When Sir Monkeypants and I got married — 10 years ago today — I was going to make a list of all the things I loved about him, so years later I could pull it out and we could all have a good laugh over it, but in the chaos of the event I never got around to it. But even though I never actually wrote it all down, I still remember how I felt about him at the time, because I still feel the same today — lucky to have landed such an awesome dude. He’s smart and hilarious. He hates it when anyone is sad and will go to all possible lengths to cheer them up. He is great at diffusing a tense situation with a wisecrack. He’s generous with gifts but sensible about money, he’s great at figuring out home projects, he’s super fun when playing run-and-tackle with the kids, and he looks hot in a pair of jeans. And that’s not even to mention that one time that he bought me a whole box of those Papermate clicky pens that I like. A whole box!
Since I’ve lived with him for a long time pretty much everything reminds me of him, but one thing does stand out:
Making toast reminds me of Sir Monkeypants.
There’s two reasons. First, one time when we were playing Scrabble, I had one letter left, an “n.” Sir Monkeypants said it would be an easy letter to get rid of, because I could just stick it at the end of any word. And I totally disagreed, and as an example, I used the word “toast” — as in, “toastn” is not a word. We both laughed and now “toastn” and other random words that end in “n” are now part of our everyday conversation. Naturally every time one of us is making toast, it is customary to announce that you are “toastn” in the kitchen.
Second, ages ago Sir Monkeypants told me a story about one time when he was (I think) around 9 years old, and he went for a visit to India. He was obviously used to eating Indian food but after days and days of nothing Western, they went to visit one house that actually had a loaf of store-bought bread. Sir Monkeypants and his sister got so excited at the prospect of having toast that they went through slice after slice. I like the thought of little Sir Monkeypants, so far away from home, finding some comfort food, and being so happy. So whenever I have a slice of toast, I think about that story and smile.
TurtleHead 
Congratulations and happy anniversary guys! I never had a doubt in my mind that you’d make it this far. 🙂
He hates it when anyone is sad and will go to all possible lengths to cheer them up.
I was thinking about this fact the other day. I love that has this quality. It’s definitely high on my list now for qualities I’d like in a partner.
You forget to mention ‘ extraordinary financial wisdom — always consider whether you can throw money at a problem to make it go away! I’ve been using that a lot lately (think: Extreme Nesting)!!
I hope you guys are doing something special for your anniversary — not that I had any doubt you two would ever make it, but it’s still worth doing something different to celebrate the milestone. At the very least, get some cake and candles and make a wish for something you want — it worked for us!
We aren’t big anniversary celebraters — usually we just turn to each other sometime over breakfast and say, “Oh yeah! It’s our anniversary!” But I actually got pretty excited about this one, so I’m making a special dinner for us tonight (cheese fondue with — gasp! — wine).
Tomorrow is Carl and Krista’s 5 year anniversary, so I am going over to babysit for them so they can go out to dinner. Then Carl is coming over to our place on Saturday night so and I can go to the movies. It’s been ages and ages since we went so we know nothing about what is playing. We are thinking of seeing Inside Man, Thank You For Smoking, or American Dreamz — have you seen any of those?
And as for the wish, mentioned in one of his posts that you’d had some trouble conceiving. Obviously a very private topic but I just wanted to say I was sorry to hear that, and I hope there wasn’t too much heartache.
Girly! You know I’m not one for big, over the top, public declarations of love so let me just say .. you rock. And if only I’d known that I had you at the clicky pens ..
Mmmm … fondue … sounds wonderful!
As for the movies, we haven’t been seeing very many lately. Our second-run, cheapy movie theatre was supposed to move to a new location in October, but they still haven’t reopened. We cancelled Netflix after we found we were strapped for time and not really watching many movies. However, we do watch Ebert and Roeper religiously every week and they both agreed “Thank You For Smoking” is really good.
As for the conceiving part, I think it’s probably pretty impossible to go through that without some strife, but I’m glad it seems to be behind us now.
Btw, it’s awfully nice of you to write such gushing posts about your wonderful hubby, but just realize that it makes the rest of us look bad. And I think I’m in just a teensy bit of trouble for not having done the same thing for :-).
Oh, yes, I completely agree. I don’t know what state my finances would be in if it weren’t for both and ‘s help.
C’mon now, don’t be too hard on yourself. Writing and expression comes very naturally to , unlike the rest of us tech-heads. So long as knows how you feel, don’t worry too much about writing it out for him or doing some grand gesture for your anniversary.
10 years already…You two are a great couple who will grow old together!
P.S. I love the toast stories! Once when I was about 4 years old, my mom let me make my own “toast” and I messed up, putting the PB+J on before toasting, so naturally she didn’t let me put the gooey mess into the toaster afterwards so I had to eat the untoasted peanut butter sandwich. I never made that mistake again!