Skip to main content

Lessons!

Having been married for WELL OVER a month now (33 days), I'm pretty sure I'm qualified to tell the lessons I've learned and give unending marriage advice. I am, after all, almost halfway to Kim Kardashian's wedding-length with Kris Humphries.

Lesson number 1: Saying the H and W words is different.

It's always weird to switch titles in a relationship. It takes a minute to get used to saying "girlfriend" and then takes some extra time to get used to saying "fiancee" but neither of those shake a stick at the weirdness of saying "wife." This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's a thing. Both of us have felt this and we're pretty well confused about how it's making us feel - it's anxiety-inducing, possibly because it's a forever word. In any case, it's taking some adjustment-time, and we haven't quite gotten over it yet.

Lesson number 2: Getting gelato for your reception is the best thing you can ever do.

This one doesn't need much explaining, but we got gelato for our wedding and got about 5 gallons of it. Of course, we got a ton of other food and that meant that gelato was one of the key leftovers. I don't think any of the five flavors we got were more than halfway-eaten by the time the reception ended, and they made their way to my parents' house before we commandeered them for our own freezer. Over a month later, we're almost through the remaining 15 pounds of gelato that we saved (two of the buckets - and they were buckets - went to our neighbors because they weren't our favorite flavors). Learning how to properly make a gelato-shake with your new-from-the-registry blender is one of married life's great joys.

Lesson number 3: It takes a really long time to get used to sharing a bed.

Maybe just a personal item here, but after living together for almost a year before the wedding, I am still learning that I hate pillows, I hate blankets, and I cannot learn how to sleep. We don't share blankets because one of us (go ahead and guess who) is really good at stealing blankets in the middle of the night and prefers her (dead giveaway on which one of us I'm referring to) one blanket that she's had for years whereas I need one-leg in the open-air of the room. But when you're using a queen-size comforter and only get half the bed to use it on...god I'm impossible. Good luck with this one, losers.

Lesson number 4: Maybe don't pile everything complicated in your life into a 4 months stretch? Or do. Your call

We returned to the USofA exactly 4 months before we would get married. In the meantime we half-moved into my parents house for a couple weeks, then moved into a new apartment, then got jobs that didn't start for a while, then hosted people on AirBnB, all while planning a wedding and honeymoon. This was stressful. On the other hand, there's not much left to stress about, so maybe this was the perfect plan? Jury's out.

Lesson number 5: There's post-wedding withdrawal.

For all of those reasons in #4, once the wedding is over, it feels weird to realize you don't know what to use your time thinking about. Hopefully, during this time, you realize/remember that you really like each other, because it's just you two now, and maybe your fat dog and his tremendous farts.

So there you have it. Everything you could ever want to know about marriage and wedding-stuff from a full-blown expert on the matter. I'm happy to take speaking engagements, if the price is right.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Naples Archaeological Musuem and Its Penis Room

When the situation calls for it, I am a mature person. I can talk comfortably about reproductive health, I can watch a movie with a sex scene and not make a joke, and I can look at nude statues and think nothing of it beyond art. Hell, my senior yearbook quote was about how maturity is just knowing when and where to be immature. I won't laugh when you fall down because you might be hurt and I absolutely do not laugh when an animal humps something because it's instinct and the animal can't help it. I believe you shouldn't laugh at something if the thing you're laughing at is helpless in the situation. But sometimes you find your limit. The National Archaeological Museum of Naples (abbreviated MANN in Italian) pushed me near my limit. See, Naples is home to brilliant and interesting historical artwork. With the nearby town of Pompeii buried under the ash of Mt. Vesuvius, tons of pristine artifacts which were rescued from Pompeii ended up in MANN. Some of these p...

Movie

Someone asked me today: if my life were made into a movie, would I watch it? HELL YES, I WOULD. Upon answering so emphatically, she called me out for being cocky. Here is my extended answer, including teasers, cliff-hangers, and the possible title. I justify my arrogance by saying that if I don't believe in my product, who in the world is going to see it? The movie about me would be executive produced by me, obviously. I have the final say in what goes and what doesn't. If my life were made into a movie, only the most important parts would make it...it would be like a 23 year highlight reel crammed into 2 hours and 12 minutes (any longer and I'm risking a major walk-out-to-pee-and-miss-the-important-stuff crowd reaction). For the meaty part, think about all the great things this movie would have! It would feature sports, love, friendships, hardships, heartbreaks, family bonds, and most importantly...frontal male nudity. Name one thing from that list that doesn't appear ...

1000 Words a Day, Day 10: On Old Friends

At some point in college, it dawned on me that my group of friends from home was unusual. Yes, we were all weirdly close an did some objectively strange things to each other (and with each other, but mainly to each other), but apparently it was weird to stay so close to people from your hometown. We all thought nothing of it, because that's just the way we were. Others, however, were surprised and often confused. Some of them were "adopted" into the group of us from the Chesterland area, and it's hard to say how much they still stayed in touch with people who didn't go to high school with us, because they sure assimilated into our friends-since-early-childhood clique. But still, that was only college. Later, I moved to Chicago and found that there were people who I hadn't seen in years who would gladly, willingly, almost eagerly bail me out of I was in a pinch or needed a place to stay. These were people I wasn't even necessarily close  with when we were...