Meanwhile Back to the Biggest and Bestest Birthday of Them All

I had made the command decision on Tuesday that my beautiful, brilliant, most-wonderfulest-wife-ever wife, the saintly and scrumptious at the same time Joan, was too precious to blog about on her birthday, too important to reduce to a mere blog posting on what is frankly somewhat of a puny blog to begin with.    That was on April 12... a date which shall now live in infamy, or at least in the Husband Hall of Shame.   Once again, my judgment failed -- an "epic fail," as the kids say nowadays.   How could I have failed to know that Joanie -- one of my handful of readers to begin with, and the only one who keeps me warm at night -- would have wanted a shout out from The Regular Guy, or at least a birthday wish from The Right Curmudgeon?   Fool!   Scoundrel!   Idiot!   (Spoken with an Irish accent, as in "eedjit.")  

And such a beauty too!   Here she is at about 11, looking remarkably like daughter Annie methinks.   (Sorry for the blurry pic... this is a picture I've carried with love in my wallet for lo these many years.)  

And here she is at 21 or so, in college, two years before I met her.   Did she know that her undoing was just around the corner?   Did she sense a short and squatty presence approaching?   Did she have a premonition that her life would soon be tied forever to a Protestant know-nothing whom she would have to work assiduously the rest of her life to turn into a semi-Catholic know-something?   Like Mona Lisa, her look seems to suggest she knew more than she was letting on.   Poor girl!   Man, what a hot ticket, though!   (Again, the picture is blurry because it has been carried in the Regular Guy's wallet for years; it's probably his favorite picture, and one he will occasionally take out on long plane rides or out of town on business just to provide a little sense of what he's missing and a reminder of what a lucky man the RegGuy is!)  

And here she is now at.... well, we won't go into that... the Mother of Three, the First, Ever and Only Wife, and the best, most Christian, smartest, prettiest girl I know:

So, Happy Birthday, my darling.   I won't make that mistake again.   :)

P.S.   The flowers were also to get me out of the doghouse.