How do I love thee?

I mentioned the other day how I had signed up for Dad Blogs DOT COM? This isn’t a test folks. I was just refreshing your memory. Anywho. They’re having a little contest over there, and it don’t involve rulers. It’s a Valentine’s contest where you can post a blog about how super fantastic your wife is…the prizes, FIVE $70 gift certificates to ProFlowers.com. I ass u me that that’s one gift certificate for five individual weiners…but maybe there’s one blog that’ll be more incredible than all the rest and steal all five??? I dunno.

So Joeprah, one of the sites co-founders, posts a contest update yesterday about recent entrants, rule clarification, and such. And I posted a very brief comment, “If I only had a wife…”.

***NON-ESSETIAL TANGENTIAL PARAGRAPH: I should note, before I go any further, I fucking adore the name “Joeprah”!

Okay. So. A little while later in the day, Joe sends me an email explaining that he didn’t want me to feel like I was excluded from the contest because my “wife” had a mangina and that they weren’t a discriminatory kind of site and yadda yadda yadda. He basically said that if I wanted to write a post about my finger puppet, mother, jailed sister, pregnant cousin, or anyone else I worshiped on Valentine’s Day that I could and all entries would be accepted. I assured Joe that I wasn’t sensitive to the love-fest going on over there with the guys and their wives, and all was good.

So while I’m not technically writing this post in an effort to win any sort of prizes, I thought, what the hell. Let me tell my Boo story.

My sweet kitten is the most amazing guy ever. He sticks with me regardless of my many whims. Over the years he’s navigated, successfully, through my:

• bowling ball obsession when I bought them every other day off of Ebay.
• “Under $2k and 200k miles, gotta have it car/cycle obsession". (Seriously, at one point there were six cars in my driveway).
• duct-tape phase, where I made wallets, purses, shopping bags, car-seat “upholstery”, and swimming trunks out of duct tape.
• Pet phase (where I came home with a new mammal every weekend).
• Camping phase (I still like to do this, but now I do it with the kids).
• Cell phone/Laptop addiction. Either I have a “problem” or manufacturers need to start making these products more durable.

He tolerates my:

• Shoddy weekend bathing schedule.
• Mother
• Smelly feet (that doesn’t have anything to do with my lack of bathing Friday through Sunday).
• Father.
• Bi-Polar personality/ADHD.
• Sister.
• Weekend nap schedule.
• Road rage.

But most importantly:

• He let’s me be me. I know many of you probably think or assume that “(F)reddy” is a performance piece, or an act. But I assure you…what you read is what I really am in person!).
• He agreed to adopt these rug rats and then let me abandon him to be a single parent for 32 years while I go back to school in the evenings.
• He always tells me how fabulous I am (and, it’s true, I am…but it’s nice to hear it)…AND tells others how amazing I am.
• His capacity to stay mad at me is about 21 seconds, and that’s if I REALLY piss him off.
• He has no sense of smell, so I can be as gassy as I want around him and not feel self-conscious about it.
• He’s an amazing poppa to the kids, and they worship him as “the ‘nice’ one”.

Now, that’s not to say my boo kat is perfect. No. In fact, he has many faults. He:

• Can’t cook to save his life. Boiling water is verboten for him in our house, because he can even fuck that up.
• Isn’t exactly sure where the recycling bin has been stored for the last 10 years. (Though he’s getting amazingly better since I’m not home in the evenings anymore to take his shit out).
• Thinks our house is green, but it’s not.
• Drives worse than my grand-mother did the day she drove home from the hospital the day after her hip surgery better.
• Has an unnatural obsession for comic books that is either going to defeat us or rescue us in these tough economic times ahead.
• Did I mention his cooking is terrible? Seriously. Ask him about his “Chicken Scaryaki”.
• Can navigate his way through any comic book and/or porn site, but can’t find another single thing on the internet. I’m not even sure if he knows what Google is.

He’s a pretty amazing guy. I’m sure many of you would argue he’s more amazing than pretty, but I’d disagree. I tell him all the time how lucky we are we found each other, cuz nobody else would tolerate either one of us. I enjoy being stuck to him. And I’m glad he enjoys being stuck to me.

Like I said, I didn’t write this to win any contest. I’ve already been told that I’m the absolute least romantic guy ever. I’ve been told I “ain’t marriage material”. The best Valentine’s day I ever gave my boo was when I took him to Bath Spa, UK for a week, and I even fucked that up by bringing his mother along. I try though, I really do.