15 things I love about my relationship

Today is the last day I can legitimately call Anniversary Season. Having married on Leap Day 2004, Erik and I still haven't actually had our first official wedding anniversary. However, since our original anniversary was February 26th twelve years before that, we figure we can pretty much celebrate the whole week. We do the same thing with our birthdays which are also three days apart.

In any case, I'll be spending the last day of anniversary season in airports on my way to play super anti. Much as I appreciate the miracle of travel, I dread the actual task of doing it. I generally have horrible experiences in airports. There I have seen the grossest public restroom ever (which, in desperation, I had to use). I have also used, as a kid, the airline supplied barf bag. I hate the smell of peanuts (why peanuts? just about any other nut would be less aromatic and less likely to trigger allergies. and why always honey roasted? I mean, I'm all about the salty and sweet, but something about honey roasted peanuts is just wrong...). I'm haunted by a sound bite an airline official once made on one of those pseudo-educational shows I watch. When explaining the cost-benefit analysis of using stale air over fresh, he commented that, "everyone gets a little fresh air eventually." And just ask Erik about the time I ran the wrong way through the SF terminal...

So rather than focus on the 8 hours I'll be spending breathing stagnant, recycled, germ-ridden air, my skin slowly amassing a film of other people's farts, my neck crumpling under the strain of our collective discomfort, I will spend these moments honoring the most important thing in my world, my relationship.

So here are 15 reasons I love my marriage:

1. We don't fight. Erik says there's no point. If we fight and he wins, he beat a girl. If we fight and he loses, he lost to a girl. And so, though I may try to pick them, we never have a fight. I just win.
   
2. We always stop for kisses at red curbs and red lights.
3. We often see great wildlife together. Most recently we saw 25 of the Hearst Castle zebras on Christmas Eve. We've also seen a sea gull suffer brain freeze while eating ice cream outside a Rite Aid. And then there was the mountain lion at East West Ranch.
   
4. We also encounter and rescue needy wildlife on our walks. We've escorted a mole out of a parking lot and we've moved a fish from a shrinking puddle into a pond. And of course, he's helped on some of my most amazing seal rescues ever including Spelunker (it took us 2 hours to dig 200# of comatose sea lion out from under a rock) and Homer Ray (an entangled yearling that was too close to open ocean for my taste).
   
5. We hold hands a lot. Even while watching TV.
6. We generally have a pretty clear division of labor. He does all the penis work and I do whatever's left. He makes the money, I spend it.
   
7. We negotiate. We often trade away hurt feelings or embarrassing memories. I can't get him to come to the table with the Jen-ran-the-wrong-way-through-the-airport story, however, because he thinks it's so cute.
8. We play games. Not just real games (like Yahtzee) but made up games (like Neck, and Hole) which are generally just ritualized forms of rough housing.
9. We laugh a lot. Many times at each other.
   
10. We're so different that we constantly marvel at how the other one thinks.
11. And yet, in so many ways we're alike.
12. We both come from crazy families. They trade off being craziest. Right now my family is winning. Or would that be losing?
13. We're young at heart. Some would say immature. In any case, I love the little boy in him and he pampers the little girl in me.
    
14. We stop for sunsets. The world would be a better place if more people paused each day to appreciate the earth spinning on its axis.
15. We both think we're the luckier one in relationship.

Happy anniversary, Smoocher.