No, Really: MFEO-Such

In late January I titled a post “MFEO-Such.” Two months later, The Husband asks me: “what does MFEO-Such mean, anyway?”

First, this is the status quo. Our communication tends to run on a two-month delay. I cannot even tally up the number of times I’ve discovered some bit of information on my own, mentioned it to him, and had him say something like “yeah, I’ve known that for a couple months.”

Sort-of Example: In November and December we sporadically discussed our ideas for pouring a patio along the back of the house. For over two months we had increasingly-heated discussions about our greatly-varying ideas for the design. He couldn’t envision what I was talking about; what he was describing made no sense to me. In late January, we finally each drew on a piece of paper what we had in our heads. Still we weren’t agreeing. After scribbling all over each other’s drawings (pointing out our respective design flaws), I said something to him about not being able to picture what he meant and thinking it would look ridiculous. At which point he whipped out his cell phone and showed me a photo he had taken of another patio he’d viewed with the contractor in December. I, of course, deftly moved from criticizing his patio idea (which in the cell phone photo was okay after all) to criticizing his inexplicable withholding of a photo that would have curtailed a whole lot of unnecessary home improvement drama.

Anyway.  That’s just a taste of what a typical timeline for delivery of information is like around here.

What’s that? You want another taste? No, not right now. That might seem like what he lovingly refers to as “The Husband Bashing,” which is not what I intend. I adore him, communication-challenged or not, photo-withholder or not.

Circling back around to where I was . . . .

Second, I am so sad to learn The Husband wasn’t paying attention years ago during Sleepless in Seattle. If he had been, he’d totally know that ’mfeo’ means ‘made for each other.’ And yet? I am so happy for a perfectly reasonable excuse to make him watch that movie with me again.

So MFEO-Such? It’s like this:

Unlike The Husband, I frequently mispronounce words (to his GREAT GLEEFUL DELIGHT). However, while he sometimes sends me to the edge with confusion of they’re/their/there or the like, my spelling abilities far exceed my pronunciation skills. Together, and not accounting for the context of the words, we make one mostly-literate sounding/reading person.  Made for Each Other-Such.

With rare exception, The Husband arrives everywhere sometime between fifteen-minutes-early and right-on-the-dot. Unless it’s a professional event where someone in a black robe or at a speaker’s lectern might call me out on it, I arrive everywhere sometime between when-it-started and thirty-minutes-later, my official social-engagement-timeliness motto being: Your Five Minutes Late Is My Ten (Or More) Minutes Early. Made for Each Other-Such.

Last week I went shopping for a springish dress to wear to the big, annual fundraising dinner hosted this coming weekend by a social club in which The Husband participates. While walking through the mall I spotted a super cute dress in the window of a store geared toward girls in their late-teens to early-twenties.  As I am clearly their target consumer (in my thirty-something-mind, anyway), I wheeled the stroller right on in there (The Child and her grandmother tagging along behind me), snatched that dress up in the only size left on the rack, and took off to the dressing room. When that size turned out to be too generous around the top for a lady of my proportions, I found a salesgirl (really: GIRL) willing to pull the one from the window. While she was off stripping the mannequin, I tried on a little bolero sweater and pranced in front of the three-way mirror. Not liking the sweater, I went to pull it off when the security tag became entangled in the back of my hair.

Now, in hindsight, I realize: when this happens it is better to stop in my tracks, put the article of clothing back on, and brush the hair aside. What one should really, really not do? Take the item completely off and swing it around to your face so you can examine just how tangled it is. Why? Because it turns out that the “swing” only ENTANGLES IT MORE.

Which is about the time that the salesGIRL returned with the requested garment and discovered me in the middle of the dressing room, bolero sweater hanging from my head, techno-funky-pointedly-younger-than-me music beating in the background. And entering the dressing room right behind her would be The Child and her grandmother.

I had lots of help, but none of us could separate my head from that security tag.  So what did we do? SalesGIRL escorted me up to the front of the store, behind the counter of registers, and had me bend over the desk with my head next to the security-tag-removal-thingy so she could free me. On the way there I flippantly said “Eh, I’m sure this happens all the time.” She assured me that in her nine months on the job I was her first. Awwwww! I hope she has another. No doubt, she does, too.

I meant to tell The Husband about the spectacle of relative oldness I’d made of myself when I got home that evening. But somehow between getting The Child fed and him electing to give her a bath while I cleaned the kitchen (grr! I envied him getting the more fun task) and then him carrying a contaminated bath rug to the garage (ha! the kitchen-clean-up straw was no longer the short one) and me starting the wash for that rug and him chasing off The Child’s remaining energy and me doing a little work on the computer and him going to bed ahead of me – - well, telling him that story just didn’t happen.

It was two hours after he’d gone to bed that I finished up the bookkeeping or writing or whatever I was working on at the computer. Two hours.

And I had forgotten to go move that rug from the washing machine to the dryer. Which I remembered as I passed the laundry room on the way to bed and heard the water running. Wait. Water?

Yes.  Water.

Only . . . not the washing machine.

No, it was the faucet running into the utility sink. Running now-cold water over a pink wash cloth, which I assumed to be a casualty of the earlier bath-time incident. Earlier, like TWO HOURS EARLIER.

Who puts a wash cloth in the sink (instead of the washing machine), turns the hot water on, and leaves it running? For TWO HOURS? In a sink that is seven steps (I counted) from his pillow? And doesn’t hear it?

The Husband of The Lady with The Bolero Sweater Stuck To Her Head, that’s who.

Made for Each Other-Such.