A Quick Word: Say nice things to your life partner, my friends

Trust me. Compliments are proof that you're still looking.

I adore my wife.

Along with being the hottest 5 foot 2 inch woman in St. Louis-I drove around and checked, dotting the zips and crossing the codes-she makes my life very easy. I am the Mr. Mom, driver, writer wannabe who eats rejections like breakfast bars and keeps on trucking. She is the backbone who supports the falls and allows me to catch her when she decides to take a rest.

Oh, and she works 65+ hours a week. Oh, and she takes care of a gigantic pool in our backyard. Oh, hey, she also fixes everything in the house, an unpaid Princeton Heights forewoman.

She’s my rock; I’m her stone.

We made that promise sometime in the summer of 2002, a couple of Mizzou kids trying out life out away from home. Due to a timely catch with my Hatch Hall pal, Dan McKinney, Rachel started burning a hole in my back. I came over, gave her the Greg Maddux flirt game, and made a dent. It was only weeks later that I asked her out, due to being the stupidest man in Columbia, Missouri. (I also checked on this too.) One small note later and a great first date, it was over.

My dating days were over twenty years ago, at a Dave Matthews Band concert at Riverport on this not-so-exact-but-close day in history. I proposed and off we went to a series of apartments, paycheck-to-paycheck jobs, and various delays and false starts before each of us found our calling. We didn’t graduate from the University of Missouri (COL), but we bet on ourselves and won big. We bet on romance, and won.

That’s cool, isn’t it? Getting that intimate shot at a happily-ever-after and just taking it to the house. A son came in 2011, sparking a World Series run by the Cards, which happened the year I was born as well. You can do the math. Start at zero, and add 40 to it.

But I write this note as my wife prowls around Chicago on a work trip. I am guardian of the house who really realizes what a quiet house brings: infinite possibility, but an assured sadness. Every guy rants and raves about having the house to himself. It’s easy to boost and stand behind initially. But at the end of the day, the house feels right when it’s whole.

But hey, I can at least smell her pillow and find her in some way. The shampoo, conditioner, and overall Rachel aesthetic connects, sending me into a deep coma with the voice Matthew McConaughey and a fluffier Captain America easing me into dream space.

Find yourself a Rachel, ladies and gents. Just not this one.