topsy.turvy.

In two short weeks, I will have been with my husband for fifteen years.

Fifteen years.

That doesn’t even sound right. That’s a lot of freaking years. But, it’s true. We have jammed quite a lot of living into those fifteen years. We’ve had two kids, we’ve mourned together, we’ve fought, we’ve laughed our asses off, we’ve travelled, we’ve created… but I’m not going to talk about any of that sappy crap right now. Right now, I’m going to talk about that phenomenon which seems to happen while you move.

You know that strange thing that happens when you’re moving house, right? When, for some reason, the person for which your heart swells with pride and admiration every single other day in your life, becomes the proxy victim of homicide in all of your short stories while you are trying to pack, rearrange, and shove your entire life into boxes, only for them to spring out accordion-like out of those same boxes in the most frustrating manner imaginable at your new house?

No? That’s just me?

Please tell me it isn’t just me. Well, I’m sure it isn’t. In fact, I’m pretty sure my dearest, darling, smoopsy-poo has similar feelings towards me while all these packing and organizational disasters are going on. After all, I am the world’s least organized person. I will suggest a way to accomplish a goal, and invariably, he will suggest an alternative route. And not just an alternative route, but one in total opposition to mine. Then we will shake our hands at each other in desperate wonder. Because honestly, how the hell can we be so compatible and so completely at odds with each other over the simplest. freaking. tasks?!? It makes my head spin to think of all of the idiotic arguments we have had in the last decade and a half. Seriously, sometimes in the middle of a heated, hand-wringing, head-shaking, foot-stomping argument, there will be this little moment of clarity for both of us, as if someone has rung the Dumbest-Shit-Ever bell, and we will look at each other, at ourselves, and laugh our asses off at how freaking moronic we are being. I can’t even tell you how one of those arguments starts. And I guess, that’s the point.

We have moved now, four times since we were married. We have done extensive remodeling projects. We have given each other various opportunities to bludgeon each other to death with power tools, and we haven’t, yet. So, I guess this whole marriage thing is going to work out, after all.

I’m tired from moving and all of this is rambling nonsense, but I guess what I wanted to say, is don’t choose a partner who is perfect when everything in life is. Turn your whole world upside down, shake the drawers out all over the floor, cut a hole in your ceiling, and push yourself to the point of exhaustion. If you still feel like crawling into the same bed together while all that is going on, you might have a keeper.

Now excuse me, but I have to go have an argument over where this stupid freaking bookshelf is going to go.