JUST ANOTHER DAY, and I like it like that.

How many times have I seen movies, read books, where the protagonist says, " Eeeeuuuwww, I can't marry him. He's my best friend!" Happens all the time, doesn't it? Like spending your life with your best friend is inherently wrong. Why in the world would you want to be with someone you can relax with, be yourself with, laugh, cry, burp and fart with? I mean, how romantic is that?

I can not imagine my life without my best friend. We fall in love over and over again and always for different reasons. Right now I love his greying hair, silver beard and freckled knees. Last year I loved his determination to heal after having knee surgery. And the year before that I loved his ability to stand outside in the heat and pound fence post holes in to the ground one at a time because he loves our horses as much as I do.

Without that rock solid core of friendship, laughter, fear, pain, history, and always our curiosity, we would have split years ago. It's the relationships that exist without that center that dissolve. Nothing wrong with passion. It makes the world go around, no doubt about it. But without the ability to laugh together, gripe and complain about the tiny peccadilloes that make us crazy (and it's always the small shit that pushes me over the edge. I'm good with big stuff, good in an emergency or while reaching for a goal. Little shit makes me crazy!), getting old together and being amazed at how quickly that happens would be a lonely place indeed.

Making love is fun but it only lasts, physically, for just so long. It's the lead up and the afterwards that makes it wonderful, at least for me. Maybe that's what makes me a story teller. I love everything about the story, beginning, middle and end. I like the adjectives and adverbs, the exclamation marks and just plain periods.

If we can't laugh at this...

Or this! How in the world will we get through the rest of it, the aging and disappointment, loosing friends or family, being afraid of political corruption or loss of habitat and species we haven't even begun to find, meet or understand or even just grey days and simple boredom. 

Magic happens in the little moments, while you're watching a rented movie and your silly puppy rolls over and grabs her foot and you laugh. 

It happens when your baby barfs down your front just before that big interview and ruins your best dress shirt and tie, or when you see your shy mustang walk up to your husband just to stand with him while he does evening chores. 

It's all of the small things, the moments you see and forget, that fill your dark places with light. 

It comes with sitting in your house during a rock and roll thunderstorm in the middle of the night, no electricity, lightning flashing like strobes in a disco, thunder booming so hard and fast you can feel it in your chest. Sitting there on either side of a terrified Saint Bernard who's shaking so hard she's making the bed move and it knocks a picture off the wall. How can you not laugh at that?! How can I not be in love with that kind of life?

And it's loading up a video when you can't remember what's on it and laughing when you see what you chose. 

I live with my best friend and I have since I was nineteen. We were babies, had no idea what was coming and we still have no idea what's next either. We won the lottery forty five years ago. It doesn't pay the bills but who cares? Bills aren't what you think about at the other end of things. I learned to pay those when we can and let the rest go because life is way to exciting to just wait it away, hoping it's going to "get better". 

So what next? More writing, more painting and photography, more mistakes and learning that, at least, I won't do that anymore. 

Today? It's a weed pulling day, a clean up after the storm day, a scoop the poop, brush my ancient cat because she can't keep herself groomed kind of day. It's just another day and I LIKE THAT. John's at work, the horses are out in the field rolling in the mud to keep the flies off, dogs are under the table farting and panting. My kitchen needs to be cleaned, again. ( Do the math. 45 x 365 = 16,425. I've cleaned my kitchen at least that many times and usually more since I cook more than most people do and the only ones to help have been John and, when they lived at home and I held them down long enough to help, my sons.) 

I know you read cliched statements all the time about living in the moment. There's a reason for all of those repeats, silly memes and goofy puppy pictures. They come from living with your best friend who loves you just the way you are. It's because of those over and over moments that I love my life. That's my idea of romance.

I am, ever yours, Nancy, laughing at the way things go