10. I'm cool with myself.
9. I'm cool with the girl who won't eat beans.
8. My boots hold more horseshit than hers.
7. She secretly likes one Republican.
6. I got mauled by a grizzly and don't blame the bear.
5. She looks good in my T-shirts.
4. She thinks I'm a good cook.
3. She thinks I'm somewhat shy.
2. Our lips fit well together.

The No. 1 reason why Cowgrrrl thinks I'm OK:

1. She is a goddess and I know I must please her.

"I stop in the morning for a 44-ounce pop and a licorice, and that's my breakfast," says a cherubic, middle-aged woman sitting in the conference room where I am attending a budgeting basics workshop.

Broad of beam with a poodle perm and a down-to-earth, humorous demeanor, the woman typifies Missoula's working class.

The instructor responds: "OK, you do that five days a week? And you spend how much every day?"

"Two dollars and 30 cents," the woman says.

The instructor punches these numbers into her calculator. She is about to illustrate to us what she calls the "latte factor. "

"Five hundred and ninety-eight dollars a year," the instructor announces.

The cherubic woman's husband, a balding man in a maroon Montana Grizzlies windbreaker, says with mock outrage, "How much did you say that was?"

"Never mind," says the wife, playfully smacking his shoulder. With a confidential glint in her eye, she tells the room, "He buys bottled water everywhere."

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If I had my life to live over, I would do it all again, but this time I would be nastier.

I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war. I vote no.

Killing more people won't help matters. (1941, after Pearl Harbor)

"Death lies on her, like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of all the field." ~ Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet"