My Darling Joe celebrates an undisclosed number of years today. He will be getting a knitted present (that I can’t show you a picture of, because he will read the blog before dinner, and dinner is present time) and he will be getting the love and adoration of his family over a birthday dinner.

There are any number of reasons why my love deserves this, and much more…but we’ll start with these.
-for never raising his voice to me in anger. Not once, in all these years…even though I am…well. Me.
– for consistently referring to my handspun as “real” yarn. (Compared to, you know…Rowan or Koigu).
– for the stunning discovery I made the other night; that he is spending a few minutes each day actually trying to become friends with a hamster.
-for laughing himself stupid every single night that he succeeds in getting the aforementioned hamster to hang by one paw for a sunflower seed. Never gets old.
-for totally being the field trip guy. Even though I run into trees trying to get away from the Parent Council, Joe is the go-to guy for field trips. Science Centre? Yup. The Zoo with 30 fifteen year olds? Yup. You gotta field trip, tons of unruly urchins of any size or number? Joe will go, and he will like it.
-for deciding that the best way to keep track of Amanda and her life was to become friends with her friends, and for actually being cool enough for teenagers to fall for it. (I am forced to admit that this is much better than the chastity belt idea, or the brief consideration given to a cage.)
-for being afraid of racoons. (Seriously. His defence is that there are no racoons in Newfoundland, so it’s a “fear of the unknown thing”. My arse, he’s a chicken. When we were camping last summer and were set upon by a plague of racoons in the night, Joe refused to get out of the tent and shoo them off of our food, thus beginning an argument that ended with the classic line: “Get out of this tent and fight like a man”. )
-for (oddly) not being afraid of bears.
-for (even though he doesn’t buy movies) purchasing every single James Bond movie ever made and watching them over and over.
-for buying me the new Cake CD.
-for yelling “I love you very much” like I left him a great gift each time he finds clean underwear in his drawer.
-for his complete silence about “the wool situation” and for the way he makes out to his friends like I’m cool.
-for never buying anything I’m boycotting, for being political, and for only becoming more left leaning as he gets older.
-for being a completely empirical learner. I am forever smelling smoke as Joe walks around with burned up electronics saying “Wow, I should never cross those two wires.”
-for never making the same mistake twice (or actually burning the house down).
-for staying with me in the hospital when I was afraid, even though he was really afraid.
-for being a good sport. Joe will cycle 400 km, hold a sheep, drop spindle, try to make cheese, get up early, help you move, go to yarn shops, snorkel, ski, hike, pick carrots, or scour the city for a copy of the violin solo in Moulin Rouge if you ask him to. More than this…he will not complain while he does so.
-for insisting, even though he has never once been on time for anything, ever…and even though there isn’t a single person he has ever met that did not realize this about him instantly, for absolutely insisting that he is not the sort of person who is late.
-for, when I asked him if he was a “Townie or a Bay Boy” saying “Bay Man, Steph. A Bay Man”.
-for never saying anything about my absolutely horrible sense of direction, just quietly turning in the direction opposite to my suggestion.
-for still loving me every day, despite the fairly good evidence that I am out of my mind and a little hard to keep up with.
-for being a wonderful parent, who hasn’t stopped learning as fast as his kids.
-for being completely loveable, charming and good tempered.
-for not letting me unravel the sock (singular) that he is knitting me, even though it has been years and years since he knit on it, just because he promised to finish.
I wish you many more birthdays my Joe. Love you.