Hi, Journal!
Omg, omg, omg, omg, we are getting so close to 500 entries!!!!
Okay. Deep breath! Whew!
All right.
The 194th thing I love about my boyfriend is that he has very creative and expressive hands. It doesn't matter if he's typing, or writing something by hand, or drawing, or just gesturing when he talks ... I really like watching his hands.
Sometimes even when he's just cracking his knuckles!
Hi, Journal!
The 193rd thing I love about my boyfriend is watching him try to match his grey athletic socks to his other grey athletic socks once his laundry is dry to make sure they have the same label on the toes even though they're both grey athletic socks and nobody is going to look closely enough to tell they're not paired up. I am way too lazy to put that much work into something so goofy, but it's just totally him.
Hi, Journal!
The 192nd thing I love about my boyfriend is when he chews on the end of a pen. He doesn't really chew hard on them, not enough to break or scratch them up. He just gets them between his teeth in a thinky-think way.
Hi, Journal!
The 191st thing I love about my boyfriend is, I can get excited about the same thing over and over again and it still tickles him to see me that way!
Like, I'm so excited that I'm getting closer and closer to 500 ENTRIES!!!
Hi, Journal!
The 190th thing I love about my boyfriend is how pure and caring his emotions are when he really connects with whatever's going on around him. He says we have that in common, except that he loses sight of it more than I do. But I think he's wrong and those emotions are always there, just sometimes jumbled in with mounds of other stuff.
Hi, Journal!
The 189th thing I love about my boyfriend is that he likes to double-check stuff and make sure he's not giving out bad information. Like, even if he's just tweeting on Twitter and thinks he remembers something that would be good for making a point in a reply to somebody, he'll stop and look it up to be careful that he's not mis-remembering whatever it is.
More people should be that careful!
Hi, Journal!
The 188th thing I love about my boyfriend is that he always takes care of the catbox and never makes any of the rest of us do it.
Peeeee-yewwww.
Hi, Journal!
The 187th thing I love about my boyfriend is when he tries to give people the benefit of the doubt. "Well, maybe that person wasn't trying to be evil or anything, maybe they're just having a bad day and didn't notice if they did ____ it would be a big problem for someone else."
He doesn't try it in every case, and I'm pretty sure there's lots of cases it wouldn't work in, but it's still a good thing to do, I think.
Hi, Journal!
The 186th thing I love about my boyfriend is when we're thinking the exact same thing about something, like a show we're watching or something one of our yams said or some food we're eating, and then one of us says that thing, and the other one is like, "I was just thinking the same thing!"
Hi, Journal!
The 185th thing I love about my boyfriend is how much he appreciates art. He got these PDFs of the new RPG game we're playing a while back, and he liked going through them for the rules and also for the art. But now the actual boxed set is here, and he's been showing us every picture and saying how much better it looks in print. And he's right! Which I might not have noticed if he didn't point it out.
Hi, Journal!
The 184th thing I love about my boyfriend is how he is very conscientious about rules. Sometimes he works so hard to follow a rule and I don't understand why it needs to get followed but it's way cute that he's still doing it.
Hi, Journal!
The 183rd thing I love about my boyfriend is that I think he's super-cute. He doesn't really think so, but I do, and I know he likes that I do.
I keep telling him he should trust me on this because, I mean, I'm pretty sure I know a little about being cute!
In other news, I am getting so pumped to play the new RPG game that came it the mail from a Kickstarter! It looks way fun and awesome.
Elle agreed to be the Game Master too, so I get to play with MSG as a character again. (Which, actually, I guess I get to do kind of a lot, but he's been Game Mastering the most recent game we've been playing, so I've had a little time to miss his player charactering.)
Hi, Journal!
The 182nd thing I love about my boyfriend is when he lets go of something that's been bugging him a long time. He's terrible about not doing this enough! So when he does, it makes me feel super happy for him. Also, it gives me an excuse to hug and kiss him a lot because I want to reward his achievement.
Hi, Journal!
The 181st thing I love about my boyfriend is when he makes time for his yams even though he's tired. I try not to take advantage of that too much, but it's super-awesome knowing it's there if I need it.
Hi, Journal!
The 180th thing I love about my boyfriend is when he keeps a stiff upper lip. Which is kind of a "whatever that means ..." sort of saying, because I don't know what a stiff upper lip has to do with not wimping out on something, but I know that's what it means, so I'm going ahead and using it.
