Winning at hobbies

My wife is a fairly lucky person. Not lucky with big things like the lottery , but in everyday things luck surrounds her. She is currently winning hard at hobbies. My wife has lots of hobbies, but currently, she is restoring old pipes. She bought a pipe rest on Ebay and it came with 6 bonus pipes! She is currently in the process of repainting the dog (he doesn't have mange.)

Another of my wife's hobbies is collecting old globes. We have a room in our home that is slowly filling up with earths as she adds new globes to the collection. Recently my wife ordered a globe that is also...wait for it...a pipe rest. Boom! That's game. Thanks for coming out folks. She has been crowned grand champion. 

Here are some other things that my wife also wins at because she is an all around winner:

Hats. Any hat anywhere looks good on Satu.

Wildlife: My wife can spot an opossum from 500 yards.

Cats: there is no cat in the world that she won't befriend with enough patience.

Stationary, pens, pencils and obscure erasers. You name it, she's an expert.

Collections. Things that are like another thing in only one weird way, she can find that common thread and will group them as a kind. 

Colors: Is there a name for that? You bet, and she knows what it is and can pick it out of 30 other shades of green.

Food: Satu can make a delicious meal appear from some dry goods and a couple of random cans in the back of the cupboard.

Words: Need the right word at the right time? She's got it on the tip of her tongue.

Marriage: She may not have the hottest wife in the pack anymore, but she does have the most devoted, loving, infatuated woman in the world to share her bed with. 

Working together

Today, one of the welders that I work with asked me if I like working with my wife. The answer is yes. I love doing anything with her. I like to work. In general I am a happy person, but Satu makes every day better.

Yesterday when I was having a bad day she hid mints in my office to keep little happy surprises coming throughout the day. Today, when she had a really bad day at work I tried to lighten the mood by being there to sound off against and to rub her shoulders secretly before the meeting.

I love being anywhere she is. It makes me proud that people there know us as a couple, because I can only now think of myself as a part of this pair. Work often sucks. No one pays you to do easy stuff, they pay you to carry a burden, emotionally tumultuous, heavy with responsibility and make decisions that you might get yelled at for making or not making, But when Satu is around I feel like someone is always on my side.

When I told Vicki that I not only liked working with Satu, but that I adore her and I think everything is better when she is around, she seemed either jealous or disgusted. She says that her boyfriend/ man person annoys her even though he's also wonderful.

I can't imagine feeling like that. Satu is just wonderful, but in an effort to relate, I think I just described her as "bad ass." Satu is a force of nature. She can summon power from thin air and make you feel like all of the love in the universe resides in your aching, swelling chest. I always just want to come home to be around my wife. There is no brighter day than the one we live in now. There is no home that could be more full of love and no moment in my life that I don't feel like I am half of this team and wholly myself.

Long weekend

Satu and I were lucky to get two whole days of a 3 day weekend together. We did all kinds of couple things like meet another couple for dinner and tell our slightly embarrassing stories to new people who will tell us theirs.

We went to Home Depot and to Lowes and giggled about landscaping ideas and the odd chipmunk scampering through the patio section. Satu bought a bee house and helped me figure out the right blocks for our (possibly toxic) fire pit. For the rest of the afternoon we sat outside and planted flowers and just listened to podcasts.

To our 20ish friends who spent the weekend camping and hiking and defiantly smoking cigarettes while they manufactured emotional drama, this weekend probably seems boring. To me, it was perfect. Satu kept looking over and asking me why I was making goofy faces at her. Obviously it is because I feel like I live with a superhero. I feel so lucky that I often feel like I with someone who is so awesome that she is a legend.

possibly toxic

I never get tired of being around her. She always surprises me and makes everything better. When I worry, she finds a way to calm me. When I am hyper, she lets me run myself down. When I giggle for no reason, she will giggle with me just so we can laugh together.

I never thought in my life that I could be with someone that I can trust like her and admire and be endlessly surprised and fascinated with. I usually have more fun at home with Satu than I would anywhere else in the world.

