identify 100 things that make my partner happy

31. Riding in the car. She doesn’t care where we’re going, she just likes to ride, even if it’s just around the corner.

Haven’t worked on this in a while.

25. Fish tank!
26. Bowling
27. Her new nanny job
28. Sleeping next to her cat
29. Taking walks
30. Trains

24. (Finally) setting up our surround sound system. Last night I finally hooked up our surround sound. I’ve let this go since we moved in July. At first, she asked me to do it, and I said I didn’t feel like it that night. Then, I went ahead and started it anyway. When she saw what I was doing, she did a little dance and sang “My baby’s doing something to make me happy.” That made me happy. It’s nice to be appreciated once in a while (and it was really cute).

19. Manhattan
20. Anything with a Yankee’s logo on it
21. Winning. Games, money, lottery tickets, raffles, arguments.
22. Soup. She loves soup.
23. My cologne. (She ought to like it. She picked it out. I like it, too. Especially the one I’ve got on today.)

15. Travelling. Anywhere.
16. Concerts.
17. Talking to strangers.
18. Fantasy hotel rooms (any hotel room, really).

I haven’t seen her in almost two weeks. (She’s been out visiting number 10). I kind of forget what she likes and doesn’t like. But now that’s she’s back, I’m going to start paying attention when she’s happy, and making a mental note of what made her that way.

7. Text messaging. I’ll never understand the appeal of this, but I guess that’s okay. I mean, why would someone want to pick up the phone and say all their sentences at once, when they can type them one at a time over the course of forty minutes?
8. Slo Motion. They’re a local cover band that we’re friends with. Mental note: we haven’t seen them in quite a while.
9. ** (This one’s personal between she and I. No, it isn’t anything dirty. Get your mind out of the gutter.)
10. Her cousins.
11. Doing just about any activity with her older brother. It’s like she’s still ten when he’s around.
12. Buying movies.
13. Helping me with work. When I bring home some of the more mundane parts of my job, the stuff I hate doing, she loves to help. I think it makes her feel smarter than me, or something.
14. Organizing things. Things like the pantry. Or her jewelry box. My closet. It seems to be very satifying for her, putting like things with like things. But do NOT get in her way when she’s doing it.

I’m actually sort of ashamed that I really pay very little attention to my fiance’s happiness. That sounds more callous than it is. I certainly love her, and want her to be happy, I’m just the sort of person that tends to get lost in his own thoughts and misses a lot of this kind of thing. That’s the whole point of this exercise, really: to tune me into what makes her happy (instead of only noticing when I’ve pissed her off wink).

Anyway, there are at least a few things that I know of:

1. Children (especially toddlers). This is number one for more than one reason.
2. Hand-written cards. Both giving and receiving.
3. Buying gifts for people. The more extravagant the better. I’ve never met someone who can hear someone say they might like to have something, and immediately store that information in a vault and never forget it.
4. MarioKart
5. Instant messages from people she hasn’t spoken to in years. I scroll through her seeming endless friend list asking “who are these people?” “Oh, so and so’s from high school… I met through…” There are a couple names of people she knew in grade school. It never ceases to amaze me, but she loves it.
6. Matchmaking. This process, especially when done online, actually causes her to dance in her chair.