List 100 things I love about my wife

101 She refuses to shop at low quality clothing stores. She has a well-developed sense of style. Her clothes are fun, tasteful, sexy, and bold.

102 She has a great sense of humor. We play silly word games in the car. She makes me laugh many times a day.

103 She is kind and thougtful to the people she works with. They all love her. She bought Katie a calendar with frogs on it when we were at the bookstore.

104 She made me watch the crash scene from The Aviator. She said it was “awesome.” It was.

105 She came up with our project to “watch all of Spike Lee’s movies”. She has great taste in movies—I will watch anything that she recommends.

106 She is spiritual. She likes to experience mystery and awe.

107 She talks to the people I work with.

108 She has a wonderful figure.

109 She forged our friendship with Moona and Kyle.

110 She is nice to my little sister.

A Fantastic Goal

I loved doing this. It helped me appreciate the wonderful woman I’m married to in completely new ways. I notice a palpable difference in our relationship. I’m very fond of her.

My next goal is to collect all of these entries, print them out, and bind them into a beautiful booklet for her. Maybe I’ll write them out by hand and add drawings from the photos that I’ve posted.

Twenty-four things from the past twenty-four hours, that I love about Kim…

1. We had three arguments yesterday, but none were more serious than her fussing at me about breaking her headphones and me playfully pointing out all of the things that she’d broken that belong to me.
   
   
2. We sat on the bench in front of the Kimbell Art Museum and made out like high school students. For a half hour, we sat and soaked up the beauty of our surroundings and of our love for each other.We kissed. She brushed my shirt and lay her head on my shoulder. We watched the water pool and spray in the wind and noticed the buds showing on the trees.
   
   
3. She wore her turquoise shirt yesterday. She calls it her “power color” and it looked stunning with her bright orange necklace
   
   
4. The purse she bought from Target for cheap that she carries everywhere
   
   
5. The strikingly colorful Sigg water bottle that came in the mail earlier in the week
   
   
6. Stopping to get the mail…I hate it, she loves it, I always grumble
   
   
7. How kind she is to me
   
   
8. Hearing about the drama at work on the drive home. She always has drama at every job that she’s worked since I’ve known her. It must be the industry.
   
   
9. She wore Joshua Tree scent yesterday. She put it on, on her way out of the door
   
   
10. She ate a fish sandwich from Wataburger, and said it “tasted funny.” She’s very particular about the foods she eats
    
    
11. She wants us to renew our membership to the Dallas Museum of Art…she likes being able to go anytime and part in the garage for free
    
    
12. She talked about how she loves the antique exhbits at that museum
    
    
13. She suggested that we a) eat lunch together, and b) go to the buffet at the Kimbell. It turned out to be a lovely time.
    
    
14. She appreciated the small portions that they served us.
    
    
15. She put mint in her lemonade
    
    
16. When I asked her about our marriage she rated it at “8 out of 10” This is up from two years ago and high by her standards
    
    
17. She went to Target to buy a birthday card for her friend Angela
    
    
18. She found a shelf unit to mount above the toilet for $10.00 at Target and spend a half hour at 10:30 last night banging drywall anchors into the wall
    
    
19. She was very excieted about her purchase
    
    
20. We drew cladograms on a scrap piece of paper while we drove to Fort Worth after class. She’d just finished her Biological Anthropology exam that morning.
    
    
21. She asked me how my day was and listened when I talked about it.
    
    
22. We held hands when we walked around the Museum district
    
    
23. She thinks some kind of serendipity brought us together. She talked about how coincidental it was that when she was very young, she loved the Science & History Museum, and now she was married to a man who worked there. She also found it remarkable that the architect who had designed a lovely structure near her house is the same architect who is designing a new building for my Museum.
    
    
24. We listened to “All Things Considered” on the drive home. I turned it up too loud. We both listen to the radio louder when we’re in the car by ourselves.

e.e. cummings wrote…

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like,, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big Love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

Ten things I love about Kim’s body…

24 I love her womanly shape. She is a small woman with slender limbs, her elbows and knees are sharp and her frame is light. But she has the full hips and butt of a woman ready for life and love and babies. I get a thrill when she pulls her gown over her head and reveals the curve and round of her body. I get mad when she goes on about how she’s “fat” and needs to lose weight. Her body is beautiful, quirks, bulges and all.

25 I love the mole above her left breast. It’s directly below her neckline, and it only shows when she wears a revealing top. It’s mysterious and sexy. Yesterday, she wore a very low cut top made from colorful, acrylic flowers. The mole stood against the rise of her breast and the burst of color from her top.

26 I’ve secretly admired the mole on the back of her left arm since I first met her.

27 I love her scent (from #65… I’ve always been struck by her scent—when I would lean closer or stand beside her my nose would fill a musky, sweet, and subtle aroma. We made out for the first time in the back seat of her Saturn and my shirt smelled like her when I drove home. Every breath I took that night carried the feel of her skin against my hands and the warm pressing of her mouth against mine. I wore that shirt for two days without washing it.)

