the happiest of all

(happiest of birthdays to my husband)

today is matt's birthday.

this morning he is over at our new house painting some rooms so we can move in,

but first he woke up early and brought me a surprise latte.

(because that's the kind of wonderful he is)

last night i told him i was looking forward to the next 35 years of his life.

after all, i only got to be part of 15 of the first 35.

35 more years of living, learning, grieving, hoping, striving, laughing, disagreeing, and discovering more about each other in the process.

he'll never admit that he's as much of a handful as i am,

but he is.

before we got married, matt and i met with a bunch of different couples for advice and wisdom about marriage. one couple told us to never assume that you'd figured each other all the way out - they said one of the keys to a successful, happy marriage was to remember that your partner still has life experiences, stories, and new thoughts, even if you have been together for 40 years; that it begins to kill a relationship to act as if you know everything about each other, and to assume that you aren't both changing and growing over time. then you stop asking, wondering, learning about who this person you are spending life with is deep down.

matt makes this easy for me because i swear half the time i can't guess what his opinion will be on something. i kind of love that about him. (of course some days it drives me crazy, but it also keeps me on my toes & knocks me out of autopilot)

last year, when i posted about matt, my friend michele (who i have known even longer than i have known matt) wrote this comment:

I'm thankful for Matt because he loves you in a way that you need to be loved and because you are a truer version of yourself the longer you are with him.

she's right.

so in honor of my husband,

you should pick one or more of the following activities today:

listen to some punk rock

drink french wine

read an article in the new yorker

get into an impassioned discussion

share a meal with someone

eat at a total dive

or

at a super foodie spot

(just don't eat at a chain restaurant)

garden

advocate for someone who can't advocate for themselves

drink some really strong black tea with a healthy dose of whole milk and sugar

sit quietly in a chair to prepare for your day

go on a run

find an impossibly difficult and obscure recipe and then attempt to replicate it perfectly the first time

sit and talk with someone for longer than you intended

hang out with a 2 year old

(here is to my marvelous enigma, my best friend, my number one fan, my counterpart in this journey of life, my handful, my beloved. happy birthday.)