their business and ‘Stop chasing the damn deer!’ three times a day. I’ll get the estimate for the tractor repair and take a second shower after unloading hay and teaching a couple of lessons.

But each evening, as the fireflies come out, I’ll pull up a camp chair next to my young, French horse’s stall door, facing the pedestal fan blowing on us both, and feel his breath on the top of my head…

“You’re worth every drop of blood, sweat, and tears, even if I can’t afford another vacation for the rest of my life,” I murmur as I reach up to stroke his muzzle—just as he deposits a long string of drool into my hair.

Those French really know how to charm a woman…