28 I love her elegant hands and feet. Her fingers are long and slender, the bones not far beneath the skin. They are strong hands that have caressed my skin, plucked my eyebrows, tickled my belly, squeezed my hands, and rested on my lap.

29 I love her lips. I love watching her smile and laugh. I love feeling them brush against mine when we part for the day, gently, so we don’t ruin her lipstick.

30 She has beautiful hair that seems as alive and feisty as the woman wearing it. (from #70… When I first met her, she had an unruly short afro. She would wrap copper wire around it, or pull it up. It had highlights of red from when she’d dyed it before I met her. Now her locks are down to her shoulders—springy, thick, and soft. She dyes her hair a different color every season and it always looks dramatic and gorgeous. I love the way it feels on my skin when we cuddle in bed—firm and scratchy. I love how it frames her face when she wears it down.

31 I’m very fond of the way she moves. When she’s excited, she turns into a whirlwind of movement. Her movement is graceful, but jerky, limbs going every which way. She is unrestrained and impulsive when she dances. I find it thrilling.

32 Her neck and shoulders are delicate. She likes to lay her head on my lap and let me knead her neck and shoulders. When I cradle her head in my hands and gently turn it to the side to stretch her neck , I feel like she has given me her complete trust. It’s a nice feeling

33 I love her skin; every inch of supple warmth, every bump, every bristly hair, and expanse of smooth flesh, brings joy to my own skin. The marks on her cheek and brow disappear under makeup, then reappear at night when she washes. She is beautiful with the make-up, but I like her better at night, without it. She seems more alive with her natural skin, marked by time and accident.

Ten little things I love about Kim

34 She makes me turn off lights to conserve electricity. She’s very conscientious about that sort of thing

35 She plays relaxing, ambient music. She likes Dzhihan and Kamien, Kings of Convenience, Everything But the Girl, and Zero 7. She is very much into moods and environments, so our life has an amazing soundtrack. One of the first things I found out about her was her fondness for ambient music. During our first conversation on the phone, she told me that she liked to fall asleep to Musical Starstreams

36 She will forever be a part of my memory of the Museum. That building has been such an important part of my life over the past ten years, and the memory of meeting her there makes the building even more precious

37 We joke around in bed during sex. She brings out the goofiest in me and it is delightful. She’s so much fun!

38 She likes to come up with ridiculous insults that apply equally to our cat and to the evil, incompetent manager at her job;

I don’t have to listen to you, you don’t have a soul!

I don’t have to listen to you, you don’t have opposable thumbs!

etc.

39 She does a great Michael McDonald impression

40 She has bought both flannel and satin sheets since I met her. She’s as much into tactile sensation as she is into sounds and smells. It makes for a pleasant everyday life with her

41 She prefers Japanese-style incense to the more common wooden-stem incense. She always keeps a dozen nice candles around the house. For a while, she would warm fragrant oil in a diffuser. She even had a diffuser for the cigarette lighter in her car when we were first dating.

42 She has nice lips

43 She held my hand under the table at the lecture we went to last night. It felt intimate and familiar.

44 I love seeing her between classes on campus. I never imagined that going to the same school would be so nice.

I love Kim because she’s away on a trip to New York City and…

45 I feel a giant hole in my daily routine where her body, her voice, and her warmth used to be

46 She calls me every day and tell me how much she misses me, even though she’s only been gone for three days

47 She convinced her best friend’s roommate to slide down a giant, snow-covered hill in Central Park. She talked the roomate into sitting face to face with her in a plastic tub while they hurtled down the hill, barely missing young children on sheets of cardboard. The snow was eighteen inches deep and the La Guardia airport shut down, so she had to stay another day in NYC

48 I ran into her gay friend, Kenyon from work and his man and we all went to a giant gay club in Dallas and danced until two in the morning. She is close friends with this guy and they share a million ridiculous jokes and comic routines while working the counter at the salon. Ruben (her co-worker’s man) and I are baffled by Kim and Kenyon’s antics so we just shake our heads in bewilderment.

49 She really appreciates it when I do little favors like sending e-mails to all of her professors to let them know that she’s stuck in New York. These things don’t feel like favors—I consider them obligations, but she’s very grateful all the same

50 I get to listen to my jazz for hours on end at full volume. I seldom do this when she is at home. She respects my taste and music and will often put the streaming channel on a great jazz station that she found…I really dig it when she does this

51 I miss her voice, her touch, her laugh, and her hands

52 Dancing at the club last night, I kept thinking about how Kim dances when she’s happy—she’s a maelstrom of motion and life, quirky hip-hop dance moves, and wild grace. I’m always astonished by her complete lack of inhibition when she dances.

I love Kim because yesterday…

53 she played her Kings of Convenience CD for the ten-millionth time while we drove to Dallas

54 she insisted on being the first person in line at Kalachandji’s so we could get a good seat in the garden

55 she invited me to come lay in her lap on the couch when I wasn’t feeling extremely happy. We watched “Gray’s Anatomy” together like we do every Sunday night.

