According to a new study, married couples who fight live longer. The theory is that anger is not bottled inside, slowly disolving the internal organs in a bitter sauce of regret and frustration until one day the pancreas thinks it’s the heart and the brain thinks it’s a tongue and the intestines get delusional. Buckets are kicked.

My husband and I fight. This shouldn’t surprise any couple who has been together longer than six months.

Our fights, like most, are stoopid.

On a night when cooking is out of the question:Where should we eat? Ooh, boy. Especially if one of us says “I don’t care.”

When getting ready for church: I thought you were going to dress the baby! There’s nothing like hitting the road early on a Sunday morning, frustrated with each other. Thankfully, by the time worship begins we are contrite and sorry and feeling like two big dummies.

When a child is sick: Don’t Google rare and horrible diseases! But what if she has Schistosomiasis? Does our insurance cover Schistosomiasis?

Whilst cleaning for guests: A certain person’s inability to focus on things people will see, not the state of the garage floor or under the beds. Kitchen floor? Clean it! Bathroom sink? Get the pound of blue toothpaste outta there! Junk mail and credit card offer shredding? Not so much. Unless you think my mom is going to obtain a Capital One credit card in my name so she can go on a bitchin’ wakeboarding vacation in the Ozarks.

Embarrassing the spouse on one’s blog: Just doing my part to live a long life.

Ryley is nine today.

He is our eldest son and he is halfway to age eighteen.

I love him so much, I ache. I am proud of what a sweet, sensitive, hard-working, bright, inquisitive, spiritual, tender-hearted little man he is. Ryley wears his heart on his sleeve. He always has. He rarely complains when there is a job to do—he just does it, and he does his best.

Happy Birthday to my big little boy.

~~~~~~

Bonus: his birth story, for the birth-story junkies out there. Originally posted on his seventh birthday

I had been in labor all night in a nearly-empty maternity ward. When we arrived at the hospital I was their only patient and got my pick of the twelve rooms. All the other heavily-pregnant ladies in Grand Junction were glued to Thursday Night’s Must-See-TV lineup on NBC, I supposed, whispering to their babes to wait until “Frasier” was over.

I went with room #12, at the end of the hallway. Not only did I like the distance, I liked the view. It had a stained glass window which opened to the hallway. When the door was closed and the room lights were off, the window was illuminated by the hall lights. I sat in my rocker and breathed through contractions, eyes locked on the bright colors. As the pain sharpened and deepened, I began to recite “Goodnight Moon” by memory. I read it several times a day to 18-month-old Aidan and knew it by heart.

The tightening began…in the great green room there was a telephone…

By the time I wished goodnight to nobody, the sharp wave was over.

I also visited the whirlpool tub, which was housed in a room painted like a tropical rainforest.

A teenaged girl arrived on the floor, screaming.

The nurse, who was probably the sole reason the HIPAA laws were created, told me she was sixteen years old and at 9cm. Her unhappy dad was with her. More screaming travelled under the crack of the door and then I heard the wailing of a newborn baby, a boy I later learned.

I’d like to say happy birthday to him, too.

It was a long night. More women arrived, more babies arrived. I never asked for an epidural. I soldiered on and on and on.

Daylight and the doctor, who pronounced me a mere six centimeters. Disappointed. She broke my water.

Ryley said “hey!” and decided to chase it out because not long after he was born.

My boy. He had giant hands and feet, splayed and red. They placed him on me. He squeaked, eyes wide open. I looked, I loved, I love.