Happy Fuzzy Bunny Love, and why it's terrible.

One thing that I think a guy getting married may overlook is the sheer amount of time he'll be spending with his future wife. Sure, he may look at her and say to himself "I want to spend the rest of my life with this woman." He may even go slightly more specific and think "I want to spend every day of the rest of my life with this woman." But what I'm sure few men ask is "Do I want to spend every minute of every day of the rest of my life with this woman?" And that's a shame, because it's something to be considered.

I've been in a bad mood for most of the past 23 years, and pre-marriage it was pretty easy to just lock the door and ignore people, but now I've got a wife to contend with. And I'll be damned, this never fails, the second I'm in a bad mood she wants to cuddle. The upshot here is that I do actually love the girl, so if I just give in chances are I end up in a better mood, or get some sex, or both.

The other day when I was either in a bad mood over something specific or just being a mopey bastard for no reason whatsoever Steph wanted to cuddle so cuddle we did. I think we were laying in bed, but I don't really remember. Then she called me on the fact that the hard-drive on my computer is named "Seppuku" which is the Japanese named for ritualistic suicide. Steph apparently found this a little creepy, which I guess it could be, but in my defense there's a reason for it. Before the drive got in my computer it was used to store files during the editing process of my film Several Ways to Die Trying. In the movie the main character who's trying to kill himself has a pet hedgehog named Seppuku.

This explanation didn't seem to appease Steph so later that day when she wasn't looking I changed the name of the drive to "Happy Fuzzy Bunny Love" to help convince her I wasn't going to cut my insides out with a samurai sword, and because I was experiencing a cuddle-related lift in mood.

So, my mood had improved. The hard drive was named something less likely to worry my wife, and all was right with the world so I went to bed. Sort of. I couldn't sleep so I stayed up until three or four playing Monopoly online before finally being able to pass out.

But the thing about being married is that you're on-call all the time. So at either 4:30 or 5:30 I get woken up to the sound of Steph typing, which usually happens around 7 or 8 and I roll over and ignore it. This time was different. Despite the ridiculous time of morning this typing was accompanied with Steph's "The computer's doing something I don't understand please come help me" noise that I still haven't decided if she makes intentionally or not. So at some ridiculous time of morning I found myself helping my wife with a website she has to design for a class. She figured she couldn't sleep anyway, she may as well get something useful done.

After a brief fight about the situation I went over to help her. She was panicking because the computer told her it couldn't find any of her files, and she thought they had somehow disappeared.

They didn't. The computer was looking for Seppuku but all it found was 230 gigs of Happy Fuzzy Bunny Love and had no idea what to do with it. Like most things I do to try to make Steph happy this backfired, and I was awake at 5am renaming my hard drive to the Japanese word for ritualistic suicide to make my wife happy, even though the day before she complained about the same thing.

The moral of the story is that offing yourself with a samurai sword is better than Happy Fuzzy Bunny Love.

Epilogue:

After re-renaming the drive I went to sleep out on the couch. The couch is fairly comfortable, but it's no bed so I tend to wake up once in a while when I sleep there. I woke up a few times, and every time I did I saw Steph staring at me and smiling. This made waking up at 5 in the morning to fix a computer problem I caused and fighting about it completely worth it.

Why DID I get married?

The other day at work I was leaning against the bar and spinning my wedding ring. Then out of nowhere a girl I work with asked "So why'd you get married?"

I didn't know what to say. Not because I don't have any reasons for getting married, but because it's hard to pick one. Besides the obvious one, but... "I don't supposed 'Love' is the answer you're looking for." I said. Knowing full well that this particular individual is jaded well beyond the point of love ever being a possibility.

"No, I mean really." She replied. Pleading for a "real" answer. "I mean, she wasn't knocked up or anything?" She added.

"No, but I could see why you'd think that." I said it even though I had no idea why she would think that. Except that I live in a town that still holds shotgun weddings.

I could have given her a speech about wanting to spend the rest of my life with Steph, about wanting kids with her, about always knowing that she'll be there when I wake up, but she was looking for something practical, and I know full well that digging the hell out of Steph and not wanting to die alone aren't particularly practical.

