Married Life

It has been a long time since I last posted, but I believe that I have very good reason. Since I last posted, I both bought a house and got married. Because of that, it is my pleasure to announce that Weird is a Compliment is no longer a solo effort. My beautiful wife has agreed to join me in posting here occasionally.

The two of us have mostly managed to settle in, and we are really enjoying just being able to spend time together. It's amazing what kind of a difference it makes when you can do things together in the evening, and don't have to worry about leaving in time to make an hour-long drive home. It's a wonderful thing to get home from work, and enjoy a quiet evening at home with my wife.

With that said, I have to express a few pet peeves with a lot of people that I have run into since our wedding. It seems like everyone wants to ask the same questions, and in most cases they should already know the answers.

1) "What did you do on your honeymoon?"

This one irritates me for several reasons, depending on who asks it and what they are specifically asking. Some people ask it as though it's a competition to see who can have the most exciting honeymoon, or travel to the most exotic locations. Others are trying to ask what specific activities we had planned. To answer this, we spent a quiet weekend at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, and didn't really plan much of anything except alone time to get used to the whole idea of being married. It was wonderful.

Of course, that sort of answer isn't good enough for some people. In one case, someone kept pushing me about what did we have planned for our honeymoon, to the point where I gave an answer that will shock some of you. (It certainly shocked him.) If you really want to know that answer, email me. I'm not posting it here.

2) "How's married life?"

This question really irritates me, because I mostly get it from people who are married themselves, and so they should already know the big secret of married life: it's a lot like single life, which is just like life in general. People don't magically change when they get married, and Gwen is the same Gwen today that she was before our wedding.

Yes, there are adjustments to make. She fold the towels in halves, while I fold them in thirds. She puts soap into the dishwasher immediately after emptying it so she can easily tell that the dishes are dirty, and I wait to fill the soap dispenser until I run it. She's stolen the covers a time or two, and so have I.

But none of these things is really a fundamental issue, nor do these sort of things really matter that much in the long run. (Well, maybe the towels, but we won't go into that...) The only real difference between being engaged and being married is that we are discovering more and more each day how deeply we really love each other.

3) "Are you planning to have children?" "How many kids do you want?" "Are you trying for kids?"

These questions irritate me more than any others. Quite frankly, it's no one else's business when we plan to have kids, how many kids we plan to have, or whether we are trying to have kids right now.

If we want you to know when or if we're having kids, we'll let you know. We're still getting used to the whole idea of being married, and we're not really focusing on children right now. When that changes, we'll be sure to let all of you know within a year or so of our getting pregnant. Otherwise, if you are going to ask these questions, you had better be prepared to provide babysitting services (for free) when we do have kids, because I consider such questions to be volunteering.

I don't want to seem like I am just complaining, though. I'm grateful that so many people care about both of us to the point where they are interested in our lives. But I do wish that some people would learn to temper their curiosity with a little more common sense. At the very least, I would prefer that people come up with some more personalized and unique questions.

Is that too much to ask?