Happy Anniversary to my Huzbo

Today is the 7th anniversary of me marrying Huzbo.

Pretty momentous, considering when my first marriage died at 5 years, I swore I’d never get married again.

For those of you that know me, or those that read this blog regularly, you know I don’t often talk sweet about poor ole Huzbo.

So today, I’m going to talk about the GOOD STUFF for a change.

1.  He is the hardest working man I’ve ever met.  He is the major breadwinner (where on EARTH did that stupid term come from? He doesn’t win bread, for crying out loud!) and he doesn’t quit when he gets home.  He does every kind of housework that I do and he also does ALL of the outside yard work, shovels, takes out the trash, does any house repairs required.  He is my Superman in the work department and even my closest girlfriends will attest to the fact that when we sometimes gather for our ladies’ bitch-about-our-husbands sessions, I certainly join in, but never when we get around to bitching about how husbands don’t help around the house.  He does.  Lots.  More than any man I know.  And I am very grateful for that.

2.  He scoops cat shit every day.  In addition to the household contributions described above, I have to point out separately that when I met Huzbo, I had 2 cats, and upon marrying him, he blindly agreed with me that a 3rd cat was just what our household needed.  From the time we began living together and trying to procreate, he has scooped the cat doo-doo.  In the past 7 years, the only times I have ever scooped are when he had his gallbladder removed and couldn’t bend over for a week, when he broke his ankle and couldn’t walk down the stairs to the basement, and when he went to Florida to help his mother there for 2 weeks.  That’s a LOT of cat crap that I’ve avoided, especially considering two thirds of those cats were mine to begin with.  Even now that one of those cats is a very senior citizen and has some senility with respect to where he should be doing his bio functions, Huzbo understands how much my cats mean to me and has never suggested they be removed from our family.  He has also committed to me that no matter what, when it is a cat’s time to leave this earth, Huzbo will be the one who goes with them and stays with them through it all, because I know I just could not.  He loves our cats too and I know it won’t be easy for him either, but he’s willing to do that so I don’t have to.

3.  He does amazing things with his hands.  Oh jeez – c’mon now!  Minds out of the gutter! (Although if you really want to know about that business, I’d have to say he does more magic with his mouth than his hands…)  He is a carpenter and a cabinet-maker and he listened to my desire to have real hardwood floors, laid on a diagonal with a dark strip border around every room in our 1st floor.  He told me I was crazy and it would be too hard and virtually impossible.  Then he did it.  He also did the same thing with the wall-to-wall built-in wall unit I asked him to build.  Then he did it a 3rd time when I told him the fancy plans I had for landscaping the front of our house, which he had never even done before.  He’s a talented man and not afraid to take on my challenging projects.

4.  He is not shy or quiet and loves to have fun.  I am not shy or quiet and sometimes need someone to pull the stick out of my ass to have fun.  I love going to parties with him, because I do not have to babysit him, ever.  He can work a room better than any politician.  He is the fun parent and our kids love a rumpus with daddy, because he puts everything into it.  He’s a big kid at heart, and sometimes it’s cute and endearing – like on Christmas eve just past, I arrived home with Baby Girl and he had a bowl of sugar waiting for her, with a bowl of multi-coloured TicTacs.  He told her to plant the magic seeds in the magic sugar, and she would get a big surprise in the morning after Santa worked his magic fertilizer on the seeds.  After she went to bed, he pulled out all of those TicTacs and instead stood up large candy canes of matching pink and green colours.  I’m pretty sure you can imagine Baby Girl’s eyes when she saw those magic candy canes that had “grown” from the seeds.

5.  He has a cute ass and beautiful hazel-green eyes.  ‘Nuff said.

6.  He will go to the store or fast-food restaurant at almost any time of day for ANY kind of products.  I’m not sure I want to get into too may details here, but we all have embarrassing items we sometimes urgently (or not-so-urgently) need at the pharmacy and Huzbo has never once said “No way am I going to march up to the counter and buy THAT business for you!”  And trust me when I say that sometimes I would have been embarrassed to have to buy some of those things.  He also is usually just as willing to run out at 9pm for a craved bag of chips, should my craving arise.

7.  He has seen me in some pretty awful states, some medically-induced and some self-induced, and he has held my hand (and sometimes the barf bag) and cleaned me up and he still wants to kiss me when it’s all said and done. After I’ve brushed my teeth, of course.

8.  He is the reason I am a mother.  When I met him, he already had a son.  Yes, he wanted more children, but considering the lengths we had to go to trying create a baby and then trying to adopt, I think he probably would have called it a day and accepted the fact that his one child was enough for him.  But he didn’t, because he knew I wanted, needed, one child for me also.  He wanted Baby Girl and he loves her to the moon and back, but when all is said and done, I think if I hadn’t wanted to be a mother so badly, he might not have pursued it to the extent that he did.

9.  Every once in a very long while, he completely shocks the shit out of me in the most touching of ways.  My parents mean the world to me, and Huzbo loves the bones of them also.  My dad has had a few health issues in the past few years, and recently has had some pain from one of them.  When the snow began to fall in December, my mother mentioned a few times how she worries about him shovelling their big driveway, and how he now needed to rest in shifts of shovelling.  They live close enough for us to see regularly, but not so close that we can pop over there every time it snows and do their driveway for them.  Two weeks before Christmas, Huzbo says to me “I think we should get your parents a snow blower for Christmas so your dad doesn’t have to hurt himself and strain his health every time it snows.  I’m worried about him.”   This, my friends, is when I fell in love all over again.   Not only was he willing to help pay for the snow blower with my brother and I, but he actually thought of the idea.  Forget flowers  – romance gets redefined when your husband does something so touching for parents that you love dearly.

10.  He loves chocolate.  I didn’t always think this was a great thing, to be honest.  Before I met him, I liked chocolate, but I didn’t LOVE chocolate.  I generally only indulged about every 3.5 weeks or so, if you catch my drift.  But living with a chocolate addict has its advantages.  Like, whenever those cravings hit – I know we have a cupboard FULL of choices that I can choose from to satisfy myself.  What’s not to like about that?

I could add a bunch more here – how he doesn’t mind eating at restaurants regularly, how he allows me extensive input into his wardrobe choices, how he will watch and actually enjoy chick-flicks with me, how he will sit on the couch and let Baby Girl play hair salon with his head for hours – but I think you get the picture.

Don’t get me wrong – he’s not perfect and he’s no angel, at times.  But neither am I.  Which leads me to another thing about him that I love:  he puts up with me, most of the time.

Happy Anniversary, Sweetheart.  It’s been a bumpy 7 year ride, but I’m still glad it’s you.   xoxo