56 she drew a bath, put salts in it, and lit candles and incense because she wanted me to relax and feel better. I was depressed and stressed out and she took the edge off of my mood with her kindness. She also cleaned the bedroom, made the bed nicely, and changed the sheets, which made for a very pleasant night’s sleep.

57 she made me take vitamins—vitamin C and an Intelligent Nutrients multivitamin. I always protest that “those vitamins are for kids!” and take them anyway

58 she insisted we go out and do something “fun and productive” with our afternoon. It was a gorgeous sunny day and we tooled around Arlington doing chores.

59 we found the neatest little outdoor produce market in the ugliest part of the city. It had all sorts of local produce, canned vegetables, honey, and jellies. She bought pecan praline and shared some of it with me. She was excited about the market and tried to figure if it would be worth the trip to come over to this side of town to buy fruits and vegetables.

60 she sounded so excited talking on the phone to her friend Kamila in New York City, who she is going to go visit in a few weeks. I love how her voice and accent change subtly to match Kamila’s. Every time they talk on the phone, I know instantly who she’s talking to.

I love kim because I remember…

61 ...THE FIRST time we went to Kalachandji’s in Dallas. I had gone to the Hare Krishna temple many years before with my parents. I was a teenage member of an interfaith group that visited different places of worship and going to the temple that night was a surreal experience—incense and dim lighting and a giant white statue of a bald man in robes. I didn’t know then that the temple had a beautiful vegetarian restaurant inside, but Kim brought me there not long after I had met her.

We had just begun dating and I wasn’t quite sure what to think of her aside from how gorgeous and cool she was. I remember feeling lucky, like I was dating up the food chain. And that we had so many little things in common that friendship was easy.

We sat in the courtyard of Kalachandji’s surrounded by trees, flowers, and a bubbling fountain. It was a spring day, late in the afternoon and tabla music played softly on the speakers above our heads. I remember being struck by the peace of the restaurant and the beauty of the woman sitting across the table from me. We had a long road in front of us before we got to a loving committed marriage, but that moment fixed the tone for the whole journey.

62 On our first date we ended up at the IHOP on University St. because the second coffee shop we’d visited that night had closed. We sat and talked into the early hours of the morning while great sheets of water slammed into the windows outside. By the time the rain stopped and we were exhausted from talking, it was 3 o’clock in the morning.

63 I remember all that times I’ve eaten at Luby’s Cafeteria with her. It was comfort food for her, since she grew up going there with her Mom and Dad. She always ordered the same thing – a LuAnne platter with fried cod. I learned a lot about her at Luby’s around the city.

64 One of my most vivid memories is sitting in the car at the doctors office while she was inside taking a pregnancy test. We’d used the grocery store test and it had turned up negative, but we had to make sure. We were at a rocky point in our relationship then. After dating for four or five months I had decided to pull away, that it wasn’t going to work out. But as I sat there for a half hour with every scenario playing out vividly in my head, I pictured me and Kim raising a child together and realized that I could spend my life with her. And that it would be a joyful life together.

She wasn’t pregnant. I didn’t tell her about my revelation then, but that was the moment when I decided that I would marry her if she would have me. A year and a half later we were married.

65 I’ve always been struck by her scent—when I would lean closer or stand beside her my nose would fill a musky, sweet, and subtle aroma. We made out for the first time in the back seat of her Saturn and my shirt smelled like her when I drove home. Every breath I took that night carried the feel of her skin against my hands and the warm pressing of her mouth against mine. I wore that shirt for two days without washing it.

66 I love her voice…it is at turns, deep and sultry or high and strident. I’m always tickled by how grown up she can sound—very womanly. I hear her voice in my dreams

67 She likes Vince Guaraldi

68 She wants to name our kids Zola and Sebastian

69 She is incredibly kind to me. She really cares about how I feel and she does many small kind things for me every day

70 Her hair is amazing. When I first met her, she had an unruly short afro. She would wrap copper wire around it, or pull it up. It had highlights of red from when she’d dyed it before I met her. Now her locks are down to her shoulders: springy, thick, and soft. She dyes her hair a different color every season and it always looks dramatic and gorgeous. I love the way it feels on my skin when we cuddle in bed – firm and scratchy. I love how it frames her face when she wears it down.

I Love Kim because…

71 She wants to go on Antiques Roadshow. We watch it whenever we can catch it on the local PBS station. She’s into all things old and valuable.

72 She introduced my to great vintage and second-hand shops in Dallas

73 She competes with her friend Kenyon at “building a high-end kitchen utensil and appliance empire.”

74 She introduced me to the Rapture, Dzihan and Kamien, Portishead, Bjork, Zero7, and Jamiroquai – meeting her was like falling through a spacewarp of good music

75 We checked out “The Emporer’s New Groove” from the public library and she laughed herself to tears watching it. I love the sound of her laughter.

76 We fell in love with San Francisco together when we went there on a business trip. Four nights at the Sleepy Cow Hollow Inn, afternoons walking along the marina near the Golden Gate Bridge, and dust motes dancing in streams of light at the Exploratorium made for a magical trip. Now she wants to move out there. Or to New York City.