Lessons of Marriage: 6-10

6. Never ask me if a picture frame is crooked. The same statement applies to if I think a frame is straight. Which is a bit odd to me since I can draw a darn good straight line freehanded, I took art since a young age, and I'm a type-A person; but in all seriousness, I apparently can't tell the difference. I mean I can tell the obvious slants on a wall, but the ones that are just enough to annoy people to fix them... yeah, those I don't notice. So maybe there's a chink in the armor of my control issues. Perhaps this is a good thing? I'm looking for a silver lining here... Can you tell?

7. Logic doesn't play into the length of a shower. Obviously, I'm a girl. So my shower times have always included shampoo, conditioner, soap, face wash, and shaving. I mean that results in an understood twenty minute shower (maybe fifteen if I want my legs to resemble a chigger bite war zone after bestowing myself with razor burn...). It is also obvious that I now live with husband. His habits should be completely different than mine, right? Right. I mean he even has super short hair. By my calculations his shower should take about 6 minutes, and that's still giving him some leeway time. What is not obvious is that his showers take longer than mine.... Who knows why? For being an extraordinarily logical person, this is definitely a chink in his armor. You might also ask why this topic has even been discovered: well... our apartment hot water heater only has warm water for 20 minutes. When my shower ran out after his, the investigative work began... Call me Nancy Drew.

8. I have serious issues recalling a phone conversation. And when I mean serious, I mean it's bad. Husband will ask me questions about a conversation that I physically just finished, and I can't tell him many highlights. Being a bionerd, I blame the whole "associative memory being different for everyone" line. Notice how I called that a line... Now it's not like I don't store the information I just learned somewhere, I just... can't tell you where. "Hi, I'd like a roadmap to my last conversation cataloged 7 minutes ago..." Boy, that would be nice. A cumulative history like a web browser. And it would fare better than when I remember the details in spurts over the coming days and weeks and then inform husband of them (as if he still cares by that point...). I'm working on it. Maybe I should jot down a brief outline as I talk? Or maybe J.K. Rowling should spill the beans on how to make a pensieve and pull those memories from our heads... Muggles. How do we cope?

9. I reread books. Husband does not. This was a low blow for me to discover a few days ago, so let me elaborate: I'm a book person. Like majorly. I might not read every title listed on the NY Times bestseller list, but I really enjoy a good story. One that develops a world within my mind and tells an interesting, or captivating plot. Yes, I am a Harry Potter reader and perhaps that is where our differences begin. I have loved Rowling's world since a young age, and I reread at least one of the books every year... It's like my own personal tradition (I used to reread them all every summer, so I have thankfully dialed it back a bit. Nerd alert). But my rereading habits apply to books beyond HP: Huxley's Brave New World, Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, Rivers' Redeeming Love... You get the picture. I'm just one of those types that will think of a world that I enjoyed visiting, so I return... Sometimes it's a nice world, sometimes it's frightening. It's a process that helps shape your own world and reminds you of valuable lessons, you know? (If you couldn't guess, yes, I have a great imagination...) Either way, sweet husband let me know gently that once he trucks through the world of Harry Potter, he's leaving on the Hogwarts Express and never returning... It was a crushing few seconds where I realized that my childhood love of other worlds will always be my own and not his. Ah, well. I should have seen this coming since he didn't begin reading the series until after we got engaged... So I'm counting it as a victory to have gotten him into the series at all and another W for getting most of my HP references in our daily life (serious nerd alert). Way to go husband! I'll cope with the rest (As a side bar, yes I will read HP to my children. And most likely my grandchildren (Lord willing). I'm that confident.). Moving on....

10. Strawberries are way less likely to be wasted if you core them. Seriously, it's true. You know how you can have an itch for a ripe strawberry, so you end up buying a pint of them just to eat seven? So in a few days, you're left with these wimpy and wilted strawberries that you most likely ignore until they mold and you throw them away? Well, it was complete happenstance that we fixed our wasteful ways on this subject. I, being the idealistic bride, registered for all the cool, nifty kitchen tools, including a pink and lime green strawberry corer (You know, why not register for it??). Well one day, curious husband was rummaging through our kitchen drawers and pulled out this odd looking contraption. He decided to attack the whole container of strawberries at once (and we buy the big one... no shame) and put all the freshly washed and cored berries in a ziploc bag and back in the refrigerator. No lie, within about 4 days we had consumed them all... The moral to this story: we humans are lazy, but if we just push through the pain of making an effort all at once, we can continue to be lazy AND enjoy yummy fresh strawberries (rather than the wilted ugly stepsisters). Oh, and that this couple loves fruit (blame the wife for that one).

