collisionwork | A Pair of Difficult People

Cat blogging in a bit.

I got back from the grocery store a little while ago to find Berit smiling -- "Guess what we forgot?"

Oh, lord. "Your mom's birthday?" (I'd forgotten my dad's earlier this Summer and B & I have been trying to help each other stay on top of these things).

"Nope."

Then it hit me. September 4. We BOTH forgot this year.

Berit Johnson and I have been together six years (and, uh, four days). Pretty much living, working, and in love together every day the whole time.

Which is over nine times as long as any relationship I'd been in previously -- I'm not an easy person to be involved with.

But then, neither is Berit, and somehow it's our mutual "problems" that help hold us together (we have them, so we put up with them in each other, so, no problem), that and our similar outlooks on life, music, humor, cats, the universe, everything (or most things). There are things we don't have in common, but we leave those to the other, and have no problem with having "apart" time as well. We have our ups and downs, of course, and little spats -- I'm sure that some people think we're The Battling Bickersons and others think we're disgustingly lovey-dovey, but in general, we care, we're in love, we're partners, and we put up with each other's prickly eccentricities.

So, it works. And we plan on keeping it working. Someday we'll get married. When we feel like it and get around to it (something else we agree on that others might not).

We may have both forgot (usually, only SHE does), but at least on this anniversary, as opposed to our first one in 2001, Berit wasn't stuck, all hopped up on Red Bull and paint fumes, in the backyard of The Connelly Theatre, painting around 80 cardboard boxes white and then stenciling black letters on them (for my production of The New Tenant in the Ionesco Festival), or something equally depressing.

Here we are four years ago in Molde, Norway: