the one with lots of capital letters aka a love letter

i have always been attracted to the bad boys. remember the weird-o kid in parenthood? loved him. edward furlong in terminator 2? nick stahl in man without a face? brent ogee in 6th grade. still makes my heart flutter a little bit. i like the bad boys. probably has something to do with the facts that i was known as "the perfect child", my dad was a cop and i didn't rebel in my teenage years. who wouldn't love the sexy, long greasy haired, introverted loners with a reputation like mine?

spring 2004. i meet ted and alan during church softball. those boys were/are CUTE. cute together. cute by themselves. cute. i could tell ted had been a little bit of a bad boy (i have badboydar) so of course i clued in and started paying attention. NOT TO MENTION, that bad boy could run the bases like nobody's business and he had very attractive arms while he was up to bat. what? i'd never cared about arms before. bad boys don't normally have particularly hot arms. but oh man, i always wished ted was up to bat. OR i wished that i would get hurt somehow, so ted would come show me sympathy. my wish came true frequently, because 1. ted is very sympathetic and 2. i got hurt a lot.

it took this bad boy all season to ask me out. that's the beauty of bad boys. they aren't cocky and forward. they are shy, planful and unassuming. during our first date ted invited me on three more in the next three days and he didn't even think i was a loser for not having any plans. pretty good for a first date.

so the next day when ted called me and said he would meet me at the movie theater, i was pretty bummed. meeting is no fun. getting picked up for a date is fun. so when ted called me back 30 seconds later and told me he would pick me up instead, i was thinking that he was the right kind of bad boy for me.

and that is the beginning of our love story.

this is the other beginning of our love story:

ted is not so much a bad boy anymore. sometimes, i have to convince him to be just a little bad and NOT eat healthy. or i have to make him blow off some responsibility for a little fun. other times he makes me do wild and crazy things like jump on the piles of fertilizer bags outside of safeway or chase an ambulance or two. we balance. his bad boy with my good girl.

tonight i was contemplating this man i LOVE.

he started back to school this year to pursue his love of music. he works hard on homework and studies every night and day. he puts a lot of thought and effort into cooking meals for our family. he spends time playing with the kids. once in a while he blows off his homework "just to hang out" with me. he reads hatchet to alan almost every night. he rubs my shoulders when i have a headache. he makes up stories to tell maya before bed. he makes me sit down with him and come up with a chore chart. he always does his chores and sometimes mine.

last night ted was super stressed about his homework and test today. (he has about a million hours of homework a week.) during study breaks he made cookies with the kids. (did I mention they were GOOD cookies??) then he took his test and got an A.

and today when he had the day off from work, what did he do? not the hours of homework he could have. he decided to take maya and alan to the skate park and then hike saddle rock.

this man is a GOOD dad.

he's a GOOD husband.

he's a GOOD student.

he's a GOOD guy.

i love my bad boy turned good guy. and his arms STILL get me. literally and figuratively.