30 great things . . .

. . . about Jeanine, on the 30th anniversary of our marriage:

1. She can dance.
2. She never met a glass of wine she didn’t like.
3. When we first met, shortly after she returned from two years in Japan, she taught me some basic Japanese phrases, the first being “Jeanine is very beautiful, isn’t she?”
4. She’s good with money: not too loose, not too tight.
5. The way her breath smells. No kidding. There’s this wonderful smell her breath gets sometimes. There’s no rhyme or reason about when or why it happens, but it’s awesome.
6. She’s trustworthy in every way.
7. She trusts me. I have lots of friends, many of them women, and she is supportive of that.
8. The first time I farted around her, she laughed.
9. She respects that, once in a while, a husband might need to leave the table, pick up his phone, and check the A’s score.
10. I can talk with her about my work, and she understands.
11. I can not talk with about my work, and she understands.
12. Peyton.
13. Walton.
14. Most mornings she makes the bed. Unfortunately for her, I’m a bit like Erma Bombeck – who said “Noone ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed” – but Jeanine accepts this about me.
15. She loves my parents.
16. She laughs a lot when she’s around my brothers.As do I.
17. She exercises, meditates, hangs out with friends, gets acupuncture, eats right, and does other things to take care of herself.
18. She responds to a variety of names: Jeanine, Geneva, Jeaniqua, Jeanita, Nita, Juanita, Jeanine Silver Jones, and more.
19. Sometimes she gets grits eyes. I don’t know what that means either.
20. She’s on a spiritual journey and has introduced me to people, experiences, and ideas that I would not have known without her.
21. She didn’t divorce me after our first fight, which began when I criticized the way she was washing the car.
22. Her eyes.
23. Her family.
24. Special Mommy-Daddy time.
25. She tolerates me being out of the house for long hours on the weekends, running with friends. Maybe she likes it?
26. When I’m lying in on my left side, meaning my good ear is buried in a pillow and my almost deaf right ear has to do all the listening, she never mumbles just to tease me. She’s not tired of kale yet.
27. When she had the magnets surgically implanted in her feet and my hands, so that I would rub her feet whenever she puts her feet in my lap, it was a painless procedure.
28. When we fold sheets together she doesn’t complain that it takes me twice as long to get the corners lined up.
29. At lunch, if I catch her with her office door open, she will share the chocolate she keeps in the drawer of her desk.
30. She makes coconut cake for my birthday. Which is in 6 days. Hint hint.