I don’t want to say that my husband and I never see eye-to-eye, but on some days, it certainly feels that way. I like to be on time. I like things neat. I like to finish what I’ve started. Well, most of the time, at least. When things aren’t “just so,” I tend to freak out. Big time. Mike, on the other hand, is more of a “go-with-the-flow” type of guy. He can mop the floor on Monday and empty the water bucket on Wednesday, and he’s always astounded by how much that bugs me. “I’m getting to it,” he says whenever I ask him about a item on his Honey-Do List. “Yeah, but when?” I say before I stomp off in a huff.

Today, I was home late from work. I had to hitch a ride with a colleague because he got off work late. (Check out yesterday’s post on the joys of car sharing.) He was heating up dinner when I walked in. “The mail’s on the counter,” he said. I dropped a handful of junk into the recycling bag and picked up a catalog. I immediately abandoned the rest of the mail; I absolutely adore catalogs. I rarely buy anything, but I enjoy pondering the use for things like penguin-shaped bookends. This catalog, though, was from Sur La Table, a store that sells high-end cookware and kitchen gadgets. I’m not sure how we got on this list. Fingerhut is more our speed.

I took the catalog to the family room and flipped through a few pages. They had a set of grill plates you could use for vegetables. Hmm. I thought. Those could be useful. I imagined us firing up our rusty gas grill for asparagus and Brussels sprouts. I put the book aside and started to unbraid my daughter’s hair.

“Honey – Did you see this?” I turned to see him looking through the catalog.

“I didn’t go through the whole thing.”

“Well, they have a set of grids you put on the grill so that your vegetables don’t fall through the grates.”

“Yeah -I saw those.”

“We should get them,” he said. I continued to work on Elyse’s hair while he turned pages. “Ooh! A deluxe potato cutter!”

I had to smile, because I thought the same thing about the potato cutter when I saw it. I started thinking about the other things that we agree on, from which brand of peanut butter to buy to how we raise our daughter. Suddenly, we didn’t seem all that different. We just seemed right.