Happy Birthday, Love.

Today is my husband Ramon's 30th birthday. Sweet man, in honor of this very important number (finally he's in the same decade as me - it's been a long year being the only one in their 30s) I'm going to name 30 things that I love about you:

1. Your eyes - easily your most arresting feature (since people rarely get to see your ass first), they're coffee-colored and turn cinnamon in the sunlight. I'd say that I'd like to drown in them, but death by drowning in cinnamon-flavored coffee is not my preference.

2. Your ass. You think it's too big, too bubbly-shaped, too sticky-outy, whatever. It's magnificent. Trust your wife on this.

3. The fact that you're my friend. I love that we feel more like chums more often than even lovers or domestic partners, though those roles are good, too. You're good company.

4. Your laugh. Your quiet chuckle is the most most common and wonderful, but your rarer total-belly-laugh is music to my ears.

5. Your annoyed-bunny face.

6. The way you talk to the cats - your special voice for each of them, and the way you portray them as beings who talk back. I've noticed that Simone especially cusses a lot...

7. Your art. I'm lucky to be married to an artist at all, but to be with one whose topics of choice resonate so closely with things that I dwell on is spookily convenient. For me.

8. Your kindness - we're both sarcastic, sometimes selfish bastards, but underlying your caustic sense of humor is a deep desire to do no harm to anyone. And you're kindest of all to your wife.

9. Your pajamas. I dunno - something about them...

10. The way you can take chaos and make tidy order in our apartment. I admire that pick-up gene that you inherited more than I can say.

11. You appreciate every tiny thing I do in the household. Every dish I wash, stitch of clothing that's gone through the laundry, everything is minutely observed and lauded by you.

12. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the housework YOU do, for that matter. If it were only me doing the dishes (we don't have a dishwasher, people) we'd never eat on anything reusable.

13. The Mr. Nice Guy act you put on for people you don't know. It's not really an act, though, since you ARE nice and also have large quantities of personal integrity, but you make people really comfortable with your kind-eyed, head-nodding affirmation. And you really listen.

14. Your integrity - you're just a really, really good person. You do the right thing, mostly, regardless of the cost, and you treat people well. I wish you could understand how rare that is.

15. What you looked like as a boy. Your snaggle-toothed, shy grin and that haircut always gets me right here. I'll post some later, Dear Reader. I wish I could have known Little Ramon.

16. Your singing voice. You're busy now and not using it much at the moment, but it still makes me weak in the knees when I hear you in the shower.

17. Watching you at the computer with that digital drawing-pad-thingy. Skill is sexy.

18. I love how you LOVE wine but refuse to get too shee-shee about it.

19. I love your open mind and liberal personal politics.

20. I love our quiet evenings at home when you're working on your art and I'm plowing through another novel, or swearing quietly at the piano.

21. You answer me with care and honesty and kindness when I ask you hard questions about me, or us, or you.

22. I love your restlessness, how every achievement is followed by a What's next? Is there more? from you. I wish you could savor your amazingness more often and for a longer duration, but perhaps your inability to revel in your success too much will keep you humble when you're known worldwide.

23. Your charm. You are a charming man who refuses to acknowledge to me the attention you get from women.

24. Our fights on the bed. Some of my favorite memories of our marriage are when we're lying on the bed talking and the whole thing degenerates into a puppy-wrestle. [Quit retching, perverts. It's not THAT kind of wrestling.]

25. That face you make when I'm being a total ass and you're trying not to either laugh or inform me of my ass-ness. Kindness, that's what that is...

26. Your walk. It says "I'm the coolest mofo around, but I don't really think so and am totally unconscious of how gorgeous I am."

27. Your grace. You are a graceful man, and it detracts not at all from your manliness. This especially comes to light because of your wife, who crashes through life breaking things, losing her balance while standing totally still, acquiring bruises and inventing new invective (god-mother-shite!!!) in the kitchen when that damned porcelain sink claims another wine glass.

28. Your kisses. You're a champion kisser. And you're generous with them. I get just the perfect amount of physical (and verbal, for that matter) affection from you.

29. The fact that you hate PDA as much as I do.

30. Your generosity. You give me whatever I ask for, or try to, and I'm not unconscious of the personal sacrifices you make to make this marriage work so well.

31. Just...you. I love everything about you (to restate a cliché), even the stuff I hate, because it all makes up the person I love and respect and admire most in the world. Life with you is so good - even the bad bits of life are good because I get to share them with you.

