For my muppet husband

I just wrote a long, wordy, and sloppy post that I had delete because of its embarrassing sentimentality. Why is it that the subjects that I care most about are the hardest to write about? Is this true for other people? I think it must be because language is so limited. There just aren't words important enough. I'm doing my best but it's like trying to translate The Odyssey into the language of hummingbirds. (What the heck kind of a simile was that? I don't know.)

Anyway I want to write about Chris and why I married him. Today was a good day until this evening when it suddenly turned into a very hard day and it reminded me of my favorite qualities of Christopher. I'm going to list some of my favorite things--not a lot of them, but the most meaningful to me. I was going to illustrate them with stories but that just turned into smarmy embarrassment city so I will keep it short and sweet. However, before I list them I want to address Chris's most readily apparent quality from his blogging: his playfulness. And by playful, I mean both playful like a puppy who wants to play tug-of-war, and playful like an otter cruelly toying with its prey before devouring it. Chris is annoyingly, infuriatingly, and delightfully playful. I do love this about him. It makes things fun, exciting, and occasionally dangerous. I don't always encourage it, but I like it.

However, this is just frosting on the cake to me.

Here is why Chris is so great to be married to:

1. He will casually tell you all his worst faults as soon as he meets you. This may not seem like such a virtue at first, but you, as a reader of his blog, probably know all the worst things about him already. There are not hidden surprises--what you see is what you get. He's just an honest guy. I promise, you don't know even a fourth of my worst faults. And you won't if I can help it.

2. I've never met anyone who communicates better with me. I've never had an awkward moment with him. I think this is a very real and very specialized spiritual gift that benefits only me and our marriage. This may not seem like a big deal, but trust me, it is.

3. When he's wrong he'll admit it and apologize. I noticed this as a missionary. I was struck by it. He can do it immediately, and incredibly humbly.

4. The world is delightful to him. Everything is interesting. I can't keep up. Things distract him that I don't even see. Sometimes, before we go to sleep I ask him what he's thinking about. He might be doing math to figure out how many arm hairs he has. He might be thinking about organic gardening, or physics, or word puzzles or dinosaurs, or waht happens if a bird flies inside a moving car and then stops flying. He can talk about just about anything with anyone because he is interested in everything. When I waste time on the internet, I really waste time. When Chris wastes time...well, he also wastes time I guess, but he also learns crazy things.

5. Okay. This is the last and tonight feels like the most important quality of the Christopher. Yes he's playful 90% of the time. But when things are serious, or scary, or so so sad, he is not serious. He is calm, and patient and takes care of things. He's the best person to have around in an emergency. I wish you could see him fall into his EMT routine when someone is hurt. It's almost as dramatic as Clark Kent to Superman switch. Tonight was not a big deal, but it felt like a big deal and it was so nice to not have to handle it alone, in fact, to not deal with it at all. Chris got on the phone and fixed the problem that was fixable. Then he sat down with me and put the other problems in perspective, then he went off to do some service by babysitting some kids as a favor to the J. Reuben Clark Law Society that he's not even a member of anymore. Don't let his manner fool you, this kid is no kid. This guy has gravitas.

I find this post unsatisfactory, as I find anything I have so far tried to write about Chris (with the exception of one poem I wrote about what would happen if Chris died which I got spot on). So I will end this by just saying that the best choice I ever made was marrying Chris, my muppet husband.