40 Things About totte

I'm kind of stealing this idea from another blog (The Reign of Ellen.. her husband did this for her.) I just thought it was a fun idea.. most of the the items are things that he would never say about himself, or think of as something to write about. It was harder than I expected, though.

1. He can never remember the word "condescending". (An easy one to get me started, since I just mentioned that this week.)
2. When he typos and goes back to correct it, he never just backspaces and retypes, but always goes just to that spot and fixes the error because he says it's quicker that way.
3. Once, when he was here on a visit before we were married, he bought a saxophone in a second-hand store for $40 on a total whim. He doesn't play sax.
4. He served in the Swedish army. Still seems totally wrong to me because he's so not the army sort.. but of course, the Swedish army doesn't particularly care who is and is not "the sort" to enlist.
5. He likes Monty Python and Blackadder and Benny Hill and that stupid, stupid show, The Young Ones and other things that aren't funny. (Okay, Monty Python is okay in small doses.)
6. His mandolin skills aren't as bad as he pretends.
7. He should have been a programmer instead of me. I wouldn't bet on him making it through life without actually becoming one.
8. He has eerie mad skills with math, and I no longer do simple calculations when he is around for it is much simpler to say, "Hey, what's 340 times 56?" and get an answer pretty much immediately.
9. He never forgets his multiplication tables, or mixes up left and right... unlike his beloved wife.
10. He has built a mandolin from scratch and written a book.
11. He is really good at building people's self-esteem. I think he should get a job doing that, full-time. (And yes, he's done it for people other than me.)
12. He tips better than I do.
13. He is the thirstiest person I've ever met.
14. He used to smoke, which I found wildly unlikely for him.
15. He quit on the first day of 2001, and still craves cigarettes sometimes. He compensates by having the very occasional cigar, which I HATE but don't bitch about.
16. When he moved to the US to marry me, he sold his house and two cars. I felt worse about one of the cars than I did about the house.
17. It was a 1963 Volvo P1800, and I don't think I've ever seen a vehicle suit a person more than it did him.
18. He never starred in internet porn. Apparently.
19. He never calls me by my name, at least not to my face. We usually call each other "baby", but it used to be "love". I don't know what that means.
20. He likes to invent new dishes for himself. Tonight, he threw some celery in a pan, covered it with ranch dressing, bacon bits and cheese, and baked it until he got bored with waiting.. and he liked it. BUT HE DOESN'T LIKE CELERY.
21. He will almost always refrain on eating peanut butter products, and he thinks that root beer tastes like toothpaste. He does claim to think my peanut butter balls are good, though.
22. He requires less sleep than I do.
23. When I go to bed before he does, he always comes to tuck me in, and he will sing two songs to me: Sov Lilla Totte and The Freckle Song (She's got freckles on her but, she is nice/and when she's in my arms it's paradise..)
24. He once called me at work just to tell me that I'm short. That was all--then he hung up.
25. He is a serious fan of Mick Farren and Salman Rushdie and Terry Pratchett. He used to read Wheel of Time before he got fed up with the bullshit wordiness.
26. His tastes in music, to the despair of his wife, are way more than mildly strange. He plays jazz from the 40s, classical, bluegrass, experimental bluegrass, bagpipes, pop, oldies, organ music recorded in a cathedral in Uppsala, humorous Swedish songs, 80s music, Mexican... uhh.. I don't even have a word for it, South Park songs, rock, lofty choirs of Swedish men singing about spring, not to mention just now he played the graduation song which was written by the Swedish king, and more Dire Straits than you could shake a stick at. ON THE SAME CD.
27. He will kick your ass at network computer games.
28. He once hit on the Swedish crown princess in a bar. She was less than impressed. I would be offended at her lack of clarity in seeing his brilliance, but.. well, I've seen him drunk, too.
29. When he does drink, he never gets mean, or loud, or more than a touch drunk, or stupid. He does, however, talk so much that I can't even get a nod in edgewise.
30. He knows me better than anyone else ever has, and likes me even with all my many flaws.
31. When he changes lanes on the interstate, he makes a little game of trying not to run over those little reflective bumps in the dividing lines. It's almost impossible, btw, when you're going 70 MPH.
32. He likes toys, and trains, and video games. I recently took him to Toys R Us for the first time. It was like watching a kid fall in love with ice cream.
33. Speaking of which, ice cream is his only dessert weakness. He'll eat other desserts sometimes, but declines them just as often. He almost never turns down ice cream, though, no matter what.
34. He is five full years older than me, which means less now than it did when we met. (I was barely 19.)
35. The first time he came to visit me, he shaved off his beard so he would look younger. Unfortunately, that was part of my image of him, so I have always tried to get him to shave it off again, just so I could get it out of system.
36. When he had to shave it off last year for work, I was finally able to settle it in my head: the beard suits him much better.
37. Most people do not know upon meeting him that English isn't his first language, and that he wasn't born here in the US.
38. He always does the driving when we go somewhere. I almost never drive with him in the car.
39. Not long after we met, before we were a certainty, he dreamed of us together, sitting on a cliff, holding hands, watching the world end. It still kind of gives me goosebumps when I think about it, because I think he knew about Us long before I did.
40. His instincts are almost always good. See previous statement.