Define Normal

My whole life I've either been a step ahead or a staircase behind. I had short hair before it was cool. Rode a bike before it was green. Kissed a girl before it was on the Top 40.

What I did right on time was find my wife at exactly the right moment. We were planning our marriage just as our state was planning to legalize it. We were expecting our certified license in the mail the day the nation recognized our melded life.

Most couples are worried about colors and flowers and where to have the reception. We were concerned with rights and taxes and health care. Who would come and who would scorn, not where to seat them. As we became one, which companies would accept us and which would give us hurdles. There are plenty of hurdles...we continue to find. And yet plenty of people who won't bat an eye when a woman says my wife.

Some see our choices as unconventional. Okay, if you must. I've been different my whole life. But saying my wife feels as natural as my own skin. I don't care about your policies or loopholes. Falling asleep in my wife's arms erases any struggles in our day.

The heteroes bucked society by living together before getting married. And here we are married, living apart. Now I'm hearing the key to a successful marriage is not living together at all. Here we go again. A step ahead about to fall behind. Different as the day is long. C'est la vie. Haven't you read the new YouTube comments, she keeps me warm.

I'm not sure if I should be excited or not, the whole process has been such a stressful journey. I want to live with my wife. I want dinner at the table with conversations of our day. Dog walks, evening jogs, rides to the city, nights on the couch with the remote. Many many more blog posts about life with the girl.

She makes breakfast. I cook dinner. She kills poison ivy. I do dishes and laundry. We love each other, support each other, depend on each other. We are married. And soon we will live in the same house. Yeah, I'm excited. Normal or not.



Hey Bud

This is exactly what I'm saying. Guess what I found today, finally? It's stringy, pink, and heard all over. Welcome back ipod, I can finally hear you now.

Ear buds. Yes, ear buds. Where were they? Is that what you asked? I just want to make sure I heard you correctly. Where? In the office.

NO, I am NOT saying the girl was right. In fact, what I am saying is I was right. This is why we don't throw items willy nilly around the office. In the black bin would be one thing, but these were clearly not there. I looked 104 times. Every time the girl said, they are in the office.

Yes, I understand how that last statement makes it seem like the wife was right. But clearly you are not listening to me. Typical. See I know she didn't put them in that white bag. That's not what she meant when she kept saying, "in the office." I have no earthly idea how they ended up in the white bag. PARKER?!! Hmmm? Well, yes, maybe.

But let me distract you from this post a second since you seem to be taking her side...

Today I was at the market and I sent a text to my wife.
It said, "Honey do we need bread?"
She replied, "No it's in freezer."
I snicker, "Really, there's bread in the freezer?"
She doesn't miss a beat, "3 loaves in freezer."
I said, "Clearly you haven't read the latest blog."
Fresh, fresh, exciting...

Really I'm just procrastinating because now that I found my ear buds I have no excuse not to go out and run. It's not like I need to stay in and make bread or anything.

Keepin' It Fresh

Good lord woman! Did they discontinue sliced bread? I mean even after the rush on Twinkies they ended up bringing them back. I don't think bread will ever go out of fashion. It's not a fad.

Haven't you ever heard the expression, the best thing since sliced bread? It's here to stay, mark my words. There's no need to hoard it. It's much better fresh.

Meanwhile she has got every chilled crevasse stuffed with the floured yeast product. And here's the thing, wait for it...she doesn't even hardly eat it!

I'm not exactly sure what the plan is but we are covered. Covered in bread. If the apocalypse comes maybe she is planning on lining the house walls in it to protect us from inevitable doom. Floods, good there too. Just open the fridge and all the water will be aborbed in no time flat!

Maybe it's the drama king across the street. He can be quite loud. Bread would most definitely deafen the sound of his whining rants that last hours and hours on end. Just ball up the bread and stuff it in your ears. I mean if your ear buds are missing and all. I know, they're in the office!

I can only assume she gets it at half price. The bread not the sarcasm. She was born that way. By the looks of things I won't be having fresh bread for the next year and a half. It might be different if we had a toaster. Or space to buy lunch meat or cheese. Good grief.

Girls, Work It Out



I used to get my panties in a bunch whenever the girl would ask me to do something in the middle of my work day. Like laundry or food shop. Um, I'm WORKING, I would quip, borderline annoyed.

And she would always put stuff on my 'desk'. Papers, Reader's Digests, crap we bought at the store the night before. It would drive me nuts any time I went to the country. I'd have to reorganize my office 'space' every morning. I'd miss the city where I had my own 'office'.

She's gotten much better about respecting my country desk. Now apparently, we need to work on the city office. Baby.

It's her house, I can't much complain. And she's cleaning up. But cleaning up means if she doesn't find it important or see a place for it it goes in the office. My office. I looked up office and it does not mean a place to store unwanted stuff. In fact it means quite the opposite.

It's a room assigned to an individual in which they do business. I'm that individual and my business is not rearranging stuff. I do collect a lot of unwanted stuff, but we send it overseas far far away from my office.

And so we do this little dance every weekend. I go to work, she cleans up the house by throwing everything in my office, closing the door, and forgetting about it. Monday morning I get up and move everything she put in there back out into the hall and living room. It doesn't belong in the office. I have to WORK there.

Baby, where's my ear buds? Last I saw them, they were in the office. Sigh, I'm not surprised. It's like the bi-cycle tri-angle in there, things go in and never come out.

Grounded

At it again. By the time I'm finished I will have rewired the entire country house. It's not likely to improve the electrical situation but at least when we catch the joint on fire we will be able to do with it with less effort. Just the flick of a switch.

But not any time soon. Right now I can't even get the light lit. I can't technically gain power from the main circuit box, if we're being honest. I never said I knew what I was doing, I just knew it wasn't right.

I've honestly got the best wife ever. So she comes home from work...I've got switches dangling from multiple walls, wires shoved in and out of junction boxes, and a rainbow of wire nut accessories saluting the mess I've created. Oh, and the power is shut down to half the house and I can't get it back up.

So she walks in from a long day at the pen...me hurdling debris on the floor, running back and forth between dining room, living room, and utility room, nervously assuring her "I'll fix it." She doesn't bat an eye. I'm not sure if this is because she trusts me (tsk tsk) or is just used to me screwing things up (already?).

Maybe it bodes well for me to have a partner who never minded that her three-way switches weren't exactly wired to work correctly. It drove me nuts in two days. And I set out to reverse engineer them as soon as she wasn't looking. Not that she cared.

She is so patient with me, lucky me. And I did get the electric back on, lucky me. Simple grounding issue, lucky me.