MSG isn't always the most confident guy, but when the crunch is down, usually he stiff-lips his way through it.
I also don't exactly know exactly what "when the crunch is down" means. I think maybe I just made it up. But you get the idea, right?
Hi, Journal!
The 179th thing I love about my boyfriend is that he knows his limits! (About some things.) Like, if someone invites him to go hiking, he'll say okay because he likes the outdoors and he knows he needs to get in shape. But then if they say, "By the way, we're hiking up this super-steep mountain," he'll be like, "Ohhhh, no we're not."
On the other hand, other things, he's not so good about knowing his limits, like going out to eat at restaurants that give you too much food. Usually, he does give up and bring some home, but also usually, it's after he's eaten a lot more than he should have.
I mean, I guess he still knows his limits about that, he just doesn't pay enough attention to what they are.
Hi, Journal!
The 178th thing I love about my boyfriend is when he goes on a binge rolling up RPG characters. It's like, even if he's never going to be able to play them, maybe never even going to get to play the game, he still tries really hard to make them good characters with interesting combinations of skills or powers or whatever and usually even at least kind of a personality.
Basically, he can find a way to make a game fun even if he doesn't get to play it, and I think that's awesome!
My non-listy part of this entry is, now I want to make up an RPG character.
Hi, Journal!
The 177th thing I love about my boyfriend is his books. He's SO GOOD at writing them! He's been slacking about them lately and he needs to write more, so I hope he reads this and remembers how much happiness they bring me and everybody who reads them!
Hi, Journal!
The 176th thing I love about my boyfriend is that he doesn't think there's such a thing as growing up. Meaning, you're not going along being not-a-grownup and then there's a switch and you're a grownup. I really think it's kind of weird that people imagine that's how it works, like, kid, kid, kid, kid, grownup. But he still likes to do a lot of the things he did when he was a kid, and also, when he was a kid he was very rational and responsible like most grownups supposedly are but actually a lot of them aren't. So the older he's gotten, the more he's basically just learned how different stuff works, which means he can deal with stuff he couldn't have when he was younger. But also one of the ways almost all stuff works is that there's way more about it you don't know than you do know. So if you're bothering to keep paying attention and learning, you don't really stop "growing up" (if that's what you want to call it). And if you're replacing stuff that brings you joy with stuff that doesn't bring you joy, that's not growing up at all ... it's just learning some really wrong lesson.
Whenever I talk to him about this kind of thing, he makes me feel like it's okay that there's a ton of stuff I don't know and things I have silly ideas about because I haven't experience them much or at all. He says we're on a journey. And he wants to see where our journey takes us and where my journey takes me.
But he doesn't want it to take us someplace where I'm always all serious about everything and I never do or say goofy things about stuff I don't know anything about. He told me, "Aers, the wonderful thing about you is that every time you open your eyes, you open them a little wider -- because you see more, but also because the new things you see amaze you. A lot of people would call that naive or childish, and that's a big part of what's wrong with those people. They can't appreciate someone who allows the world to constantly dawn upon her and surprise her. They think a person like that needs to grow up. But that's fossilized thinking, the thinking of people who are stuck. Don't ever let them get you stuck in the same place. You deserve so much more than that."
Probably ... I should have been writing more things I love about my boyfriend that are like this one and not so many short silly ones like I've been doing this whole time, right? If I can write this kind of thing here and now, shouldn't I be writing it a lot more? Except that's exactly what he means by people getting stuck. The little short silly things I love about him are me with my eyes wide open, always seeing and being amazed by this wonderful person who cares about me. And every one of them is something great I've learned by knowing him.
I'm just so, so, so, so lucky, you know?
Love you, Journal!
Hi, Journal!
OMG!!! I am now halfway to my goal of 350 days of things I love about my boyfriend!
Well, I mean, not yet I'm not because I haven't finished this post. But in a second I will be!
So ...
The halfway to 350th thing I love about my boyfriend is that there's nothing about him I feel just halfway about and he's never just halfway in the way he treats me. We're all a hundred percent with each other!
Hi, Journal!
The 174th thing I love about my boyfriend is when he tells me things about his life. I mean, he's not super-old or anything, but he's older than me and he's gone a lot more places and done a lot more stuff than I have and when I ask him to tell me stories from when he was a kid or even just from before I met him, he's always happy to and they're always interesting!
