1. That’s her, at the desk.  Becky has great self-esteem, she just hates being the center of attention.  So she doesn’t like to have her picture taken, to be complimented or talked about at all ever publicly.  So here I go with nine not-so-usual things I love about my wife.

2. I think that Mother’s Day planter/picture frame/paper weight is three years old.  Still on the desk. She keeps everything our kids make and displays it as if priceless, because, to her, it is.

3. Becky is a multi-tasker with an exhausting-to-witness work ethic.  She’s wearing an apron (just finished cooking.) While doing math (just started our taxes.) I’m sitting on my butt a few feet away playing with my new camera (loser.)

4. She saves McDonald’s large styrofoam cups.  We have a cabinet full of them, with lids. Slightly neurotic plus thrifty equals strangely attractive.

5. Becky keeps folders she puts ideas from magazines and newspapers in: birthday party cakes and decorations, meals to try, places to visit, gifts to give, kid crafts, home improvements. She’s creative and adventurous yet paradoxically anal retentive.  I’ve never known anyone like this.

6. Workout DVDs, unwrapped and well-used.  My wife aerobicizes.  Sweat, tight pants and discipline.  That’s hot.  (Brian may be onto something with that theory of his.)

7. Becky home schools Gabriella (age seven).  Those books are on that shelf because her convictions were greater than her fears.  She’s not easily swayed.

8. Becky has every year of her life, my life, and our kids’ lives put in photo albums, with every person in every shot listed.  She’s not in many of the pictures these days (something I’m working hard to remedy) but the rest of us have proof we did stuff and a back-up memory on paper, she says, if we ever have a brain injury or Alzheimer’s.

9. She’s my business manager.  She was the cutest ruthless auditor in Dallas years ago.  I put my receipts in a little basket on her desk and they’re magically transformed into completely legal tax returns.  Becky and her ten key skills keep me out of jail.

10. She’s cheap.  She bought that frame for $3 and those Kleenex were three for the price of one.  She routinely cuts our grocery bill in half.  It’s a sport to her.  She doesn’t shop for groceries and clothes.  She hunts them down like the Navy Seal of shopping that she is and shows no mercy.

What not-so-usual things do you love about that person on the other side of your bed?