I have been griping more than my fair share the last couple of weeks.  I am going on gripe hiatus long enough to appreciate one of the truly wonderful things in my life: Cathy McDonald (whom I *never* call Cathy), my partner and friend (oh, and incidentally, we’re married — so she’s my husband as well).

This morning we were running an errand in town and we stopped for coffee on the way home.  The individual who took our order (for some reason an offensive, five letter word beginning with “b” and rhyming with “snitch” comes to mind) did their best to counteract the general cheeriness of the sunny weather, and we both griped about her on the way home.  Also, all of our receipts got dumped accidentally into our paper recycling before I could enter them into Quicken.  With that as preface, I just received this from Cathy in an email titled “Zealous about Paperwork”:

I’m feeling proud of myself. I just spent too long on a phone conversation with a passport official that made the coffee chick this morning look cordial. Then I overassembled the documents they requested from me to annoy them.

I also went through the reclying piece by piece and retrieved all the receipts. Now I feel holy.

Darling — you are holy and wholly wonderful.  I am so grateful to share my life with you.

Okay, now I’m going to wipe the besotted expression off my face and get back to the serious bidness of griping.  If there is an occasional smile on my face…  well, you can’t blame a fellow for occasionally pausing to count his blessings.