He's a keeper. Like we didn't know that already.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I was talking about how The Dude gets me?

He proved his wonderfulness (is that a word?) again today.

Exhibit A, posted on his facebook at 4:42am this morning:

I knew I wasn't going to hear from him all day - if he was doing Nyquil shots at 4am, then there was no point in even thinking about talking to him. Sure enough, later this afternoon, he finally got online. I asked him what he was talking about in that status, and he just said something vague about it being something that I wanted but kept not buying for myself - and that he'd bring it over later.

Fine. I hate surprises, so I tried not to think about it and I went to do the dishes - and then I figured it out.

Sure enough, he showed up a little bit later, feeling miserable and sick and cranky. Not only is he battling the intestinal bug that he's had for a few days, but now he has the flu on top of it. Anyway, he had this with him:

Big deal? Nope, not in the grand scheme of things.

But to me - HUGE. Really really HUGE. See, my griddle - that gets used constantly thanks to my kids' obsession with French toast and pancakes - only has 3 legs. I don't even remember how the 4th leg broke off, but it's only had 3 legs for a really long time. So whenever I used it, I just put a little pepper shaker under the corner that didn't have the leg.

It was annoying, but it worked - so every time we saw a display of them at the grocery store, I'd stop and look at them...and then walk away, because as long as it worked, I couldn't see the point in buying a new one. Sometimes I take that whole "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule too far. This was one of those situations where it was more like "well, it's broken, but it still works, so until it breaks more and quits working completely, I'm not going to replace it".

But here he was, at the grocery store at 4:00 in the morning, sick as a dog, and he saw it and bought it. And then brought it to me after he got up from his Nyquil-induced coma.

Again, I don't know how I got to be so lucky, but I'm not going to complain. At all. And I'm going to keep him. For a very long time.

Feel better soon, babe. I love you.