Most of All, I Just Love You

Dear Husband,


It's the day before our 15th wedding anniversary and time again to tell you how much I appreciate everything you do.

It's the little things, like reminding the boys not to pee all over the toilet seat and to stop making farting noises with their armpits when I've had a hard day; because lord knows, when I remind them all they hear is that parent on the Charlie Brown cartoons, "Wah wah wah wah waaaa wah."

Thank you for sweeping the moss of the roof, so that I don't hear the crows playing with it in the mornings I'm trying to sleep in. Thank you for always eating the dinner I make, even if I am experimenting with potato chip casserole and it tastes like melted plastic bags. You sat there and quietly waited for everyone else's response before we all threw our hands in the air and decided take-out pizza would be a much better idea.

Thank you for being a super dad to our boys and our girl. Thank you for taking them on bike rides when I'm not feeling up to it. Thank you for making their lunches so I don't have to get up and do it at o'dark thirty. Thank you for believing in them. Thank you for going with me to parenting presentations even though we've been doing this for a few years. Thank you for tucking them in at night.

Thank you for putting up with me for yet another year, a challenging year in which a doctor shot hormones into my hip in hopes of making me feel better and one of the side effects was a forced chemical menopause.

That was fun.

I know I was a crazy person. I know I still am. And we'll have to do it all over again, but at least this time we know what to expect, right? We know that I will (and that's a promise) cry at the mere mention of anything even remotely sad or happy or funny. We know that I'll have night sweats and hot flashes and that my head may indeed spin around Linda Blair style at any given moment. But still, you are always by my side, laughing at (WITH) me.

And for that, I love you.

Thank you for being so motivated to get things done, and for not taking it personally when I bit your head off for beating me to the task of making coleslaw the other night. I really did want to make it, you could have waited 5 minutes. But thank you, anyway.

Thank you for letting me get a cat. And isn't it funny how you have a pet name for her and you are so obviously her favorite? Sorry, couldn't help myself.

And last but not least, thank you for your smile. I know that I look pretty funny with my zebra-print sleep mask in the mornings, especially when I'm facing your side of the bed and you can't tell if I'm awake or not, but thank you for not laughing so loud, just smiling quietly and thanking god you have a wife as hot as me and my zebra-print sleeping mask. Really. I really do appreciate that.

At least it's not a c-pap machine.

Tomorrow we celebrate a milestone, 15 years on the 15th. Thank you for being with me all day tomorrow, even though I will be in surgery and you will be playing cribbage with my Dad waiting for me to wake up. Thank you for being home with our kids tomorrow night and assuring them that I'm fine, even though my heart will be breaking that I can't be with you. I promise I will make it up to you, in Swedish Fish.

Most of all, I just love you.

Happy Anniversary Baby.

Love,
Your Wife