My Wife's Birthday

Today is my wife's birthday. There are a lot of things I love about my wife, but a few struck me right about the time I was going to bed, and I figured I'd put them up here on my blog, since I know she reads it.

1. She's intelligent - I love that when she writes in her blog, she'll drop words like hubris. Or that she picks up all this weird, interesting knowledge from Discovery Channel, various podcasts and reading the Internet and books.

2. She's tough - Seeing what she went through during the birth of our son just re-affirmed this, which I already knew. I was scared for her during the whole post-birth ordeal, but I watched her fight to stay awake, and worry about staying awake, even when she was in a whole lot of pain and the midst of a lot of confusion. And I know she'll fight like hell for her kids. Even in a lot of pain, on a lot of drugs, she wouldn't sign the form to admit Aaron over to the hospital. She knew she wanted to think about it. I was fully conscious, and I don't know if I would have thought about it before I just signed whatever they were putting in front of me.

3. She's understanding - While I stay up way too late every night, catching up on TV and the Internet, she doesn't gripe at me about coming to bed late. And even though she's got two kids to watch over, she lets me sleep in in the mornings, keeping my weird schedule of doing stuff at night and starting the day in the early afternoon.

4. She's principled - My wife will fight for her principles. She thinks about why she believes what she does, she'll argue those principles even with people who probably won't ever change their minds. I can sometimes have a hard time arguing with people, because I just don't care enough to change their minds, or I don't want to bother thinking about and defending my positions. I haven't ever seen Suzanne have that problem.

5. She gives me strength - Since I married Suzanne, I've had to take a leap of faith at a dream job by moving halfway across the country, I've had to suffer through some very unpleasant surgery, I've had plenty of job stress and I've worried about who knows how many small things. Knowing that she's there with me, that I've always got someone to talk to, makes it all possible.

Happy birthday, Suzanne. I love you.