My Pineapple Princess

Guest post by Jay's husband, Jason.


Happy Valentine's Day to everyone, but especially to that one special girl named Jamie. I don't often get the chance to write a post for Kill the Goat, this is often due to the fact I don't have interesting topics to write about. But today, boy oh boy, Jamie is a topic worth writing about, and frankly, reading about too!

It's been 6 years to the day that I put that inappropriate gift in her cute little hands. For those who haven't heard the tale, I was far too shy to tell Jamie that I wanted to be more than just friends so instead I went to the jewelry store and bought a shiny something wrapped in a velvet box. I'm the King of Subtle.

And on to the Wonderfulness....

Jamie is the perfect woman. That seems like a bold statement, but consider the evidence and I'm sure you will agree. Sexy, funny, intelligent AND she's all mine. Those 3 adjectives occur to me on a daily basis because she is always being all three, at the same time, and that takes talent.

Here is a list of the many things I love about my wife (in no particular order).....

Jamie does not wear a watch. She usually doesn't even like me wearing one either. Jamie knows the world will wait for her so there's no need to rush.

I'll admit that I should buy flowers more often, but no matter how often they are in the house, Jamie makes me feel like they're the best ones she's ever seen.

Jamie loves one thing more than great music, and that is sorting it and giving the Playlist a really great name (currently on tap: "Fuck Yeah!", "Summery Goodness", "Taco Fest", "Songs I Wouldn't Kick Out of Bed").

Jamie doesn't like to be bound by the usual constraints when working with the English language. If there's a word she's imagining that is exactly what she needs, she'll invent it, right then and there. Examples include: Bubby, disengable, suspish, and the ever popular No-Nee (which she defines as no raised the power of pi).

Jamie tests my limits and I love that about her. Sometimes it's seeing how many times in a row I can lose at Trivial Pursuit, sometimes it's writing on the computer screen with pencil to see how long it will take before I wipe it down.

Note: About the pencil on the monitor, it's been over 3 weeks now and I've still not cleaned it. I think I can make out the word "John" or "Johann". Who knows?

Lists everywhere. Jamie loves lists. I love this about Jamie because she takes so much satisfaction out of making one, but never follows one. Jamie doesn't like being bound by rules.

We got Jamie the model of MP3 player that has the rubber around the edges and is waterproof. Why? Because oopses happen. Often.

Jamie sings like an angel. But sadly for you, she only sings to me.

Jamie's self-proclaimed "most productive hours" are between 3 and 5am. She sees those hours more than you might think. Jamie once stayed awake for 92 consecutive hours, by the end she thought she was Grover.

Jamie has a very particular way of sleeping. The blanket needs to lie accordingly: cold shoulders, at least one cold toe, and warm everything else.

Jamie has an obsession with Diet Pepsi. The only 2 things about Diet Pepsi that have ever upset Jamie are the following.
1. Running out of Diet Pepsi.
2. The new Pepsi campaign slogan of "brown and bubbly."

Jamie will be prime minister one day, mark my words. She will save the world. Her name will be known. I will be a kept man. There aren't too many people you can say that about, but with Jamie, if you've ever met her, you just know it's true. She has so much fire in her that you can't help but feel the world was made to fit into the palm of her pretty little hand. And she's so fucking cocky about it too. She knows it. I have never met another human being who is so self-possessed and confident in herself. She makes you believe. She has so much enormous talent that it really seems unfair almost. She's musical, and she doesn't even know it, but there isn't a day that goes by that she's not singing in the car, and shaking her bum in the aisles of the grocery store. She writes lyrics so brilliantly it breaks my heart that she considers it only a hobby. She has an incredible sense of aesthetics that almost everyone comments on eventually - the way she pairs artwork in our home, or puts together some of her famous outfits. She paints and has an amazing knack for colour. She scrapbooks for everyone, and gets others hooked on it as well. She designs and decorates her own cakes so well that people actually pay for her creations. She builds menus and meals that put the best restaurants to shame because Jamie makes her food with so much passion and love inside that you can taste it, and it's wonderful. And all of these things are just pastimes of hers, just things she does on a lark!

If I'd never laid eyes on Jamie, I'm sure I would have fallen in love with her just based on her true calling, her writing. Some of you may read her blog semi-regularly, which means you have no idea what she's actually capable of. This blog is just a journal where she burns some energy. It's her recycle bin of writing. None of her best scraps even come close to here. The real stuff is amazing. She can rip your heart out in 3 sentences or less. It's so natural to her that it's crazy. She is so unafraid to put herself out there and write about subjects that I know must be hard for her. Her writing is her real art, and I am in awe of it. She lets me read it, which shames me. I wish I was half as smart as she is. I wish I could appreciate it the way it deserves to be. I wish I could read and know the right words to tell her how amazing she is.

But I can't. Jamie married beneath her. She deserves to be with 8 times the man that I am, but she's not, probably because such a man as would befit her does not exist. No one is smart enough. Jamie is brilliant. Yeah, her IQ is officially off the charts, but the point is not how much she knows, and constantly learns, the point is how she makes you think about the world. She constantly plays devil's advocate just to make me think. She has really strong convictions. She has opinions about everything. She doesn't believe in beliefs. Beliefs are too constraining, she says. Better to have strong ideas and a thirst for knowledge. And take it from me, she does.

