« It was just a little "ow". If it had really hurt a lot, rest assured I would have whined like crazy. | Main | Call me jDoi »

April 09, 2005

Watch out, I may get sentimental here

Today my beloved turns 39.

I've known Peter for more than twelve years now, and loved him for most of them. Our relationship was pretty turbulent for the first five years or so, but now we've settled into a boring old-couple groove.

I used to live in a tiny apartment on the second floor of a 1 1/2 storey house in London. All the ceilings were low and sloped, and my bedroom was a little dormer walk-in closet with a window at one end, just wide enough to slide a three-quarter mattress in so that the bed had a wall on either side. We would spend long summer afternoons making love in that hot little room, sweating like crazy and then opening the window afterward to let the breeze chill our wet skin. And then we would lie there and talk, for hours. About art, politics, physics, the Russian revolution, life, the universe, and everything. Peter was just starting his masters degree then, and I was working part time, so we had a lot of free time on our hands. I sometimes wish that he could be unemployed for a little while so we could live like that again.

I believed everything Peter told me back then, something that he took advantage of more than I knew. Now I'm a little better at figuring out when he's shitting me, but he still fools me fairly often.

Some reasons why I love Peter:

He never, ever places my needs before those of his children. I know it breaks his heart that we live in a different town than them now and he doesn't get to see them as often, but he still manages to be a better parent than some people I have known who live with their kids.

He is the most beautiful man I have ever seen. I guess it's my love of figure drawing that makes me such a sucker for the subtle little contours of the human body, but sometimes the angle of his jaw or the bones in his wrist take my breath away. And he has the craziest legs, sculpted by fifteen years of ball hockey.

He has grandiose, creative ideas, but unlike me, he doesn't start working on all of them at once and then poop out. He just does things, or doesn't.

He is sensitive to my many neuroses. He makes himself huge bowls of tuna salad and has it for lunch almost every day, but he always washes all the utensils right away so that I don't have to be afraid of finding little bits of fish in the sink. And he doesn't make fun of me for being afraid of little bits of fish.

He has great taste in yarn. And if it bothers him that his birthday sweater looks like this today

he doesn't ride me too hard about it, because he knows what I'm like (I'm going to work on it today).

He puts up with the aggravation of living with my old, fat and extremely annoying cats, and doesn't resent them. He even loves them a little, which is more than I could have hoped for when we moved in together.

He is smarter than me.

He is totally supportive of my decision to go to the states for grad school, even though it means we'll be living in different countries for the next three years. He encouraged me to only apply to the best schools rather than sticking with the ones close to here.

He plays guitar and sings a lot, filling a void for me that was left when I moved out on my own and no longer had my dad and my brother making music around the house.

And, oh, about a million other reasons.

Happy birthday, Pete.

Posted by jodi at April 9, 2005 12:04 PM | categories:  sugar shock

Comments

Posted by: Emer at April 9, 2005 01:44 PM

Posted by: Norma at April 9, 2005 05:48 PM

Posted by: Krista at April 9, 2005 07:59 PM

Posted by: Rachael at April 9, 2005 09:34 PM

Posted by: NWJR at April 10, 2005 11:30 AM

Posted by: Sandy at April 10, 2005 01:17 PM

Posted by: kathreen at April 10, 2005 10:32 PM

Posted by: Carrie at April 11, 2005 12:40 AM

Posted by: Rachel T at April 11, 2005 02:17 PM

Posted by: Lori-Ann at April 11, 2005 11:13 PM

Posted by: Roberta at April 14, 2005 06:12 PM