5 years with my best friend.

The best part about living together is always having someone to bother – ahem – I mean entertain. There is always someone to zip up your dress, put up the dishes on the top shelf, clean the bathrooms, check for monsters and comment on trashy reality TV stars.

Clint and I have been living together for four years. That is four years of turning off lights, picking up clothes, sharing the bathroom, arguing over TV shows, eating the last cookie, hitting the snooze, pillow fights, tickling and laughing at bad jokes.  We pretty much have everything down to a science, but some things still slip past us.

For the most part we mesh well together, but there are some things we never agree on. For example, you wouldn’t think that it really matters how you load the dishwasher, but it matters to Clint. Heaven forbid you don’t load it his way. The world might end.  And this wouldn’t be an issue if Clint was always going to be the one to load the dishwasher. But let’s face it, since he is not the one who cooks, he is not the one who gets most of the dishes dirty. So in his mind, I should just leave the dishes stacked up by the sink until he is ready to load them into the dishwasher. Um no. That is disgusting. I might have twenty dirty dishes. I am not going to just stack them there and wait until you feel like loading the dishwasher. I am going to load them my way, and if you do not like it, you can take the dishes out and put them in your way.  This really is one of our biggest arguments. It probably should make us take a step back and re-evaluate what we spend time fighting over.

There are so much more entertaining battles.  But nope, we fight over the right way to load a dishwasher.

But see, there is one thing I have learned after living with Clint for four years. Whatever you pick to fight about, isn’t what you are really fighting about. For example, in the dishwasher loading fight. We are really arguing about our two separate and different ways of doing things. And how each of us think that our way is the best and only way to do something. But instead of rationally voicing our opinions about our different cleaning styles, we fight over a dishwasher. Most people would just be grateful that someone else wants to load the dishes.

But there are also endearing things about living with someone you love:

There is someone to warm up the bed in the wintertime.

There is someone to jump up from the table and grab what you forgot.

There is someone to rub your shoulders.

There is someone to laugh at hilarious story lines with you.

There is someone to bring you your towel when you forgot it.

There is someone to share a bowl of ice cream with.

There is someone to sing off key with.

There is someone to snuggle with.

There is someone to blame for using up all of the hot water.

There is someone to turn off all the lights when you are too lazy to get out of bed.

There is someone to come behind you and refold the laundry you just shoved in the drawer because you were feeling lazy.