"We've been dating off and on since high school, so... you know." I told her, adding "And she had health insurance."

Nothing's more practical than a $15 co-pay.

Saying, "My wife."

When you're married to someone it's inevitable that you'll at some point have to talk about them with other people. The other person will ask you something like "Do you know anyone who's a librarian." And if you're married to a librarian you say "My wife's a librarian."

As it turns out, this is when you get accused of loving to say "My wife". Do I love to say "My wife"? No. Not especially. I don't dislike it, but whenever I say it the person I say it to replies "You really love saying that, don't you?"

NO! I don't! You asked! How else do I describe her? I can't say "Steph" unless you know her already, and most of the time you don't! She is my wife! Do you think I'm trying to rub it in that I'm married? I'm not. If that's what I wanted to do I'd say "my hot wife" Which, yes, I do say on occasion and for that reason.

What are you kidding?

My friend just told me he can get Steph a freelance writing job to blog about married life.

I know! What the hell.

I'm happy for her, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm jealous about it.

Maybe her first entry can be about her husband's insecurities as a writer and as a human being.

If you need me I'll be sulking and trying to be happier for my wife than I am sorry for myself.

Marital Voting.

My wife and I borrowed her father's truck to pick up furniture the other day, and when we got in and started it up a talk radio show was on. At first it was some European man talking about cheese and I wondered why my father-in-law was listening to this. Then someone else started talking about how voting for a Democrat empowers terrorists and I knew exactly why he was listening to it.

"We need to figure out who we're voting for." I told my wife.

"What?" She asked.

"Well if we're voting for different people we cancel each other out. If that's what we're doing then I'll save myself a trip to the firehouse."

So if you're married you should mutually agree on who to vote for. Not for any deep political reason or to make your vote count more, but really just as a time management issue. If you're voting for Idiot #1 and your wife's voting for Idiot #2 then you don't really have to wake up early to go vote before work.

Unless, of course, your wife is trying to trick you. She might say "Well I was voting for Idiot #2 so you might as well not even go vote for Idiot #1 because then what's the point?" But then she'll go vote anyway. That's why this only works if you're married. You already have to trust the person you're married to on a lot of counts. Like not murdering you when you're asleep. So I guess you can trust them to vote for the right idiot come election day.

*This post was paid for by the commitee to get Bill Tickle to run for President.

The Remote.

If you've seen any sit-com ever then you know that married couples are supposed to fight over the remote. I'm supposed to want to watch "the big game" during the same time some sappy chick flick that Steph wants to watch is on.

This has never happened.

I only watch the Stanley Cup finals, and if I miss them I don't so much care. I'm also more likely to want to watch a sappy chick flick than Steph.

However...

If you're getting married or considering moving in with someone, romantically or not, keep in mind that if you only have one TV things will come up. This isn't major, and so far no fights have broken out over what to watch, but the fact of the matter is that one episode of America's Next Top Model is too many, but I've seen a few because we only have one TV and Steph, for reasons I can't begin to understand, loves that show.

I'm sure there's things she watches with me that she doesn't understand. In fact, a lot of things. When I watch cartoons she just stares at me. All I can say in my defense is that none of the cartoons have to listen to criticism from Tyra Banks.

The only thing we really watch together is The Daily Show.

Things that we watch usually don't air at the same time so that's not really an issue, and when it is we tape one and watch the other later.

Having two TVs would solve all this, but I actually like not having a TV in my bedroom, and that's the only other room in the apartment. Oh well. There's always Youtube.com (now gloriously owned by Google)

Dating Sex vs. Married Sex

DISCLAIMER #1: I did promise my wife I wouldn't go into details about our sex life. That said, we are married, and if you can't connect the dots and realize that means we're sleeping together then you aren't smart enough to be reading this... and quite possibly not smart enough to read at all.

DISCLAIMER #2: This one is for my parents, all of them, regular and in-law. I'll be honest, you probably want to skip this one, guys. The moms at least. Dads, I don't know. It's up to you. I don't see how Steph's dad would want to read this, but he did pose the question "How was last night?" the morning after the wedding, so he clearly understands that I'm humping his daughter, and he's even comfortable enough with the idea to bring it up over coffee. Anyway, if you were responsible for the birth of myself or my wife use your own discretion here.

