a meme for ted

There’s a really terrific meme going on at LJ right now, in which the rules are thus:

1. Reply to this post if you want me to tell you how cool you are!
2. Watch my journal over the next few days for a post about you and why I think you rock.
3. If you like, post these instructions in your journal and give your friends a much needed dose of love and adoration!

It’s just so incredibly nice to read down my friends page and see all of these wonderful things being said about people. Just really, really nice.

But today is Ted’s birthday, you see, and so I am going to take this meme and apply it to my husband.

Ted rocks because, with no pun intended, he *is* a rock.

Ted is one of the most solid, capable people I have ever met. He cares tremendously about people and things, and wants to keep them safe without wanting to stifle them. He is salt of the earth in the best of ways: make certain people are fed, and fed well, and from there all problems can be solved. “Ted,” as Marith once said, “puts more effort into breakfast than most people put into the whole day.”

It is my opinion that I must be a complete pain in the ass to live with. I’m constantly focused on worlds that don’t exist, I rarely cook, I clean only when the straw breaks the camel’s back. Ted not only has got the care and feeding of a Kit down pat, but he generally seems to like it, and if for no other reason, Ted would rock just because of that.

But it’s a lot more than just that. When I get stuck somewhere in one of those other worlds and I’m not sure what to do with my story, he listens and offers ideas, never taking offense at the ones I reject, until something sticks and I know what to do next. He not only supports me in my endeavors, but has a sort of low-key casual confidence in my writing that stretches far beyond the bounds of even my own rather significant expectations. He makes dinners most nights and will often make a weekend breakfast. Granted, he too tends to be a camel’s back sort of cleaner, but all things considered, that’s probably good, or I’d really drive him nuts.

He is consumately silly. Long years of association with me have worn away the edges of his dignity, so that he is willing to let the silliness out in public. I refer you to the Brave Little Snowflakes (followed later by their more fearful brethren, the Significantly Larger Snowflakes, which had obviously been frightened into poofyness by the ravens swooping around), or to the Irresistable Gravitational Pull, which causes one or the other of us to be drawn to the other for a quick smooch.

He did something entirely against his nature after years of struggle, and quit a job that he hated in order to pursue something that he loved. The past three semesters he’s maintained a 4.0, has won friends and influenced people in the culinary occupations in this town, has developed a love for good wines and how to use them to enhance meals, and has become a full-out food geek, so that every time he says something anymore I have to ask him what that word means. It is really quite wonderful.

I have ended all of my other memes about why people rock with: and that is why he rocks. But the truth is, in this case, Ted rocks, and that’s why I love him.

Happy birthday, sweetie. :)