Happy 30th Birthday to My Wife

(For the purposes of today's post, imagine that we live in an alternate universe where human beings all have 17 fingers and thumbs - 8 on their right hand and 9 on their left. In that universe, everything else is exactly the same as in our universe except people have a much easier time distinguishing between right and left AND the numeral system is base 17. In that universe, my wife is celebrating her 30th birthday today!)

On this, the 30th birthday of my dear sweet wife, I offer her 17 reasons that I love her...

1. She sleeps with her cell phone beside her bed in case one of her daughters needs her in the middle of the night and genuinely offers them carte blanche to call any time.
2. She has three "blood" daughters and countless others who consider her a second Mom.
3. She makes instant friends everywhere she goes - most recently while waiting in the Returns line at IKEA and standing in a parking lot at Niagara-on-the-Lake. Moreover, she will recognize and remember these instant friends if she ever runs into them again.
4. She can walk into the house and instantly detect that something is out of place, even if it's as small as a shot glass on the dining room table and not currently in her line of sight.
5. "Six-and-a-half of one, half-dozen of another".
6. She can be on Episode 3 of a series we're watching together when I go to bed, and Episode 8 by the time we sit down to watch again the following night. Furthermore, she will happily re-watch each Episode in order to hide the fact that she went on without me.
7. "I'm not weird, I'm just not like everyone else".
8. She is the most formidable customer in the world, and wins pitched battles with cable companies, banks, home renovators, window installers, and the like over any amount of money that she feels she was overcharged. She will then turn around and empty her wallet for anyone on the street who is in need.
9. Even at 30, she will happily grab a fake microphone and dance like nobody's watching when a song she loves comes on.
10. She likes it when people hurt themselves in funny ways (see earlier blog post).
11. She will not sit down at the end of a long day until the house is in perfect shape or until she can no longer physically continue to stand.
12. Weeks after she discovers that somebody has hacked her phone so that spellcheck replaces the word "love" with "fart", I continue to get texts from her that say "I fart you".
13. She is the world's greatest hugger. Ask anyone.
14. She gave up a life of freedom to start over with a third daughter and has never looked back.
15. Her happiest place in the world is our family room couch.
16. Keep your penny, her thoughts are always free.
17. She is mine and always will be.

While I have not yet scratched the surface on the reasons I love my wife, I've run out of fingers and thumbs to count on so I'll stop there. Next time, I'll use my 23 toes to keep going.

Love you honey bunny...David