How Many Blogs Can You Write About Your Wife?

If you can blow up that sign over our sink, you're in for a little laugh.

The Wife will celebrate the 10th anniversary of her 29th birthday tomorrow. As such, she requested no jokes be made in her birthday card. This is serious stuff. We're closer to retirement than high school graduation. And TW gets what she wants in general. On her birthday, there isn't a question. No jokes in the card.

So we'll air it all out here.

My handwriting, like my heart, is terrible.

You might think, from reading this blog or just seeing us around town, that I am an adoring husband. You're so wrong.

Take, for instance, when TW is looking for a hair tie. The unstoppable thought that runs through my head is "Just look at your feet. There's always a hair tie around." In the past two days, I've found hair ties hanging on our coat rack, buried in a shag rug and in my laundry. Over the course of our marriage, I've probably picked up 7,647 hair ties. I'm confident they are single-use items.

When we were dating, TW lived in Duluth and I lived in Salt Lake City. Her eyes are stunningly blue. Grandma – the protector of our family's blue peepers – gave her blessing to our relationship solely because of TW's eyes. To celebrate our love, which primarily existed over Cingular cellphone service, I thought I would do something romantic. I grabbed a disposable camera and took a bunch of pictures of blue things, because "Blue" was her cutesy nickname. That was back when we enjoyed talking on the phone with each other. TW likely doesn't remember this romantic episode; I'm pretty sure I just threw out the pictures today.

In fairness, TW puts up with a lot. My hobbies include cliff diving, downhill skiing and driving around New England. TW prefers watching "Dirty Dancing" to all of those activities. She is predictable.

TW humors me with a selfie. She hates selfies.

Her steadfast nature is one of my favorite stories. As happens with many married couples, she has either heard this a million times, doesn't remember the incident at all, or disagrees with the story. But here goes. When TW applied to PA school, it boiled down to two choices: 1. The University of New England, in pastoral and affordable Maine, or 2. Pace University, at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, in busy-as-hell and unaffordable Manhattan.

Oddly, TW was on the fence about her college choice. She wanted to defy expectations and go to New York City because, in her opinion, she wanted to show the world that she could do it.

She expressed this opinion as we were traveling up Route 1 along Maine's coast. Inspired, I came up with a good comparison for the only time in my life: "Every time we go out to eat, you order nachos. People make fun of you because they know you're going to order nachos, but you still order nachos. You like nachos. You like Maine. Let's move to Maine." I swear, I kept an open mind and a shut mouth for months prior to that incident. Choosing a college was going to be her choice. That conversation effectively made the decision for us ... if she got into UNE.

Of course, she did. And of course we love our community here. We're going out to lunch tomorrow and trying to get a table for 8 at one of our favorite restaurants, Nosh. That's the place with the bacon-dusted fries. I can divulge now, on Birthday Eve, what TW will be ordering for lunch tomorrow: Poutine. Possibly bacon-dusted poutine. But definitely poutine.

TW is many things. As you've read, she's predictable. She's pragmatic. Despite her Type A nature, she's actually not concerned with things like making the bed or keeping track of her hair ties. She's also sweet and generous and adorable. I've known her for 14 years and am constantly entertained. I hope she can say the same.

She married into family that lives
in warm weather in January.