Is this the first step to being an old lady? I don't need to go out because everything I want is here in my home (as long as we remember to get groceries.) I don't go out for retail therapy because I don't care much about anything that I don't already have. Our lives are happy. We can watch cheesy sci-fi shows or listen to old radio stories (which she has on dusty tapes somewhere).

It's sad to me that two days together seems like such a vacation. I think most people get this every week, but I realize that I am actually starving for this kind of time with her. I like getting up slowly and having coffee together before busy body-ing around the house. One day soon I would like to climb maybe one more rung up the corporate ladder so that we can afford for Satu to live the life of the artist that she is instead of suiting up in her work clothes every day to go do a job she hates. Hopefully soon we will have two day weekends every week. How sad is that for a dream?

47 years

Satu has been on this planet of ours for almost 47 years. I often like to think of what it would be like if I had known her for all of them. I feel lucky to have known her for almost 10 years, but I feel like I missed 37 possible years of laughing and knowing her. Satu is my best friend. The sound I love most is the sound of her laughter, but the little animal noises that she makes when she is just satisfied are a close second.
 I feel like my 12 year old self  when I am with her. When you are young, all your dreams about a future life are really simple. You never imagine drama or mixed feelings, just your happy home and good times. I feel like that is what my real life with Satu is like. I am living a 12 year old fantasy with an amazingly hot wife. We have breakfast together and cuddle up at night. Mostly we laugh and just can't get enough of each other. If I had known Satu when she was 15, we would have talked about fantasy books and probably scooped up frogs in a net. We would have ignored the world and talked on our incredibly heavy phones with twenty foot cords.

If I had met Satu when I went to college at 17 she would have been my instant crush. I would have listened to all of the bands that she liked while thinking about her. I would have spent my morning jogs convincing myself that I was exercising to be confident and pretty for all of the making out I would be doing in my mind. I would be practicing conversations about her and trying on all of my hats before finally just going back to the Indiana Jones one which is the only one I liked. I imagine that she appeared perfect in any situation. Bam! Grocery store at 2 am drop dead gorgeous in a sweat shirt with messy hair. Could she be on the next aisle? What if I run into her on the quad? She's probably really busy and would only make eye contact for a second, but in that second, she would fall in love with me.

If I met Satu when we were in our early twenties, all of our friends would have been part of setting us up. There would be elaborately fought get-togethers. She would be the life of the party and I would probably just be someone's roommate, but for one night, the best of my life, I would join the party and feel like I turned the page in my life.

If I had met Satu in my late twenties, I would be a little more calm, but feeling lost about where I fit into the world. We would talk all night long and reflect on the long stretches of life behind us while feeling that what we do now determines all that lies before us.

If I had met Satu before I joined the Marine Corps, I would have sworn loyalty to her ahead of my country. Would I have gone to war? Could I have, knowing that my true purpose was not to sacrifice my life or to risk it, but to live it with her?

What are the next 47 years going to be like? I feel like I am living all of my earlier fantasy lives at once with the woman of my dreams. There can not be a better life than this, and yet my own life with Satu gets better and better. Every day that we wake up together, I feel like I found peace and purpose in my life. I don't care at all if we end up being ignored by kids as we slowly walk up the beach in our eighties. I don't care if we drink cheap coffee and wear flower prints in our 90s. Every second that I get to spend in love with Satu is a second I spent feeling like my full self.

Better together

Satu and I have a quiet home. Coming home to her has always meant we could be ourselves. There is no better sound in the world than her laughter, and it fills our house often. When we pass each other in the hallway, we usually take the opportunity to touch hands or squeeze a shoulder.

Being away has really made me miss our happy, cozy, weird, civilized loving home. It is easy to see the things in a house that you want to fix, the broken steps or the cracked tile, but from this distance it is much easier to see the things that are right. The comfortable bed that we share most of the time with a greedy little dog and a skittish cat. The candles that she lights for me to make me feel special when I come home. Satu's sock feet propped up on the coffee table while she drinks coffee in the morning and looks at pipes online.

Yesterday, Satu nested our living room into this nice arrangement. Gimmie is probably waiting for her to turn around so he can scratch his butt on the rug. I can't wait to get there and get back to normal.

