Sometimes... love takes me by surprise. Winds me. Makes it so I can't breathe.

Last night, three miles into my run, it started raining. Sheets of sleet, slanting sideways, pelting against my face. What can you expect in December?

I'm soaked through, and who should appear, headlights slicing through the freezing rain? My husband.

Sometimes... I forget how simple love can be. How I deserve this.

I am forgetful, what can I say?

Once, when I was seriously sick, living a little more than a hundred miles away from my then boyfriend, him without a car, he bought a bus ticket in a seedy little neighborhood at 3 AM, rode the hour and fifteen minute bus-ride standing because they'd overbooked, walked five miles from the station to my apartment, and stopped off at a grocery store along the way just so he could bring me Chicken & Stars.

Today, he brought me Chicken Gumbo from the place downstairs, less than a block away, no bus-ride involved, but it was still just as much of a surprise.

So my anniversary is coming up; September 23rd will be our sixth year of marriage and our twelfth year together as a couple. This was tonight's conversation:

Me: So our anniversary is coming up here.
Him: Yeah, so it is. What should we do about it? [Stage direction: He and are are sitting back to back in computer chairs, only we're both stretched way back in them, holding each other's arms, heads side-by-side.]
Me: I don't know, how about dinner at our brand-spankin'-new Applebee's?
Him: That's not an anniversary!
Me: What do you propose? Going out to someplace fancy that neither of us likes? Getting tiny portions? Paying exorbitant prices?
Him: Yes. Paying exorbitant prices. It'll remind me of the day I married you.

-grinning- And this... is why I love him.

Last night, after one Jäger Bomb too many, I told my husband that we're like a Spirograph. Together, we're the boldest image that forms in the center, the one that shapes itself with the heavy pressure of the pen. And that everything that rotates around it is just noise. Moving patterns, left, right, circles round and round, but in the middle, we're the defined lineation.

He laughed and told me he knew exactly what I meant, but he promised me he would remind me of my drunken comparison in the morning. He didn't need to, I remembered. I rarely forget my plastered ruminations.

Here's to finding your Spirographs in the world, if you haven't found them already.

I did things last night that left bruises on the insides of my thighs and left me sore in places I can't even name. You've really gotta love that!