There you go - I went over a bit. I love you, Monchis, body and soul and heart and hands and that great nose of yours and your hair and electric shaver and Americanos and passion for edamame and our headshot battle and long showers and how your lips stick out when you're asleep and future tattoos and kissing you with the shower curtain between us and great advice and voracious mind and unwritten novel and morning fauxhawk and bedroom eyes and mirror face and 30-pictures-to-get-a-good-picture and how you get so chatty when under the influence and how seldom you cry and how you SEE me and your concilatory hugs and chasing me around the median and your Converse and batman shirt and everything else.

I wish I could really tell you.

Cerise

Good Friends and a Filthy Habit

Wow. One clove and a pot of wu wei and I'm loopy as hell. Here's my new favorite thing: standing on my back-alley, open-air apartment staircase landing, drinking a cup of somethin' and smoking a pretty black cigarette. The view is of...the alley, yes, but I can see Union St. and the trees over it, and I get a little strip of sky to look at, and man - nicotine makes me THINK. [For, alas, I found out that clove cigarettes, far from being just composed of cloves, have almost as much tobacco as a normal cig with some cloves thrown in there, too.] Is it the same for all you smokers out there? I get out there with a glass of two-buck-chuck, or a cup of tea or coffee and that one little cigarette and my mind goes bonkers. It's my new happy place. And I blog in my head. Now I know why writers are such champion smokers.

So, loopy. I don't know if it's cloves or tobacco (it can't be the alcohol or caffeine, because, like I said, this time it was wu wei and I'm still flying) or fresh air or WHAT, but I'm as high as if I'd taken a big hit off a pal's water bong. Mom, don't read that last bit. Seriously. I did inhale, yes, but that was the ONLY TIME. I swear. So, as you can tell, my substances, while relatively harmless (sort of harmless. Can you die from a one-clove-per-day-MAX habit?), get me feeling high and groovy and I just want to write write write about you (yes, YOU) and how much you mean to me. I swear - what a doof I am. Getting high on cloves? Cheez...

The people most responsible for my pleasures this evening?

First of all, Aly and Ash, who, while hosting Ramon and I in their beautiful California home, introduced me to the wonder of clove cigarettes, without which this long, silly, lugubrious post would not be possible. Truly - I'd say that I miss them every time I smoke one, and I do, but it wouldn't be quite accurate since I miss their company many more times than just once a day. I do miss you both - so much - out there on that breezy landing. I miss your laughs and clothes and bright eyes and brilliant ideas. And your questions about what's on my mind. Selfish me, that would be the thing I miss most about them. Just kidding.

I have Tracy to thank for the breathtaking new teapot that brewed three most excellent cups of tea. Get this (tea-philes, sit down for this one) - it's a black Brown Betty teapot. The real deal. She brought it to work today with a "pay me later" that means she'll never take money for it, never. T, seriously, you gotta let me pay. I still owe you for that esspensive glass of chardonnay at The Met and that pint of cider at Fado. I'm not kidding.

My good thoughts tonight were mostly taken up with jcarwen and yelahneb, a wonderful, wonderful couple Ramon and I met a few months ago and who continue to reveal themselves as two of the most promising friends he and I have met in a long, long time. I found them whilst trolling for fellow Seattle blogspotters (thank you, Blogspot, thank you!). Three dinners later and we're still completely in love with them. They're friendly without being creepy. Intelligent (boy howdy) without being pretentious or intimidating. Good-looking without being part of The Beautiful People that Ramon and I have zero time for. In love but not schmoopy. They're nice, they're funny, zany, normal, kind, down-to-earth, excellent-flights-of-fancy people. And did I already say they're funny? They're funny. The first time we met for dinner Ramon and I were walking home and I was chanting "Please, god, let this work out. Please." in my head. That's how cool they are.

I thought about the rest of you, too, but the buzz has worn off and now I'm ready for bed. Love to my friends - Jill, thank god you're getting help for that neck thing. I hate to think of you hurting. Dad, you're beautiful body and soul. Don't let the dickheads tell you otherwise. Nathan and Elizabeth, my best friends. How I love you. Peanut, have you learned how to laugh yet? I can't wait to see what kind of sense of humor you'll have. Mindy, time for another two-way-rant, don't you think? And last but never least - Momlies. I'm still walking around flattered as anything that you consider me a best friend. You're the finest human on the planet.

And Ramon - you gonna call me or what? When are you coming home? Quit sweeping the gallery floor and come home to your lovin' woman.

Cerise