Thursday Thirteen, number one on this blog

I asked Shel what I should write about today and she said thirteen reasons why I love her. Then she changed her mind and said thirteen reasons why I love "M".

So I will stick with the first one (since that's what she really meant) and save the reasons why I love "M" for another day.

1. The first reason why I love Shel is because she is such a good listener. The first time that I recall meeting her (she apparently had seen me around campus prior to my first memory of her) we talked for HOURS. I remember walking down the main stairs in the Shepherd Union Building and talking and walking SOOOOO slowly because we knew the conversation would end when we got to the front doors. She is such a good listener, people just tell her things that you would never think possible. I can't stay quiet that long to listen.

2. I love Shel because we read books together. There is nothing like finding someone who likes to do what you do. Shel and I will hunker down in bed with a stack of books between us and just read and read and read. ( We did this more frequently in life "preM") We talk about what we read, we agree, we disagree and we read some more. When living our former life, we would go to bookstores and spent HOURS browsing and buying books. We have tried to be better about not buying books since we moved here, but we still manage to accumulate them as though we were magnetic north and books were compasses.

3. I love Shel's smile.

4. I love Shel because we have the same goals.

5. I love Shel because we listen to music when we drive and we sing along and talk about the songs. We listen to the Indigo Girls and talk about what the songs mean to us. You'd never believe it but we get something different out of the lyrics. You would also think that after ten years of being together and talking about music that we were bored of it, but we aren't. We manage to find something to discuss each time we drive.

6. I love Shel because she always beats me at scrabble (and infuriates me), but I learn of ways to use one letter and score 60 points so I can infuriate others if we ever play with them!

7. I love Shel because she works at creating a warm, clean, home for M and I. She is a great cook and makes great meals, if only we could get choriso.

8. I love Shel because she has a great sense of humor and appreciates mine - so she has great taste.

9. I love Shel because she totally supports me in everything in do and believes in my ability to succeed. When I doubt myself she encourages me to move forward and "be all that I can be".

10. I love Shel because of all she sacrificed to be here with me. She came to Canada for us. Basically she put her whole life away - her job, her schooling, everything to come to Canada so we could be together when the USA would not recognise our relationship as legal and we had to "find another way". She lived alone with all the pets for five months and then came to Canada and basically waited for the immigration process to work itself out. That is not a slow, easy or inexpensive process.

11. I love Shel because we share a religious "history". It is invaluable to share life with someone who has come from the same spiritual and in our case "cultural" background. This makes a huge impact in our case because we both come from a place where our church has "rejected" us after we gave so much. Sometimes it is important to share the "knowing" with someone.

12. I love Shel because she's a great big dyke. I would probably love her if she wasn't a dyke, but probably not as much.

13. The last, but not least thing I love about Shel is summed up in the lyrics of Alanis Morissette's song, "Everything".
I can be an asshole of the grandest kind I can withhold like it’s going out of style I can be the moodiest baby and you’ve never met anyone who is as negative as I am sometimes I am the wisest woman you've ever met. I am the kindest soul with whom you've connected. I have the bravest heart that you've ever seen And you've never met anyone Who's as positive as I am sometimes.You see everything, you see every part You see all my light and you love my dark You dig everything of which I'm ashamed There's not anything to which you can’t relate And you’re still here I blame everyone else, not my own partaking My passive-aggressiveness can be devastating I'm terrified and mistrusting And you’ve never met anyone as, As closed down as I am sometimes.You see everything, you see every part You see all my light and you love my dark You dig everything of which I'm ashamed There's not anything to which you can’t relate And you’re still here What I resist, persists, and speaks louder than I know What I resist, you love, no matter how low or high I go I'm the funniest woman you've ever known. I am the dullest woman you've ever known. I'm the most gorgeous woman you've ever known And you've never met anyone as, as everything as I am sometimes.You see everything, you see every part You see all my light and you love my dark You dig everything of which I'm ashamed There's not anything to which you can’t relate