I feel so lucky that Satu found me and that she loves me. She knows the real me, the clumsy, disorganized soft-hearted person that I really am and she never has spoken a mean word to me in our lives. She has protected me every day and even when we are having difficult times, she protects me and looks at me with love.

Before Satu, I would have never thought that someone would love me like this and make me this happy. I feel like we are the healthiest couple I have ever met and I feel like I could have missed this wonderful life together if the stars hadn't aligned correctly.

Satu tells me that if we hadn't met, that I would have met someone else who is good like her, but I don't think so. I know the world is full of wonderful people, but she is my one. She fits perfectly. She knows me like no one in the world has or ever will. She's my best friend and my dream woman. I won't feel right until I get to put my head on her shoulder and relax into her arms.

Looking for a common thread

Here is a list of some of the things that Satu collects (that I know about.) I have always been curious about what the common theme is, so listing them out with some guesses about what she likes about them may be key to unraveling the mystery.

1. Fishing lures:
Hmm. They are colorful. That's a plus. Also, they look like bugs and Satu likes bugs, especially the strange and colorful ones. The more legs and fur the better I think. She is a friend to bumble bees. In fact, I have never seen her encounter a bug she wasn't willing to rescue, including spiders.

2. Droids:
She must just like them because they are droids. They are little robots with personalities. They represent the best aspects of people. Playfulness, loyalty, willingness and joy. Droids are always up for an adventure, kind of like my lady. Occasionally they get into trouble around the house. Remember when they got drunk and pooped bolts and nuts all over our bar? gross.

3. Guns:
I think she likes them because they are beautiful, well engineered tools that are also powerful. They put a small woman like her in an even battle stance with anyone who would dare to think they could bully her. She may like them especially because she is great with them. Due to Satu's no-nonsense ability to control her body and emotions, she can calmly out-shoot most experienced men who don't have her naturally calm disposition.
Guns are pretty and complicated. She has always liked various machinery and appreciated good design. Maybe Satu likes them because they strike the right love of metal and science. I personally can't tell one 1911 from another. You can point out the rounded back end all day long, but I am still going to identify that thing as a pistol and nothing more. Not my wife. If there is anyone in the world that can pick out the special difference in a thing, it is Satu... (wait a minute. That just made me feel surprisingly good about myself.)

4. Pipes:
Here is another thing that seems like all the same thing to me, but apparently we need to have different ones because each object has a different story. This one looks like a professor owned it. This one belonged to a middle class day dreamer who chewed nervously through the stem. This one may have belonged to an Italian statesman and this one to a farmer. I don't actually know if she is driven to imagine the owners or the makers of the objects. Maybe both. maybe neither. Who knows with her. She is probably looking at pandas wearing skirts online right now. Is that a thing? Meh. She would know.

5. Cigars:
I feel like these should be related to pipes, but I actually thing the connection is probably more obscure than that. It is probably about smell and taste. The same way she wants to have different liquors around, she wants to have different cigars. She really doesn't smoke them often. Satu has a keen sense of smell, so she probably appreciates the different musty, grassy and earthy smells of different tobaccos. I also think she likes to care for things that require a good sense of understanding. (like me also.) She fusses with humidity and storage. Just like with me, cigars require attention, but they are worth the trouble. Strong hands picked the tobacco, dried and aged it and rolled it lovingly. I also require strong hands. Satu has the strongest hands and heart I have ever known.

6. Desiccants.
They don't call them desi-cans. Who even knows why she has a thing for them. I feel like someone who saves desiccants probably saves matches and printed tissue papers. At this time, I fully recognize that it is very likely that my wife has a collection of printed papers in a variety of colors, sizes and prints. I will probably never find it, but it is probably somewhere.

7. Cardboard ships:
This one is a write off. I feel like everyone would love and collect these if they know about them.

8. Hamsters and crickets and such:
Japanese. What can I say. We have a figurine of  a woman washing a cat in a clawfoot tub and a ceramic baby riding a cricket. Of course there are plastic hamsters and battery operated lighting bugs.

Reality break: What is the common theme? Man stuff? No. Men don't collect hamsters or dessicants. Small? No. Pretty sure Satu would add a cannon to her gun collection if she could. Functional? Nope. Umm. cardboard ships?

