Turns that all the years I was the primary houseparent, Jeremy was secretly better than me at some common household tasks.
Jeremy grocery shops better than me, by far. This is still a task that neither of us really enjoys, but with Jeremy, it gets done and gets done WELL. He is so much better than me at getting everything on the list, buying extra of what we need, and packing it all home.
Jeremy supervises homework better than me. I feel like I was terrible at this in Sharjah - when the girls got home from school, homework was the last thing they felt like doing and to be honest, it was the last thing *I* felt like overseeing. So it sometimes went undone until right before bed, which we can all agree is the worst time to do homework. With Jeremy in charge, the girls do their homework right after school every single day. He's like a machine.
Jeremy does laundry better than I do. More specifically, he hangs it out to dry better than I do. I thought I had this skill in the bag, considering I have 7+ years of experience living without a dryer, but Jeremy elevates the task of hanging clothes on a drying rack to a SYSTEM. You can't just hang things out willy-nilly like I've been doing all this time. There is a method, and Jeremy sticks to it. (In my defense, our clothes dried so fast in the Sharjah heat that I never had to worry about spacing or distribution on the rack.)
There is almost no better feeling in life than knowing someone else has got your back, and that they've got it better than you could do on your own. I love having a buddy who can step in to the void I left, and fill it better than I ever did.
