The Best Day of the Year

No, it isn't "No Trousers for British Actress Natascha McElhone" Day. It isn't even "Donate Gently-Used Antique Volkswagen Beetles to My Masonic Apron" Day. And, unless I'm sorely mistaken, it isn't even "The Idea of a Jewish President Isn't As Funny As It Used to Be" Day.

It's my wife's birthday.

Knowing me, insufferable sap that I am, I probably wrote a post like this on October 9th, 2009. It just seems like something I would have done, 365-or-so days ago. If I did, hey, you have two choices: 1.) you can sue me, or 2.) you can use this as an opportunity to look at the two blog posts side-by-side and write a little compare-and-contrast essay on them. Five paragraphs, please, double-spaced, size twelve font. Times New Fucking Roman, bitchcakes. Oh, and A.P.A. formatting, because I think all civilized people can agree that M.L.A. is for queers and communists.

I love my wife's birthday. It turns me into a complete Pudding Pop. Every year, at the precise, absurd, prior-to-butt-crack-of-dawn time she was born, we have set the alarm clock to wake up, hug, and go immediately back to sleep. That's just how we roll.

That's not my favorite part of my wife's birthday, though. Well, if it is, I don't know it, because I'm barely conscious, and neither is she. My favorite part of her birthday comes in the weeks, actually, the months beforehand. See-- I'm a planner. I love scheming. I love machinations. I love scurrying around, buying things surreptitiously, trying my best to pay attention when she says, in January, "Oh, I'd like this! Girls love sparkly things," at an antique shop or "Ooooh, cuuuuute!" at some brightly-colored skirt at Anthropologie. I love planning weekend getaways, talking to crackly old biddies named Edna and Mary Jane who run bed-and-breakfasts in random spots along the East Coast. I even like telling them that my wife is a vegetarian, but, "you can just give me all her breakfast meat." I always use that line when booking rooms for us at B&Bs, and the old biddies always laugh. Oh, Edna. Keep that bacon coming.

I like whipping up a birthday treat for my wife. She's the baker in this relationship, and I routinely fuck up things I try to do myself, because I lack the attention-to-detail that a recipie demands.

Add the vanilla AFTER turning off the heat? Oh.

But, usually, my kitchen capers and cockups are regarded affectionately as blunders of the heart, and I am given leave to "try again next year." And I do. Because, for me, it's fun.

Every birthday of my wife's comes with a custom-written parody of a Gilbert & Sullivan song. Rhyme and meter are all preserved, as is Arthur S. Sullivan's music but William S. Gilbert's lyrics are all supplanted (sorry, Schwenck) by yours truly, and I have an absolute ball setting the funny, quirky, delicate and strong story of our love to a patter song from "Iolanthe" or a duet from "The Gondoliers." Yes, that is my idea of fun. What's yours?

I like decorating the dining room with streamers for my wife, because my parents did it (okay, they still do it) for me and my sisters, and for each other. And, after the first time my wife saw the dining room of my mother and father's house streamered up to the nines for me, she started doing it, too. It's a good tradition. It makes more sense to me than not eating pork or not driving a car on Friday night.

My wife and I have known each other since February 16th, 2003, and it's hard for me to remember a time when October 9th wasn't the best day of the year for me. My own birthday has sort of faded in importance to me, that has become a rather emotionally tempestuous day in May where thoughts of mortality, uncertainty and other unfortunate thoughts cloud my otherwise vigorous thought processes.

But I suppose it's only natural that the birthday of the one you love should eclipse your own birthday, because, when you're married to your partner, to your buddy, well-- they're supposed to come first.

I'm glad you're here, October 9th. There's presents for her, double bacon for me, and enough love for a thousand more October 9ths.

My Favorite Day

No, it's not Victoria Day (CAN).

Today, October 9th, is my favorite day. It's my wife's birthday.

All day long, I get to think about the woman that I married on October 22, 2006-- the woman with whom I commenced an almost instant online infatuation on February 16, 2003. All there was back then was a screen-name and words. Lots and lots of words. She told me that she had scared off guys before with her garrulous nature-- but with me, it was just another turn-on.

I get to think about my buddy.

Last night, I spent almost three hours meticulously adorning the dining room of the house we bought together in February of this year with streamers. I spelled her name in streamers on our window blinds. Every doorway in the dining room is framed in streamers, as is the wall air-conditioning unit. While I did my little work, I had an old LP, scratchily playing in the background. It is a 1966 D'Oyly Carte Opera Company recording of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Sorcerer. It is an opera all about love and the mixing up of love and losing love and finding love and love potions, and it is most appropriate that it was the musical selection for the night before my wife's birthday because, in February, she and I will appear in The Sorcerer together. I will be the title character-- the mysterious and Machiavellian magician John Wellington Wells, and my wife will be where she likes to be, in the chorus-- a place where she can deftly hide. A place where I never could.

And, as I painstakingly taped red streamers to frame the doorway to the kitchen, as the character Dr. Daly sang about how unmarried and unloved he is,

"Oh, my voice is sad and low
And with timid step I go –
For with load of love o'erladen
I enquire of every maiden,
"Will you wed me, little lady?
Will you share my cottage shady?"
Little lady answers "No! No! No!

Thank you for your kindly proffer –
Good your heart, and full your coffer;
Yet I must decline your offer –
I'm engaged to So-and-so!"
So-and-so! So-and-so!
So-and-so! So-and-so!
"I'm engaged to So-and-so!"

I thanked my lucky stars that I had married So-and-so.

My wife is my buddy, she is my partner, she is my best friend. She embodies all of my hopes and dreams for the future, and within her lies the vast majority of my happiness and my faith in the universe. For, if it aligned so that she and I could meet and fall in love, it can't be as bad as I'm often inclined to think it probably is.

They say that you can't expect your spouse to change for you, but you inevitably change anyway. I've definitely changed since I fell in love with my wife, and it's been for the better. She challenges me to think in different ways, she trusts me with our financial responsibilities, which to this moment rather floors me since I most commonly use calculators as paper-weights. But she trusts me. She trusts me... with money. She trusts me... in the kitchen. She didn't always, though-- at the beginning, when we would bake together, she watched me like a fucking bespectaled hawk. But she's stopped that since, and I've made my mistakes-- mistaking baking soda for baking powder on more than one occasion, resulting in inedible pumpkin bricks. But she's realized that, really, what's the difference if I fuck up a dessert every now and again? What's that worth, when compared to my dignity and autonomy? And, besides, she once made oatmeal cookies and forgot the oatmeal.

I've planned a weekend brimming with activities, and, honestly, some of them might bust. I don't know-- I've never been to any of these places before. It will involve a lot of driving, and I'll be behind the wheel, but I don't care. It's for my buddy. My right hand. My brain. My better half. My best friend. My partner.

Sometimes I look at her and can't really believe that it's all for real. We'll be sitting on the sofa or sitting across from each other at breakfast or in the car on the way to rehearsal and I'll look over at her and I'll just want to start crying. Instead, though, I just say,

"You know what? You're my favorite person. Did you know that?"

"I had a vague idea," she replies, her stock response.

I have to work today, but, as soon as I can, I'm going to get the hell out of here so I can spend the rest of my favorite day with my favorite person.

Good old So-and-so.