9. Lamps.
Satu definitely has a thing for light sources. The older the better. 20's-60's preferred. Shiny is good but so is translucent or luminescent. Flickering candles or glass? lightning bugs? Is this a related category. What is the connection here?

10. Books:
There are some books that need to be a part of the whole. Is she missing one of the Nancy Drews? We definitely have full collections of navel books and Charles Dickens and the OED which is the never-ending collection of collections. Is it the obscurity and thoughtfulness of the themes?

11. Little plastic thing-a-ma bobs.
I am thinking of the things over the sink. They are of a kind, but do they count as a collection? Maybe the key is in things that are related, but only in my wife's brilliant mind.

12. Light sabers:
I think this is just a thing that she fell in love with and became an expert in like guns or cigars. Are these in any way related to the need to collect beautiful tools, or is this about imagination? Are they like ships in a bottle and reliving naval battles in space? Is this really about how Star Wars saved her life, or is it about getting your own little piece of a fantasy as an adult? I feel like for me, life with Satu is the fantasy I have always dreamed of, but maybe she has a hero's spirit. Maybe she is a swashbuckler. Maybe she's Superman, or Aquaman, or Tarzan or Hans Solo. All of that wrapped up in a small, super wiggly little fireball of a lady.

13. Knives.
I think Satu likes things that are shiny and things that are dangerous. I think knives satisfy all of that, plus the love of tools. I have always had a thing for Damascus steel because it is swirly, sharp, pretty and deadly. Is Satu the same way, or does she have the brain of an engineer? Does she like sharp, craftsmanship, shiney, engineering or some combination of the thing you could never guess about?

Does she like the stars? Can you collect them in some way?
What is the next thing she may like? It won't be new. It won't be plastic. Maybe wood? Maybe leather? Maybe glass? Colored glass? Small glass? Artisan glass? Is there such a thing as old man, naval glass? Can we get a porthole from the Pequod? What snags her imagination and holds it indefinitely?

What is the common theme? Maybe it is just her. Maybe she is the only one with the unique life that allows her to know about bronze, collect fishing lures and love me into our sixties. This didn't help me figure out the common theme, but it did help me re-define how unique my wife's wonderful mind is.

Satu, If I could be the next strange unknown that you would discover. If I could just be a shiny tool or a complex and mysterious scent. If I can just hold your fascination long enough to be the next thing. The best thing. I want to be the thing that makes you laugh and captures your imagination, but I also want to discover those things with you. Your mind is so endlessly curious. How do you make connections? How could I ever know what tickles your fancy? You are bottomless and topless.Your touch reaches the stars and unknown places. You are the only person I know who could be you.

What is the connection? Who could know? It is just your fancy. The things that you love are lucky things in the world. Myself included.

Double plus uncozy

Right now I am at my younger sister's house getting to know my new nephew Sam and reconnecting with my sister. I love them both so much, but I feel decidedly out of sorts without Satu around. I miss our home and the way we quietly connect just by being around each other. I miss the terrible little dog squeezing between us when we try to spoon and I miss the one eyed cat purring like a chainsaw while she makes really uncoordinated muffins on the comforter.

I miss feeling like Satu and I are united against the world, cozied up together in our cave preparing to face the day together. I miss the way she smells especially feminine before work like lotion or hairspray, or whatever happens in that tiny bathroom of ours that prepares her to be seen. Except by me. I get to see her as she is. Unguarded. Perfect.

One of the things I love most about living with Satu is the little moments of joy that she finds everywhere. Look at that lady cardinal in the bush! Can you believe that this hairball I found under the couch is perfectly round? Look how serious the dog is when he tries to figure out if he likes olives. Every day is full of ordinary moments that mean something because I have her in my life to share them with. It is like having a sleepover with my best friend every night and always being excited to get home.

As much as I love my sister, this sleepover would be so much better with my wife here. I'd love to see her hold Sam. I think that Satu is hard for me to read sometimes. She's really tender on the inside, but she often doesn't show it to others. I just know that if she held Sam next to her chest, all of the joy molecules in her would click together and make a giant ball of happy light inside her. She is good with babies and animals after all. I'm happy to be her animal.