(It's the same day as when I wrote that other entry that ended saying there wasn't any extra part to the entry. I skipped blogging yesterday so I had to do two today. Which is why I basically only had time to write the list part. I mean, and this explanation. Oh. Doo-doo. I guess I could have been writing something else instead of this explanation and then there would be an extra part besides just the list part. Dang it!)
Hi, Journal!
The 173rd thing I love about my boyfriend is when he kisses me very softly on the lips.
No extra blogging part tonight because Elle is waiting for me in bed and we're either going to have a pillow fight or be naughty or both.
Hi, Journal!
The 172nd thing I love about my boyfriend is how talking to him about things I already think are good makes them seem even better! He just really knows how to point out the good in things ... shows, songs, movies, anything, really!
My not-a-list thing for today is, I am sooo tired and sleepy. Whoosh! I don't know why, even. Time for snoozing!
Hi, Journal!
The 171st thing I love about my boyfriend is that he can watch movies and shows over and over again when he really likes them and never get tired of them. Not only that, he usually keeps finding new interesting things he didn't notice about them the other times he watched! He does the same kind of thing when he writes books and stories ... puts little sneaky stuff in there that most people probably wouldn't notice the first time they read unless they're paying super-good attention. He's just super good at watching and reading and writing things. I love him so much!
My not listy thing for this entry is, OMG we're getting so close to 500 entries! I think I probably posted that same thought before, maybe even not that long ago. But since I'm even closer now than I was then, I think it's still important enough to say!
Hi, Journal!
The 170th thing I love about my boyfriend is when he brings home sushi with those wooden chopsticks and uses them to eat with. Wow. It's cool because it's such a skill, and I know I'll never be able to do it because, I mean, sushi is really just exactly the right size and shape to eat with your fingers, so I do.
For the not-listy part of this entry ... Akane started a new blog! It's not really actually new stuff to me so far because what it is is the first set of emails she and our boyfriend sent to each other, and they let us all read those ages ago. But it's soooo romantic! (Also, Akane is super-funny. I love that girl!)
Hi, Journal!
The 169th thing I love about my boyfriend is that he writes great emails!
(That's a hint at this next part of my entry, which is the not-list part.)
Akane started a new blog! It's a place for her to put all of the super-romantic emails she and MSG have sent each other. I really like it so far! I read some of those emails way back when ... MSG shared some with me, and Akane shared some others. They're so wonderful.
I'm glad other people will get to see them!
Hi, Journal!
The 168th thing I love about my boyfriend is when he lives dangerously. Like, sometimes it will be bedtime and he'll be like, "Uh oh, when's the last time I cleaned the catbox?" And then he says, "I really don't want to do it now. I'm sure it will be fine until morning." I'm less brave, because when I hear that, sometimes I'll be like, "I'll just sleep over here on the loveseat then," on account of not wanting an angry cat peeing right next to my head in the middle of the night.
Hi, Journal!
The 167th thing I love about my boyfriend is, he doesn't want me to just be all about him ... he wants me to be me for my sake.
Which is why I think I need to start at least sometimes writing other things here besides just my list of things about him!
Only I don't want to mess up my numbers because them matching up between the title and the number of the thing totally makes it so much easier for me to keep track of which thing I'm on.
So yay! You should be getting a little more of a workout from now on, Journal.
You're welcome!
Hi, Journal!
The 166th thing I love about my boyfriend is when he experiments with making foods, especially desserts! Like there was some ice cream in the refrigerator and also some kind of watermelon soda, so he made a watermelon soda ice cream float.
It was good!
Hi, Journal!
The 165th thing I love about my boyfriend is when he's on the phone a long time, he starts to pace. I like to think it's because he's trying to be a phone potato, or because he's impatient to get back to talking to me. But a lot of the time it turns out he just needs to go to the bathroom, which is kind of cute.
You know it says something good about whoever he's talking to if he keeps talking even though he really needs to go super-bad!
Hi, Journal!
The 164th thing I love about my boyfriend is when he takes the time to do things just for himself. A lot of people skip over that sometimes, and I think it's a pretty big deal thing that people shouldn't skip. Anyway, he could probably stand to do even more of it, but I still love it when he does.