One of the many things the BF and I have in common is, THANK GOD, our sense of humor.  As day after day of a life together goes by, I am grasping just how important this possession is.  We even have a similar laugh: one that peals out suddenly and rises decibels above any other noise in the room, occasionally drawing the stares of those around us.  We both have the tendency to guffaw at everything, which means we have a laugh for any circumstance: the “That’s truly funny” laugh; the “I feel awkward right now so I’m just going to laugh” laugh; the “You’re not really funny but I’ll be conciliatory anyway” laugh (I’m working on striking that one from my repertoire as I rid myself of people-pleasing compulsions); the “You’re a crazy person but I love you anyway” laugh.

Actually, that last one is more his than mine, given that I unwittingly offer up so many occasions for him to use it.  Because there’s one thing the BF and I don’t have in common, and that is How We Clean Up Our Messes and Put Our Toys Away.  And the second I hear a crumb or a splash hit a surface where it doesn’t belong and I look up and rush to the scene with a Swiffer/paper towel/dust buster, I get that last laugh from him.

The thing is, I never felt like a clean freak until we started officially sharing the same space.  In my old apartment in New York, I could live with some mess–water stains on the faucet, slight ring around the bathtub, strands of hair on the bathroom floor–because it was my mess.  I had a gauge on the situation and I could control how out of control things got before I swooped in with a sponge and a bottle of bleach.  But now that the mess is shared, and now that we actually have a new and beautiful living space, I have entered freak status.  And though the results may be gleaming, the journey can be ugly.

An errant crumb or drop or scrap of paper sets me off because , unlike the rest of the world, it’s something I can control.  But by God (and isn’t He the ultimate one who gloriously escapes my clutches?), though I can’t control who the president is, I can damn sure make my stovetop shine.  And so I set about making my (oops…our) corner of the world sparkly and safe.  Then the BF comes in, blissfully unaware of my preordained vision, and trashes it all.

Last summer he had attained Likely Lifetime Partner status and was therefore invited on our family vacation to the Outer Banks. This tradition, three years old, involves my mom and I along with my sister and her husband and his family (some of the best people on earth) along with anywhere from two to four small dogs and a bar’s worth of alcohol.  Good times.  One morning, I came in from my Come to Jesus time to a mini-uproar in the living area.  Turns out that the crew had just solved the Mystery of the Socks on the Counter, perpetrated and confessed to by the BF himself, the newbie who had inexplicably left his dirty athletic socks perched right by the coffeepot.  The transgression earned him the nickname Socks and a story in our family’s canon.

Despite being highly organized with the bigger-picture stuff and nearly perfect otherwise, the BF’s negative tidy factor confounds me not just because it doesn’t align with my obsessive need to attain a flawless veneer but because I don’t understand it.  In what world would it make sense for five minutes in the bathroom to produce hurricane-like amounts of water on the countertop and floor?  Why is it easier to leave the hand towel in a tangled mess rather than hook it neatly over the rack provided for that purpose?  How do we reach middle ground between dirty dishes piled in the sink for days on the one hand, and my not being able to finish a thirty-minute sitcom without washing them on the other?  And to think…ours is one of the most functional relationships I know.

Which brings me back to the laughter.  I was watching a retrospective of The Cosby Show this week (this is what people do when they don’t live in New York) and was struck once again with how comforting a depiction of a good family being real is to my soul. (I’m also looking at you, Eric and Tami Taylor from Friday Night Lights).  The idea that good people can live together, have kids, and still laugh gives me hope for my own domesticity.  Because underneath it all, one of my more abiding concerns is not how good a job the BF is doing putting his toys away, but how he manages to deal with the much bigger issues that I bring to the table. I may keep a clean house, but what about that temper/residual childhood anger/identity struggle/need for constant affirmation? And such.  Oh well.  I can always find assurance in the fact that we laugh well together.  And that were he ever to leave me, it wouldn’t take long to track him down. I’d just follow the trail of crumbs.

Now excuse me, I have to go clean underneath a coasterless glass.