Lessons of Marriage: 1-5

Since we're now three months into this journey called marriage, I thought I would share a few of the things that marriage has taught me thus far. It's a list that is always growing and I'm sure will involve many posts in the future. So here goes: 

1. Leftovers are a free for all. In a previous life, the leftovers from a dinner out were without a doubt yours. You would eat half a meal and bring it home, and unless you lived in a sorority house (which involved the additional step of adding your name to the container, lest you wanted your sweet neighbors to chow down on your food (and let's be honest, they sometimes did regardless of whether there was a name on it or not)), you would place said meal in the refrigerator and come back to it whenever you pleased. Post-vows, leftovers from a dinner are up for grabs, and things can get prettttty competitive around here (especially vying for the chicken pot pie from Founding Farmers). This might mean that I eat a teensy bit more at the restaurant than I have in times past, and that I might need to start cutting out the bread course (whaaattt??) if I actually want to taste what I ordered. Compromises, compromises... 

Corollary to this rule found here.

2. You sometimes have to be sneaky. In addition to the first point, if you reaaalllly want a claim on something (like dessert), you occasionally have to be crafty to get it. For instance, husband has the occasional forgetful mind, and let's just say I might have used that to my advantage. In the first few weeks of being married, we made the BEST homemade chocolate chip cookie recipe that husband (a serious CC cookie connoisseur) and I have ever come across. The only problem was that the recipe made about 100 cookies and unless we both wanted to gain 10 pounds and not eat for a week, we had a good amount of leftover cookie dough even after we made 2 dozen for his office. So we wisely froze the cookie dough for later. Out of sight, out of mind as the saying goes. At least that has served true for husband, but not for this girl who would eat a spoonful or two a couple of times a week, until last week when husband finally perused the freezer and discovered my secret... The sad thing is I'm not ashamed. 

3. If you're willing, you can change. People really can change if they want to. Case in point: as Siera, my sweet roommate of three years in the Chi O house, can tell you, I was a messy individual. Organized in life, messy in living. Clothes everywhere, bed unmade, proof of an overly involved college student. Since moving to Virginia, I have realized that in a 740 sq. ft. apartment that sort of lifestyle is just overwhelming, and I am proud to say that the bed has been made pretty much everyday and the floors are clean and the laundry is done. And I have even gotten past the gagging while doing the dishes. What has happened to me??

4. Husband will graciously eat your hard cooked meal, whether its great or terrible. One of the many sweet things that I love about him! Let's just say that my first attempt at my dad's spaghetti recipe was AWFUL (wayyyyy too tomatoey), and the after effects included me crying tears of frustration, husband eating his plate AND mine, and us having leftovers for what seemed like a family of 15... Needless to say, we haven't attempted spaghetti again, but once I nail down the problem ingredient, I shall redeem myself (fingers crossed). 

5. It is apparently the weirdest thing for a man to learn to wear a wedding band. I fully expected it for the first couple of weeks, but sweet husband is still strugglin'. I mean, okay, going 23 years without wearing anything on your finger, and then BAM one day you have a ring for the rest of your life- yes, it takes some adjusting. But I love catching him twisting that band around his finger absentmindedly: "Husband, what are you doing?" "Oh, um, nothing..." Ha! And my favorite, when that twist turns into a corkscrew motion and spins right on off his finger... and most recently, spun right into our couch. The look on his face was PRICELESS, like a kid getting reprimanded for stealing a cookie. So we proceeded to flip the couch upside down and cut a hole in the bottom to retrieve his symbol of our marriage... To his credit, I learned this past weekend that he is not alone. And in this couple, the wife jokingly asked if her husband was regretting their marriage since he seemed to be taking off his ring and playing with it so often. Ha! Men...

Let's start at the very beginning...

Oh, blogging. How I have always waged an internal battle against you. One half of me always wanted an outlet to write my little heart’s desire, and the other half never wanted the responsibility of keeping one up, worrying about what others might think of the internal workings of my brain, or really just having to make an effort.

This battle of mine has waged for several years. I managed to never create a Xanga, MySpace, or any other account that looking back on it was mostly just funny and embarrassing, so why now? Who knows. I think I credit the fact that I moved far away as to why I finally took the plunge. Regardless, I’ve now built up the courage to try this thing out. So here we go (hopefully I won’t look back on this as an embarrassing moment. Fingers crossed).

While I’m a planner, I really don’t know how I’m going to structure this blog quite yet. It’s probably going to be filled with the musings of my weird and sarcastic mind and some photo updates of us newlyweds living the Northern Virginia life so no one will think we completely fell off the map up here. Oh, and at some point I’ll explain this title of mine and its meaning to me. So, should you wish to waste some time by reading my thoughts, feel free! 

And yes, for you Rodgers and Hammerstein lovers out there, I was indeed singing The Sound of Music in my head as I typed the title. Nerd alert.