How old can this guy get?

I feel it is my obligation to give a "birthday shout-out" to my dearest prof, who is currently at cub scout day camp in the 110 degree heat with 7 10-year boys. So here are some current reasons why I love/tolerate him:

*He is willing to go to cub scout day camp on his birthday in 110 degree heat with 7 10-year old boys, so I don't have to, I mean GET to.

*He texts me chemistry jokes. Example: What do you do with a dead chemist? You Ba. (that's the symbol for barium, in case you are like me and don't remember your periodic table of elements)

*He comes up with clever names for me that he puts on his phone, so whenever I call I could come up as: Ball & Chain, Pick Up the Phone, My Guardian Angel. Of course this changes depending on whether we like each other at the moment, and sometimes I change it to something like 'The First Wife', which he then changes to 'But not the LAST'.

*He doesn't say anything about me taking daily naps while he works 14 hour days on 5 hours sleep. A worse man would be a little bitter. He does expect a nap himself though, usually on Sundays between 2pm and 5pm, you know, church. Which I have learned to grin and bear. And poke him in the ribs every 2 minutes.

*He gets honestly upset when I do something around the house for him, like mow the lawn or clean out the garage. He does not like it when I get to a task before he does, as he feels like an inferior husband when I do this. So I choose sometimes to leave things for a very very long time, or if I'm feeling snippy, I do it and gloat. But I'm not the better person here, just so you understand.

*He likes to buy items from Home Depot for projects that he doesn't necessarily have the time to accomplish, but thinks he does. So currently in our garage we have Project: landscape lighting, Project: sunscreens, Project: A/C fence, Project: overhead garage storage, Project: paint the garage door, Project: wow I better stop here before he gets too upset. But it's cute because he will still make that trip to Home Depot to purchase the items that will get stored in the garage for the next millennium.

*He likes to upgrade his car. Otherwise known as the Second Wife. She gets his attention most weekends and he spends hours surfing the net looking at pictures of taillights and armrests and other special car accessories, which he then emails to me to get my thoughts on which ones I like best. If I could, I would buy him those rims he was looking at along with the ground effects and and the cup holder. All so he could drive a hot car and feel like a cool hip 18 year old again. Who knew mid-life crises started so young?

*He will play board games with the children so I don't have to. Board games are not my cup of tea, but he will break out the Risk or the Axis and Allies and put in a few hours of quality kid time and he won't ask me once to join in. He even plays Life and Twister. The best part: he doesn't believe in letting little kids win. So our children have learned from an early age that their father will always beat them, in board games that is.

*He likes to take vacations that do not sound like vacations. Like visit the Hoover Dam. See above photo. Or the Stuffed Taxidermy Museum of Arizona. He would rather spend a vacation touring backroads or tracking down where the Mythbusters shoot, than sit on the beach. Of course he has this thing with sand, so not many vacations are spent sitting on the beach. Of all those years we spent in California grad school, probably 2 days were spent at the beach with him. Not that I'm complaining, because the last thing I want to do is hear him talk about how there is sand EVERYWHERE.

*He does laundry. Not as much as he used to, but for years it was his job. It was/is fantastic.

*He takes family members out to lunch for their birthdays. Not just his family, but mine as well. It is tradition for him to do this, and people will actually call if he hasn't, wondering about their free birthday lunch. Of course, he takes them to Joe's BBQ which gives out a free lunch for your birthday, but it's really the thought that counts.

*He likes to watch dumb tv shows with me. Even though I do not like it. And he finds it pure sport to try to convince me to watch a show with him and will usually pull some kind of "but it's quality time" nonsense. So sometimes I humor him and watch Carpoolers or that one show about the guy who works at a electronics store and has a data base in his head and helps out spy people. And I pretend to hate every minute.

*He is sarcastically hilarious. I literally have to reassure most friends that my hubby is joking for the first few years of a friendship. It is a sign of the fact that he likes you, so if he were to act completely normal, I'd be worried. I think it's annoying as all get out, but now it always makes me laugh. He is so dumb, and yet, so cute. And not the least bit intimidating, I swear.

These are just a few reasons why the guy for me is top notch. Of course I could spend all day coming up with more reasons, but I'm really not a sappy kind of girl. So here's to the Professor, on his b-day. U R da man.

*P.S. He doesn't have any problems with goats.