The gauges on the Toyota Tundra are inset.

Being the good safety patrol person that she is, Brittany would always make sure I was driving safely. She always turned her head and double checked my blind spots for me. She always had her fake passenger side brake peddle foot ready to go. And she always would want to check in with me on speed and gas status (half a tank of gas = empty for her), even if she could see the gauges herself. Well, things changed when we got the Toyota Tundra and she could no longer see the gauges because they are inset. Great for me right? Not really!

She could hear from far away when I was on a ladder and was always there to make sure I was safe!

When your wife warns you about something, it is often a pretty good idea to listen — especially when involving a ladder. But when we were working on painting inside the house, she told me to wait for her to hold the ladder before I went up, I didn’t listen, and it didn’t work out well for me.

Who would want to pull over this sweet ride?

As I have gotten older, I have slowed down… in more ways than one. Where I used to get more speeding tickets in my youth, I went years and years not receiving any in my sweet 2009 Honda Accord. Well, that ended the day I went a little fast in my own neighborhood, got pulled over by an unmarked police truck, and my wife threw me under the bus to the police officer. I promise you that the police officer still tells this story to his friends.

The hardest vehicle I have ever had to drive… even after having it for 15+years.

When I was 15 and a half, my dad owned the 1973 VW Camper that I have today. He taught me how to drive on that car, because if you can drive it, you can drive anything. Not only is driving a manual transmission something rare today, but this is one of the most challenging. But before going on a longer camping trip, we both wanted her to have some experience driving the camper, so she gave it a shot in an elementary school parking lot and around our neighborhood. Once again, she surprised me. 

Yea, she might act cool and not celebrate when she is right, but I visualize her celebrating like this inside her head every time! Also, this is one of my all time favorite photos of her.

What is the saying… “Women are always right?” and I think “Pick your battles” is an important one too. Well, they were both right with Brittany. She was often right waaaay more than half of the time, and when I decided to pick a mini-battle, I would often be shown she was right again. It was kind of spooky. Not only how she was right most of the time, but how I never gave up trying to prove her wrong. 

No… this is not the table she made. I searched through 1000s and 1000s of photos to try to find one of the actual table, but nothing. Maybe she deleted them all on purpose, so there would be no evidence.

No question, Brittany was multi-talented. It seemed that even though she might not excel at everything she tried, she didn’t fail. Well… I think I can confidently say that Brittany did not have a promising potential career in the wood table making trade. 

Not her in the robe, but that is the robe that I got her.

How can I be blamed here? Brittany liked Disney, which involves all sorts of fun characters and lets you be like a child. She loved elephants. And she wanted a new robe. So I put these all together and got her an elephant robe as a gift and thought I would knock it out of the park. Not quite…

 

I couldn’t find a pic of me drinking lemonade, so I went with this.

One thing that always impressed me was Brittany’s ability to turn even the smallest of lemons into lemonade. No, like literally. She would come home with these tiny lemons and use this squeezer thing and take FOREVER, but she would get enough for a delicious pitch of lemonade. Well, one night she fixed up a nice dinner, set up at our formal dining room table, and put out some lemonade for us. Then of course I had to go be me and ruin it. <insert eyeroll here>

I am going to say that look has more to something I just said or did, but let’s pretend it is because of a bug.

If there was a competition to naturally attract bugs, Brittany would have won it. I have been lucky that for my entire life bugs have left me alone much more than other people. And for her, it was always the opposite. If there was a bug anywhere out location, they would find her. And this is a story of one bug that just would not give up during a camping trip hike. 

The underground parking garage where Brittany used her super detailed skills.

Oh Brittany. I found out early on that it is really, really… and I mean really to surprise this girl. She would always notice the smallest detail of things and that would sometimes end up ruining a romantic or fun surprise that I had for her. But on the good side, if I ever lost my keys, 99% of the time she could tell me “they are under a sock, behind your dresser,” and she would be right.