For my beauteous wife…

… who is also comely, pulchritudinous and lovely. And damn sexy, too 😉

With Love, To My Wife

One year ago today, my wife and I were married by a judge in the San Antonio courthouse.

It was a long time coming, and we’d been through a lot before that, and a lot since, but it has always been worth it. We’re a perfect match, like cheese and tomato, every element coming together perfectly, like a BLT.

And yes, I did just compare our relationship to a sandwich. It’s a good sandwich, and besides, my wife loves a good BLT.

We’ve been a couple now for almost a decade, all told. There have been highs and lows, good times and bad, but whatever has happened, I’ve been happy and grateful for every minute that she’s been in my life. Even when we’ve argued, even when we’ve shouted, screamed and stomped around, I’ve felt lucky that I was arguing with her.

My wife is my one true love. She makes me happy; she supports and validates and completes my life. Without her, my life would be so much worse, and if I believed in a god, I’d bend my knee every day and thank it for bringing her into my life. As it is, all I can do is appreciate her, love her and cherish her for every minute of the rest of our lives, but that seems like more than enough to me.

There’s no way that I could ever tell her how much I love her and how much she means to me, but you can bet your last penny I will spend the rest of my life trying. I believe in us, and always will.

Happy Anniversary, Lottie. I love you!

Fly me to the moon…

To Lottie: my rock, my best friend, the love of my life…

Only You

This is for my wife, because she’s hurting and not feeling too good, and because I think she’ll like it… I hope she’ll see it first thing in the morning.

I love you, Honey. I hope you feel better.

Unashamedly Soppy Post…

… for my wife, to celebrate our first six months married.

I love you, Lottie, and I always will. Once I get close to you again, you’d better bet that I’m never going to be away from you again.

Happy Six-month-iversary 🙂

For my wife…

Just because 🙂

TV and love and marriage and stuff

I think I’ve written here before about my obsession with series of things. This is down to some minor obsessive compulsive behaviour – among other things, I am compelled to count similarly-shaped objects, as long as they all follow the same orientation, meaning that shelves of books or videos represent a particular danger to me.

If I find a series of something that I like, books, films, TV or cartoons, I am compelled to read or watch as much of it as I can. And it doesn’t stop there – there’s a good reason that I have all of Johnny Cash’s American series.

This can be rather frustrating. For a start, catching up on a series if I come to it late can be an enormous investment of time (The Order of the Stick and XKCD are a case in point), and keeping up with it thereafter can be a hassle.

Another reason for my frustration is with TV. We have Virgin for our TV, broadband and phone. They operate a service called “On Demand”, which allows you to watch programmes broadcast in the past week, as well as films, and TV series from channels such as HBO, Warner, Paramount Comedy and so on. This has enabled me to watch far too much Curb Your Enthusiasm, as well as catching up on some old favourites like Red Dwarf. Unfortunately, new instalments of various series seem to come rather randomly; I watched the first four episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles back to back a couple of weeks ago, and to my annoyance, no new ones have been forthcoming since then.

One of the series I’ve been watching recently has been The Mind of the Married Man, which originally aired on HBO in 2006. It basically focuses on Micky Barnes (played by Mike Binder) and his relationship with his wife, which is notably rocky, and his relationships with his friends, which are easy-going and trouble-free. Up to now, I’ve seen five episodes, and am eagerly awaiting the rest of the series.

Micky seems to always be getting in trouble with his wife, Donna (Sonya Walger); neither one of them seems to make much effort or be too content in their marriage, and he feels dissatisfied and sexually-frustrated. Out of a warped sense of fidelity and honour, Micky doesn’t sleep around, unlike his friend Jake, despite being near-obsessively drawn his assistant, Missy (Ivana Milicevic).

A large part of the series focuses on Micky and Donna’s problems, many of them involving sex, their mutual inability to understand each other and the fact that they increasingly seem to have less and less in common.

One of earlier episodes, Time on the Lake, sees Micky and Donna feeling restless after their married friends all reveal that they have joint hobbies which involve spending time together followed by great sex; Doug and Carol go deer hunting, Jake and Bianca go antiquing together, but Micky and Donna don’t seem to do anything together.

After several abortive attempts to get some kind of hobby going, including buying guns and going antiquing, they realise that they originally started going out because they liked to hang out together, and that they both love to just lie around in bed and read.

This is kind of what I’m getting at with this post. My wife and I are homebodies. We don’t go out dancing or go bar hopping. In the limited time we’ve been able to spend with each other over the years, our best times have been spent just laying around reading. We stay in bed, and cuddle, and absent-mindedly kiss in between pages. It’s one of the things I miss when we’re apart, and one of the things I like most when we’re together.

When we’re not able to be together, one of the things we seem to enjoy most is getting into discussions about… well, more or less anything, and talking and analysing and discussing that subject for hours.

What I also want to say is that even if you argue, even if you have problems, you can get past it. If you love each other, and can spend a little time doing what you enjoy together, no problem is completely insurmountable. And yes, I know that’s of a simplistic viewpoint, that most marriages and relationships are more complex than that, and that many problems are insurmountable… But not in my marriage.

My wife and I love each other, and we enjoy spending time together quietly. Everything else is window-dressing to that; those two things are sufficient and enough.

I’m struggling here because I don’t know how to get it out properly; all I can say is that I fell in love with someone who turned out to be the best friend I ever had, and she’s all that I could ever need in a companion and lover.

Dedicated to my wife, for ever and always.

For my wife

For the past week, Lottie has been dealing with various posts and issues around various blogs regarding domestic violence. For reasons which will be clear if you read this post, this is starting to wear on her a little. The flak she’s getting over here also isn’t helping.

I want to help her feel better, and I don’t know how, concretely, and that’s frustrating. My attempt at doing it is below. While it’s not something that I wrote with her specifically in mind, it does express some of how I feel about her; the feel of it is right.

Being Romantic
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways, I said,
Trying to be romantic.

(A waste of time on the beach at Blackpool,
Some have said. But I tried anyway)

Seventeen, she said,
(Utterly prosaic).

What?
Seventeen, she said,
And licked her ice cream cone.

I don’t get it, I said, and shivered
(I didn’t have any ice cream.
Too cold for me, but she wanted one).

Seventeen, she said,
It’s the number of positions we’ve tried,
And gave it another lick.

I was being romantic, I said,
And watched her tongue, all pink.
I meant ways of loving, not
Ways of making love.

Oh, she said.
Sorry.

It’s alright, I said.
Give us a bit of your ice cream.

She said nothing.
And smiled.

Eighteen, I said,
And took a bite.

One month ago today…

One month ago today, I married the love of my life: my beautiful Lottie. For the past seven years, she has been my confidante, lover and best friend. One month ago today, we stood in front of the judge and said our vows.

I struggle always to express how I feel about my wife – words never seem to come easily when I think about her and how much I love her and want to make her happy. One of the vows we made a month ago, though, seems to say it for me, or at least come close to what I want to say:

I promise to love you with all that I am and all that I have, until parted by death.

My wife has been a constant joy and source of strength when I needed her to help me, a non-stop friend, sounding-board and co-conspirator against the insanities of life. We’ve shared our thoughts, ideas and dreams together. It’s been two minds meeting together in love, honesty, laughter and thoughtfulness.

I love you, Lottie, and I always will. Marrying you was the best thing I ever did, and always will be.

With all that I am, and all that I have…

So I’m back…

I got back to the UK yesterday. I wish I was back with my wife. *sigh* Things will progress and become easier, I know that, but right now, I miss her terribly and wish I was with her. It’s only a small solace that I will be again in the near future.