To All You Normal Guys

The other day I was getting ready to run some errands of the sort that require real, grownup clothes, and as I moved a computer chair (not mine) to lean over a laundry basket (not mine) and a coffee table (mine, but full of stuff that is not mine) to slide open the closet door, an effort further hindered by the dress shirts (not mine) hanging from the sliding-door track, I pulled out an acceptable three-quarter sleeve mom-top, and
I realized I didn't care.
I. Didn't. Care.

I didn't care that my delicate fucking sense of order was disturbed by random stuff.
I didn't care that I was going to have to lean over all of it again to put clean stuff away,
eventually.
Later.

(I hate putting the clean stuff away.)

Anyway, yeah, the house is a hodgepodge of mismatched shelves crammed with all manner of books, games, music and knick-knacks I have been lugging around since childhood,
but damn it, those things have their place.
The only thing stopping me cordoning off the area and labeling them all is that I already know where they go.

So in the midst of the casual arrangement of... of...
of empty Excedrin bottles and torn envelopes and winter hats piled, essentially, in a room where there is
"a place for everything (except my own clean laundry basket) and everything in its place,"
not caring is a huge deal.
Huge.
HUUUUUUGE.



Anyway, All of You Normal Guys...

Okay, yeah, you're cute, and goofy, and smart, and fun.
The kind of guy we should have dated except when we were young
we didn't know any better,
but also...

You don't lose your nut when we forget the Horsey Sauce. You don't tell us we're incompetent when we drive by the post office twice in one day and don't check the mail. You don't insinuate we cannot do things because we are women, but sometimes you do those things for us anyway because you are nice and have a little spare time.
You don't have a creepy dynamic with your mother.
Love her, hate her, you've picked one.
Hopefully the first one, but points for consistency either way.

You don't freak out over words like "forgot," "lost," "broken," "cat puke," "male friends" (any friends) or "electric bill."
You don't automatically accuse us of having an affair with the drive-through bank teller or the guy at Subway when we've been out twenty minutes longer than expected.
(Seriously. The guy at Subway. Because you went to get the sandwiches that CAPTAIN CRAZY ASKED YOU FOR.)

You don't insist that you want us to be stay-at-home moms while simultaneously being angry with us for being unemployed.
You don't beat up the cat.
Or the dog.
Or the refrigerator.

You don't question when we hold back a little because we still have that murky reservoir of fear.

You bring us flowers and listen when we ask you to not put our favorite mug in the dishwasher. You smack our asses AND treat us like we're interesting. You give great hugs and wash your own laundry and watch The Princess Bride with us at least once and are nice to our families and understand that we might want to see Counting Crows and Toad the Wet Sprocket in concert even if you don't.

Oh,
and you wash the dishes.
DAMN that's sexy.

No, we're not twenty, and we're in piles of debt, and we might be a little reactive...
and trying to squelch it.
Not well.
But we love you.
So all that normal stuff?
Keep that shit up.