I was there while she was in school. I saw her type out 10 000-word papers like they were nothing, and not even bother to pick them up from the prof because it was universally understood that they were all A papers. I sat in the audience when she graduated and set the record for most awards received by a single student. I traced her engraved name on every single edition of the Dean's List. I saw the cheques for "scholarships" that were worth more than I made in an entire year. This stuff just comes to her.

Everything comes to her. If I leave her in a room for 2 minutes, she'll have made 8 more friends for life. She's outgoing. She's the life of the party, but she'll make you think that you're the only one she's noticed. She has the most disarming smile and sparkly eyes to match. People are drawn to her. When we go out to eat, everyone is looking at us because of her laugh. She doesn't have a tinkling laugh like most women. If you are lucky enough to amuse her, she lets out this incredible belly laugh and it feels like the greatest reward of your life. She really laughs like she means it.

She lives everything like she means it. She's the only person I know who enjoys a good cry as much as a good laugh. And I really do mean enjoys. She lives her life at full tilt, she's always searching for the big emotions. And yeah, that means our fights are red-hot. She has a fury in her that is frightening and sexy at the same time which is probably why I've never been able to be mad at her.

Jamie IS entertainment. She's the funniest person I know. Like, really, honestly funny even though she's never told a joke in her life. She hates jokes and believes that people should be able to come up with their own "original material", as if we're all capable of her heights. On Sunday my jaw was literally sore from laughing so hard. She has so many voices in her head, she can make up a song on command, and her wit is without comparison. If you were hard of for cash, you could literally sit her on a bench in a mall and be entertained by her all day long. She could disparage every single person who walked by. She has cynicism and sarcasm that bite back, which is one of the things I will never understand about Jamie because though it's literally one of her hallmarks, it's not even really her.

Truly, she is a kind person with an enormous heart. She's helped me through some of the toughest days of my life and I will always be indebted to her forever for that. She's also done more charity work than the average 100 people will do in their whole lives. She always finds time for others. She really believes that she can change the world, and I've seen it. She's right. She can. She has so much joie de vivre that she infects everyone around her with it. I am constantly amazed at how much pleasure she takes from the small things in life. She refers to mushrooms as "gifts from God." Every single day is another opportunity. She finds adventures where normal people only find boredom. On my last day off, she declared it "Mexican Day". I asked why, and she looked at me funny and said "We need a reason?"

And that's the greatest part of Jamie - she doesn't need a reason. She just has fun. She embraces the parts of herself that most of us try to block out, the good and the bad. The best date nights that I can ever plan involve the grocery store. Sometimes I come home from work and find her 19 sheets to the wind, standing naked on a chair, music blasting, and her dusting the cobwebs in the corner, and I truly believe that she's never had any more fun that she is having in that instant. She makes me want to dust right along with her. I call her The Cuteness because really, you've never met anyone as cute as Jay. She'll be a smouldering seductress one minute, and then have a child-like innocence that I find irresistable the next. She's so adorable that you want to pet her, and yet, she is the strongest person in the world. Maybe it's being both the cutest and the strongest that make her the very best. Incomparable.

She has us be tourists in our own hometown. She "discovers" things that most people take for granted. We tour museums and she combs them for crumbs of knowledge. Most of the time she tells me more about the exhibits than the museums themselves. She's read so much and seen so much and lived so much that sometimes I can't believe that so much information fits inside her small head. Ancient Egypt excites her. She knows how to write hieroglyphs (I couldn't even spell that!). Different cultures are what she lives for - among her tattoos, she has some from China, and Greece. They really mean something to her.

She is in love with the world around her. Since I have known Jamie, she has always walked several kilometres a day. She loves what her body can do. She loves walking, and skipping, and dancing on speakers, and climbing up mountains. She doesn't wait for good weather. She doesn't wait for anything. The rest of us just try to keep up. The only time she ever slowed down was when she was sick. It turned out to be more severe than we'd anticipated. I was afraid I might lose her. When I was sick with worry, Jamie would come out of her drug-induced haze to roll her eyes at me. She could barely move. There was a crater in her back the size of 2 golfballs, and yet I found her in her room fluffing pillows, sticking them under her, and grimacing with the pain. "What are you doing?" I asked. "I'm trying to have sex with you!" she yelled at me, and yup, she really was. There is no surgery in the world (she's had 4 now) that will stop her, even when I think it's physically impossible, she proves me wrong. I can't tell her no. She will rip stitches to get her way, and has. Nowadays, in the shower, I touch the scar tissue on her back. She can't feel it, her nerves have not regenerated, but it reminds me that incredibly, this girl is not as invulnerable as she believes.

I wish I could write a post that would do her justice, but I guess it's not possible. I look over what I have already written, and I know that it doesn't convey one ounce of what it's really like to live with her, to love her. Because the best part is how she makes me feel. I was just a regular Joe before I met her. But having literally the most incredibly woman in the universe choose me as a mate, well...it's beyond words. My life will never be boring. She knows me better than I know myself. She knows what I need before I do. I love that we will always be together. I can't imagine a world that doesn't have Jamie in it, I would be lost and heartbroken and hungry. She is the best, and if you read this list you have a small idea why.

Happy Valentine's Day to you Jamie. I look forward to coming home tonight and cooking together. Remember: I like my ovens hot and my chefs nude. ;)