Synonym Toast and Acrobats

Describing how grateful I am for my marriage, for El Bandito, for this sustaining relationship? Impossible. And yet important. Today is El Bandito's birthday, so a short list of gratitude that doesn't begin to cover it:

For 18 years of inside jokes, the title among them. Of finishing each other's sentences. Croutons. Interrupting Donut! and a ridiculous slew more.

For making me laugh so hard I can't breathe, even though almost every time that happens I say I hate you (I don't, really).

Locks of Love, Ponte Vecchio, 2003

For being there when I am "old and busted" and when I am "new hotness", though the casual observer might not know the difference.

For supporting me. In so many, many ways.  The early morning coffee. The patience when I schedule our lives around my workouts. For doing the dishes while I'm doing my shoulder exercises again,

For putting my shoes and coat away, even when I intend to grab 'em momentarily and get confused at their absence.

For documenting our lives in such an amazing way, the places we go, the people we're with. It's an overwhelming number of photos. But man, it's a wonderful collection (even if I have yet to figure out how to navigate them.)

For the weekends wandering new cities, or our own.  For stops for chocolate truffles and coffee. For being willing to adventure with me, no set destination. 

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

Excerpted from e.e. cummings. Somewhere I have never travelled.

It's a start. Even though there's so much more. For tonight, Happy Birthday, El Bandito. You rock my world.