It’s Valentine’s Day.

It is, depending on your perspective, some combination of day where you go above and beyond the call of duty to celebrate your love, or a day where you get on the Internet and bitch about how Valentine’s Day is a crass holiday created by the greeting card companies and how you should be nice to your loved ones every day so blah blah blah now you’re the Grinch That Had Venereal Disease And Stole Valentine’s Day. Because, c’mon, Santa was invented by Coca-Cola. The Easter Bunny was invented by, I dunno, Cadbury. Jesus was invented by Toyota. It’s all just marketing and advertising.

Listen, I get it, you think Valentine’s Day is a stinky pink blossom of consumerist hate juice. I don’t really care. Just shush about it and keep your head down while the rest of us love our respective others, yeah?

With that in mind, let me just announce it:

I love my wife.

I love my wife unmercifully, beyond the periphery of reason and sanity.

I met her online. Match-dot-com, actually. When I “online-dated,” I met a small percentage of very cool and lovely ladies, and I also met a small battalion of total farking moonbats. I went on dates that concluded with me going home, locking all the doors, and corking the silverware. When I met my wife, however, we went out to a Chinese restaurant. And we stayed there for four hours. We closed the joint out. They were throwing fortune cookies at our heads to get us to leave.

It was then and there that I knew I would marry my wife.

Why do I love my wife so completely, so deeply, so dearly?

First: she’s hot.

See? Hot.

Second: she is not an alcoholic, despite the inordinate number of photos I take of her where she is imbibing said alcohol. Which, for the record, seems to be most of the photos I take of her.

That’s really just the tip of the iceberg. In my photos, she drinks a lot. In real life, not so much. Still, right now she deserves major kudos because, as a pregnant human being, she cannot consume her most favoritest drink in the world, the Dirty Vodka Martini. Me, I just tell her to drink it. Frankly, the baby’s going to need booze to put up with us as parents. Even still, she perseveres.

My wife also puts up with my shit. Which is a really big deal, because I am a man who gives a lot of shit with up which that one would need to put. Or something. See? I can’t even write a reasonable sentence. The fact that she has not yet snapped and taken a rifle up to a clocktower is a really good sign. A number of my ex-ladyfriends are now locked away in those white metal-free rooms like where they imprisoned Magneto. If you want to see my wife in the middle of putting up with my shit, here is an image. You can see it on her face how she is very kindly tolerating my nonsense:

That is her “Tolerate Husband” face. I know it well. Here is another:

One day, she’ll probably stab me in the temple with a chopstick. And I’ll totally let it happen. I won’t even be mad. She’ll be like, “Do you remember how you were acting?” And I’ll be like, “Okay, yeah. Yeah. Yes.”

My wife is funny. And, mysteriously, she thinks I’m funny. She also has the foulest mouth of any woman I know, which for me is a total win. The fact that she can occasionally out-profane my infernal tongue does not merely earn a check-mark in the box but rather a check-plus-plus. Seriously. You cut her off in traffic, she will tell you to eat a dick and die. She will curse you in ways that will wilt your heart like warm spinach.

She’s kind-hearted. She’s tolerant. She believes in me.

But even her negative traits are ones to love:

Her impatience matches my own, as does her raging river of snark.

Plus, if cajoled, she will kiss a tiki, which is not a metaphor for anything sexual but rather a literal truth:

Tiki Loving 101, kids.

She’s got beautiful eyes and long gorgeous hair and legs that won’t quit. Seriously, her legs — her getaway sticks, her lady-longs, her gams — are long. We’re the same height but I go to drive her car and I have to spend two minutes and 37 seconds readjusting the seat to compensate for her long legs and my stumpy little clod-hoppers. By the way, I totally just made up “lady-longs,” but you can have it for a dollar.

She is one half of the Husband And Wife Video-Game Super-Team.

She is beautiful even when she’s picking something out of her eye:

She lets me thrust her into dubious Photoshop situations:

And she is beloved by all the creatures of the earth, as evidenced by unrequited looks of love and lust born by this… I dunno, amphibious Deep One frog dude.

Let’s be very clear, here. The fact that this person –

Married me –

Is an indicator that she is both charitable and loving.

She is going to be a wonderful mother, but really, who cares? What I care about is that she’s a beautiful, awesome, kick-ass wife. The kid’s just going to have to take the back-seat on this one. Sorry, Upcoming Wee One. This hot chick is all mine.

I love you, wife of my life.

You make my world awesome.

It would turn gray and then black and then die without your presence.

Happy Valentine’s Day.