Mr. Mom ... Awesome!

Mr. Awesome has been off work since my surgery. We are fortunate that he works for a great company that offers amazing benefits and employee support and his coworkers have chipped in and helped out at every opportunity. This has afforded us three months to focus on nothing but our family and my health. Although I have a lot of good days I also have a lot of limitations on what I am able to do so Mr. Awesome has been picking up the slack.

In the months since my surgery he has taken over laundry, kitchen duty and house cleaning on top of his regular dad moments of bed times and bath times. I have helped when able but seriously, the bulk of this domestic machine is being run by The Mister. He has even become very efficient with grocery shopping and errand running.

He has handled all this like a champ and has found a certain amount of satisfaction from his new skill set. In fact, he gets a little annoyed when I help out; he says I mess with his system. And Heaven forbid I question his methods!

Last week I commented that he doesn't fold the towels like I did. I tried to explain that by folding the towels my way we can fit everything on the self. He then dragged me over to the linen closet and pointed out that 'his' way makes the towels less bulky and he, in fact, fit more towels per shelf. All right then.

He's not always right, though. I had to call in back up to settle a domestic dispute a couple of weeks ago. Not the cops, my pal, Erin who cleans our house once a week. Erin walked into a full blown domestic disturbance; Mr. Awesome and I were debating the dishwasher loading techniques. I told him that Tupperware can't go on the bottom rack and his mature and eloquent response was, "bologna!"  Erin tried to slip through the kitchen unnoticed but we trapped her and forced her to pick a side. I won!

Today takes the cake though. I was feeling pretty good this morning so I accompanied Mr. Awesome to the grocery store to pick up a few things. We were going up and down the aisle, debating the list he had made up and what brands and deals were available. I could tell my input was getting to The Mister. He was trying hard to not get annoyed with me and I was trying hard to annoy him; it is just that kind of day.

We made our way to the peanut butter aisle, a place of contention with Random Family. When it comes to peanut butter choices we are a family divided. Some like smooth, some prefer crunchy; some like Kraft, others want Skippy. We can never agree, so as we stood in front of the peanut butter choices I knew this was my moment to drive Mr. Awesome around the bend.

I picked up a jar of Kraft Crunchy, my brand and mix of choice, and put it in the cart. As he looked to see what I had dropped in there I stood in front of the Smooth choices, his preference. He scanned the shelves for his favourite, grumbling that he could only find the low sodium stuff. I stood there, smirking, telling him that I had read somewhere that Kraft wasn't making regular smooth peanut butter anymore because the demographic that eats smooth is so old that they need low sodium. Old people can't handle crunchy because of their dentures.

That was it; bringing up my favourite taunt completely undid him and Mr. Awesome had a wee melt down in the peanut butter aisle. I started to laugh and stepped away from the shelf. He swiped his favourite off the shelf, dropped it into the basket and stomped away in a huff. I followed behind, still laughing.

"After everything you're dealing with you are going to let a jar of peanut butter, and not very good peanut butter at that, get to you? That's what's going to be the cause of your undoing?"

He turned, looked me dead in the eye and said, "I have plans."

Now, hours later, I am twitchy and constantly checking my back because as my pal Debbie says, revenge is best served cold so in twenty years when something horrible happens to you, remember this moment.

Seriously, though, Mr. Awesome rocks my world and I couldn't imagine living this life with anyone else ... except for maybe Gerard Butler, but that's a whole other fantasy!

Soul-mates are people who bring out the best in you. They are not perfect but are always perfect for you. ~Author Unknown