TheMommyBlog

Tuesday, November 03, 2009 Family

Is there anything funnier than listening from the other room while your children try to guess your computer password? I don’t think so.

It is the only time they have been quiet since they got home, ostensibly to “let me rest” by the fireplace because I still look like a zombie from the crushing fatigue the swine flu left in its wake. Seriously, what the hell? Haven’t I suffered enough? Everyone is sick of this and of me already, can you please let up? I’m doing jumping jacks in my head because I feel GREAT! but I’m falling asleep on my feet like Prince Valium in Spaceballs. How long does my body need to sleep to feel whole? A couple days? A week? Through January? It’s amazing that I get anything done at all, though today I did finally fix the toilet that’s been out of commission for three weeks. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

Anyway, the kids were all hunched around the screen, asking each other what the password hint meant. “‘Oh no?’ That’s a hint? What does it mean?” It means, “Oh, no you don’t, you sneaky little monkeys.” If Mommy wanted you on her work computer while she’s drooling on the arm of the chaise in the kitchen, she wouldn’t have PUT A PASSWORD ON IT.

Jiminy.

I did get lots of compliments on my weight loss from the other moms at school, and a big laugh from Traci, who once told me, “I’m one minor illness away from my target weight.” I love her. I’m not quite there, but am thrilled with the 22 pounds so far, and am going for fifteen more. I’ve got ten days in Thailand coming up in December, baby, I want bikini pictures!

Wow, one month. I’m so excited. My Guy is in Frankfurt this week, then in Shanghai two weeks from now, and then we take off for Bangkok and Phuket two weeks after that.

Tomorrow marks three months since we met, but it feels like five or six years. We’ve started referring to different events in Earth Time and Our Time. There is some kind of exponential relationship between the two, but we can’t nail it down. So far it’s been a lot like Steve Martin Time in The Jerk.

[Speaking to Marie in bed while she sleeps]
Navin R. Johnson: I know we’ve only known each other four weeks and three days, but to me it seems like nine weeks and five days. The first day seemed like a week and the second day seemed like five days. And the third day seemed like a week again and the fourth day seemed like eight days. And the fifth day you went to see your mother and that seemed just like a day, and then you came back and later on the sixth day, in the evening, when we saw each other, that started seeming like two days, so in the evening it seemed like two days spilling over into the next day and that started seeming like four days, so at the end of the sixth day on into the seventh day, it seemed like a total of five days. And the sixth day seemed like a week and a half. I have it written down, but I can show it to you tomorrow if you want to see it.

People, I believe I have found THE most low-maintenance, hangup-free, down-to-earth, easy-to-be-around, fun-to-talk-to man in the world. And he says the same about me. One of us is a liar, you say. You would be wrong.

Our iTunes playlists are surprisingly similar.

There’s only a one-year age difference so we have all the same cultural references. (My ex was ten years older and my last boyfriend was four years older, just enough to be one whole High School off.)

He lived a long time in Michigan, so he’s got that familiar Midwest twang, softened by his native South Carolina cadence. It gets my attention every time, sounding so familiar to my childhood living school years in Chicago and summers in Ohio and Atlanta. There are so many things that are funny only to those who have lived in the South or the Midwest, and doubly funny if they have lived in a wretchedly cold, big city.

We both have “Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun” on our night stands.

We have identical parenting styles. Think about that. What are the odds?

We are equally happy sitting at home having cheese and crackers for dinner or going out, and we almost always sit at the bar. I love sitting at the bar.

He makes me coffee.

I never get tired of scratching his head.

We’ve seen all the same movies, so FINALLY someone understands when I throw out obscure references or lines twenty times a day.

I can write well enough to make people feel, and he can speak well enough to have a roomful of people follow him off a cliff.

We are matched intellectually.

We are both totally comfortable being in charge, walking into a room, and instantly sizing it up.

He is not intimidated by me, nor I by him. Not for nothing, but we pack a charismatic wallop. So far we’ve only used it on the kids, but to stunning effect.

There are no secrets between us. None. We actually laughed about this the other night, trying to think up things we haven’t told each other yet. It sounds impossible, but it’s true. We’re going to have to wait for a memory jolt for anything fresh to come up.

If things go sideways, we will most likely fall over laughing. There is no freaking out.

We calm each other, completely. Totally. When he’s away we’re both reaching out for a re-set, to have feathers smoothed. All it takes is hearing a voice, sitting, breathing on the phone, knowing the other is there. We’ve sat and done our email and work that way. Swear.

We’ve each come from traumatic splits with three young children in tow. We know that we are not #1 with each other, we’re somewhere between #7 and #8. The children always come first, and we can reconnect on the days the children are with the other parent.

What? Think we’re idiots? Of course we aligned custody schedules so we have the same weekends free!