Here we go with the real post:

You still have sex after you're married. At least 5 months in. I've seen sit-coms before, so I know the whole "Married people never have sex anymore" myth. Maybe 30 years down the line it'll taper off, but I've been married for less than a year, hell less than half a year, but regardless people feel the need to bring up this topic when they find out I'm married.

Here's the typical conversation.

Me: "Oh, my wife blah blah blah blah." (The specifics here don't matter. Just that I bring up my wife.)

Them: "You're married?"

Me: "That's what me saying 'my wife' would imply, yeah."

Them: "Wait, how old are you?"

Me: "23." (although I had a dream last night that I turned 24 and my grandparents were walking me to school.)

Them: "Isn't that a little young to be getting married."

Me: "Pretty obviously not.

Them: "Is it true that when you get married you don't really have sex a lot?"

Me: "No."

Them: "Oh, cuz I heard you don't."

Me: "How often do you have sex with someone other than yourself? Wait, ya know what, I don't care. Just know that I get laid more often than you."


The problem with this is that I'm almost always stuck in this conversational hellpit with some young single guy who for some reason thinks that the second he gets married that's it for his sex life. Well, how good is your sex life now? You're 20. You maybe drunkenly hook up with some fat girl at a party once a week.

I mean, sure. Eventually we're not going to be having sex as often, but even so, look at the averages here. Single guys can go years without getting laid. (This sad fact is proven time and time again by several of my friends.) So go with a few times a week for the first few years of marriage versus... once a month- maybe, for a single cat.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, single guys, I'm having way more sex than you are. Yeah, that's right. An entire post to prove the point that I have more sex than you.

Dating Sex vs. Married Sex

DISCLAIMER #1: I did promise my wife I wouldn't go into details about our sex life. That said, we are married, and if you can't connect the dots and realize that means we're sleeping together then you aren't smart enough to be reading this... and quite possibly not smart enough to read at all.

DISCLAIMER #2: This one is for my parents, all of them, regular and in-law. I'll be honest, you probably want to skip this one, guys. The moms at least. Dads, I don't know. It's up to you. I don't see how Steph's dad would want to read this, but he did pose the question "How was last night?" the morning after the wedding, so he clearly understands that I'm humping his daughter, and he's even comfortable enough with the idea to bring it up over coffee. Anyway, if you were responsible for the birth of myself or my wife use your own discretion here.

Here we go with the real post:

You still have sex after you're married. At least 5 months in. I've seen sit-coms before, so I know the whole "Married people never have sex anymore" myth. Maybe 30 years down the line it'll taper off, but I've been married for less than a year, hell less than half a year, but regardless people feel the need to bring up this topic when they find out I'm married.

Here's the typical conversation.

Me: "Oh, my wife blah blah blah blah." (The specifics here don't matter. Just that I bring up my wife.)

Them: "You're married?"

Me: "That's what me saying 'my wife' would imply, yeah."

Them: "Wait, how old are you?"

Me: "23." (although I had a dream last night that I turned 24 and my grandparents were walking me to school.)

Them: "Isn't that a little young to be getting married."

Me: "Pretty obviously not.

Them: "Is it true that when you get married you don't really have sex a lot?"

Me: "No."

Them: "Oh, cuz I heard you don't."

Me: "How often do you have sex with someone other than yourself? Wait, ya know what, I don't care. Just know that I get laid more often than you."


The problem with this is that I'm almost always stuck in this conversational hellpit with some young single guy who for some reason thinks that the second he gets married that's it for his sex life. Well, how good is your sex life now? You're 20. You maybe drunkenly hook up with some fat girl at a party once a week.

I mean, sure. Eventually we're not going to be having sex as often, but even so, look at the averages here. Single guys can go years without getting laid. (This sad fact is proven time and time again by several of my friends.) So go with a few times a week for the first few years of marriage versus... once a month- maybe, for a single cat.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, single guys, I'm having way more sex than you are. Yeah, that's right.