Processing Information

"I was thinking I could either wear the black flowery dress with the heels," she says to her boyfriend while I perch on the stool surrounded by paper spilling out of shoe boxes, "or I could wear the skirt with these white sneakers, but really the skirt would look better with the... are you listening?"

"I'm listening," he says, not shifting his gaze from the middle distance.

Later, towards the end of the transaction, I say, "When you were talking to him, it was kinda spooky, because when you asked if he was listening, I could have sworn I heard my wife."

When she explains that she does that when she's talking and he's not looking at her, he and I say at the same time "He's/I'm processing."