Pray For Moi

Despite my on occasion wishing I could live in Moi's Alternative Backwards Universe and flit between five bazillion different husbands (you listening, Jack White?), there is something positive to be said for a long-term relationship with one person. Besides the obvious, create a family with blah blah blah, grow old with blah blah blah stuff, there is the mind-blowing fact that being with the same person for an eternity, uh, twelve years, allows you to grok to some interesting things about yourself. Forget psychotherapy, just get a mate. That'll learn ya.

I've certainly learned some interesting things about myself over the years. Like what happens when you mix Drama Queen Moi with So Laid Back He Makes Gary Cooper Look Like Woody Allen S.B.

You get conversations like this:

Moi: "I love you truly, madly, passionately. I can't live without you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, except for the fact that I don't want to do your laundry and simply must have my own bathroom. Dahlink, do you feel the same about Moi?"

S.B., dragging his eyes away from the LSU/Arkansas game: "Uh, yeah. I mean, okay, sure."

That conversation has pretty much set the tone for the rest of our relationship. I spin little dramas and S.B. defuses them. Take, for instance, my continual fear of being caught in a spinning-out-of-control airplane. To S.B., experiencing something like that would, "Certainly tell you a lot about how you handle stress, don't you think?"

Uh . . . no. For S.B., who was born cowboy-ed up, surviving something like that would be nothing more than a character-building exercise. For Moi, it would mean my main mode of transport from that point on would be roller skates. If I ever again left the house at all.

Thankfully, the majority of the time, this difference in our personalities is more a source of entertainment than friction. Except . . . when it comes . . . to . . . the thing . . . I dread . . . more than flying:

Home Improvement.

I don't have to relay to you the statistics outlining the spike in divorce rates among couples who undergo major renovation projects or build their own homes. Suffice to say, if it weren't for the fact that S.B. organizes these projects, then merrily trips out of town for work, leaving Moi to handle everything, our relationship would most likely have been shit canned long ago.

Because we simply cannot be in the same house together when these projects are going on. Because I turn into a surreal version of my lurking drama queen self. I worry and niggle and stay up at night spinning scenarios of horrific destruction and rampant lawyering. S.B., he sleeps like a baby. And the more relaxed he is, the more wrapped around the axle I become.

Like take right now, for instance. S.B. is in Oklahoma making the world safe for toaster ovens. I am at home, tap, tap, tapping my foot over contractors who are now 60 minutes late to start our cabinet refinishing project.

Ain't nothing more worry-producing to Moi than late contractors. And the sorrowful sight of my bare-ass nekkid kitchen: