HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE BEST AND GREATEST AND CUTEST AND MOST TALENTED AND MOST ADORABLE AND MOST WONDERFULEST GIRLFRIEND IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD https://twitter.com/alice_v_smith/status/1264343641352536064

here are some things i love about my girlfriend:

1. Alice's Evening Hum, a seemingly unconscious and involuntary response where, as she is getting ready for bed, she hums like a musical recap of the day (jingles from TV shows we watched, songs that came up in conversation, etc)

2. The fact that her favorite meal in the whole world is toad-in-the-hole, because it contains no vegetables

3. How deeply and passionately she loves elaborate, froofy desserts

4. Her commitment to patterned silk blouses

5. The fact that her deepest longing in all the world is to be snowed in for the weekend at a remote country home full of strangers, one of whom dies under mysterious circumstances, leaving everyone else a suspect until the crime is solved

6. The fact that, in preparation for her trip to Portland for Willett Thanksgiving to meet my giant Catholic family for the first time, she made flashcards for herself to study who was who

7. The socialist utopia barter system of the library where she works, where homesteader goods and services are currency; all her stories are like, this person watched this person's cat and received payment in honey from their beehive/eggs from their chickens/knitted gloves

8. The fact that she bought a rainbow-colored set of kitchen knives and now every single other thing she ever buys for her kitchen must match one of those colors, from her toaster to her dinosaur egg cups

9. The fact that she named her cat Idgie after the character in "Fried Green Tomatoes"

10. How her only cultural context for Oregon, before meeting me, was obtained from "The X-Files"

11. How WILDLY HYPED she was that she could see Mount St. Helens from my porch

12. The fact that she joined Twitter to troll me after seeing how many times I would refer to her on here as "Alice, who is not on Twitter"

13. Her passionate, all-consuming dedication to Eurovision, including an entire evening spent on the sofa of our Airbnb while she played me video after video of her past faves, singing happily along to, like, Icelandic death metal

14. The way she screams at the television every time we watch "Nailed It" and one of the bakers overfills their cake pans ("IT'S NOT GOING TO FINISH IN TIME! IT'S GOING TO BE RAW IN THE MIDDLE!!! WHY DO THEY NEVER LEARN??????")

15. The fact that her commitment to fancy hot cocoa is so absolute that she keeps whipped cream, sprinkles, flavorings and fancy ingredients on hand to make cocoa concoctions so elaborate she started a separate instagram account for them

16. This amazing fan art she drew of my book and gave me for Christmas

17. The fact that any time she starts a TV show which I have already watched, or any time I watch a TV show that I know she likes but which we have not discussed at length, I can immediately pick out with 100% accuracy who her favorite characters are because her brand is STRONG

18. The contrast between her mild-mannered British librarian exterior and the fact that at heart she is, in fact, spectacularly chaotic

19. The time she illegally smuggled a terrarium across the UK border in her suitcase

20. Watching her geek out about D&D with my brothers