VWH and I are currently in the unique position of sharing our living quarters with another individual. This is the first time in our marriage that we’ve tried it out and, for the most part, it’s been very successful. Our piggy bank likes it too. I don’t think we could have done it with anybody else, but our roommate is super laid-back and a really good cook. There have been many plusses to having her around. The dishes are magically clean by the time I arrive home from work, dreading doing anything other than putting on my PJs and eating dinner. For the sake of protecting anonymity (although this seems entirely pointless as I’m pretty sure that the only people who read this blog know all of our names), we shall call her Candice. Why Candice? Probably because I’ve been emailing a Candie all afternoon at work and it was the first name that popped into my head.
The three of us have pretty cool relationships. VWH and I are obviously fairly close. J Candice is one of my dearest friends. We both try to keep it real and avoid the drama we experienced way too often in college with other acquaintances. We enjoy chatting and watching movies and hanging out. Candice and VWH have a lot of similarities too. They are both trumpet players. This automatically infers a bunch more similarities. They know how to put on the suave, sophisticated trumpet player personality. “Why hello. It’s very nice for you to meet me.” They understand that you have to be gutsy and give your all if you expect to have any success with your instrument (or life). But the most important similarities they share, as it pertains to my life, are that they are forgetful and they lose stuff.
DISCLAIMER: Both VWH and Candice have given me permission to discuss their faults through this blog, largely because they find it humorous. Any slander on my behalf has been pre-approved.
Since we moved into “St. Vivian’s” (as we call our little red house) I do a nightly check before bed to make sure doors are locked, appliances are off and closed, and that the stove hasn’t been left on. This check has proven to be very valuable when our utility bills come ‘round. I find cereal boxes in the refrigerator and the measuring cups are always buried in the flour or sugar canisters instead of hung up on the pegs. Often I will see one or both crawling around a room, searching high and low for a book or musical score. Sometimes the object turns up and sometimes it doesn’t.
When VWH and I were dating he lost his truck keys. Just lost them. After tearing his apartment apart for an hour, we ended up walking to the restaurant for our date. He never found them. My initial concern about his lack of responsibility with personal items has been alleviated since we’ve been married. (Well, really after he got the multi-page listing of overdue books from his graduate school. A great wedding present.) I ask him every night if he’s set his alarm. 98% of the time he has. But for the 7 times a year that he hasn’t we both sleep better. His library fines have gone down, his hair stays trimmed, and his outfits, for the most part, match and aren’t too wrinkled. It’s when we’re not in the same establishment for a while that I start to worry.
Like today for instance. VWH left early for a substitute teaching job before I got out of bed. He was on his own for food, clothes, and timeliness. A few hours after I arrived at work I got a text message from Candice. “Is VWH’s phone supposed to be next to the dryer?” (I don’t know, at this moment, if VWH is home yet from his day. Let’s hope the car didn’t decide to break down.)
Candice isn’t free from this either. She lost her trumpet slides to one of her horns quite a while ago. She even seems to forget that she’s lost them most of the time, with periodic scans occurring every other week. I offered to help her the other night and we looked throughout the living room, where most of the trumpets of the house reside and the most likely spot for missing objects to disappear. Keep in mind that Candice has searched the living room multiple times before I offered to help her. I got down on my hands and knees to peek under the couch, preparing myself for the “I already looked there 5 times” comment. Thinking ahead, I attempted to cover my tracks by saying, “Well, I’m sure you’ve looked here already.” Her response? “Well…no actually. But it’s been on my mind.”
Really, the thoroughness and attention to detail is inspirational.
So I play clean-up after these two. I do so cheerfully, because they really are a lot of fun. Occasionally the lost items rub me the wrong way when I mentally determine that it’s crossed the line into irresponsibility, but for the most part I can laugh and help look. We’ll see what happens, but I may end up employing my mom’s strategy with us when we were little, late for church, and missing a Sunday shoe. “If I find it in less than 5 minutes, you owe me 5 bucks!” She would always find it too.
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