Marriage Illustrated with Crappy Pictures Read online

  At least potentially. He’s only six. We’re grooming him for this position. He’ll let us know how much we can afford to pay him to be our accountant later on.

  BALANCING THE BUDGET

  Everyone knows that money stress is the source of many divorces. So we decided to take a class in financial planning to try to get better at this stuff to, you know, avoid divorce. One of the rules of the class is that we must sit down together and make a monthly budget at the start of each month. Everyone warned us that this is something known to cause huge fights among couples.

  We have to write down how much income is coming in that month and then deduct every single expense for things like gas and electricity and the phone. The regularly occurring bills. And anything left over has to be accounted for too. Every dollar has to have a name on it, even if it is just going toward debt or savings or birthday gifts.

  Apparently, most people do this regularly or at least have done it at some point. This was our first time. It hurt at first but we got the hang of it. It only took us three hours.

  What was everyone whining about? We totally rocked this. We didn’t even fight.

  We explored the idea of not eating for a month, but ultimately decided to start all over.

  And then the huge fight began, trying to come up with a way to lower our monthly grocery budget.

  It was classic and ridiculous. But eventually, we moved beyond blaming and anger and started to make fun of ourselves.

  Laughing got us through and we managed to figure it out. Still thinking about the grocery store and toilet paper ideas though.

  CHAPTER

  HEALTH &

  HYGIENE

  Farting and pooping and not showering. Being married is delicious.

  FARTING IN FRONT OF EACH OTHER

  Guess what? Everybody farts.

  Some people wouldn’t dream of farting in front of their spouse. That’s cool. Whatever works. But for us, we would have been divorced by now if we weren’t allowed to fart in front of each other.

  I can’t imagine! How uncomfortable would it be to not feel fart-safe in my own home?! I’d have to get up while watching a movie to go fart in another location. Over a lifetime, that is a whole lot of farting in secret. I’m getting tired just thinking about it.

  Now this is love.

  A LINE HAS BEEN DRAWN

  We fart in front of each other. We also pee in front of each other. But even for us, we have to draw the line somewhere. The line is at poop. Sure, we can openly admit that we poop, like that time at a deli recently:

  But doing it in front of each other is strictly off-limits. Who would want to do that anyway? Don’t answer that. And definitely don’t look it up online.

  I’ve also added one additional pooping etiquette rule:

  He cannot talk to me through the door. He always tries to, seeing as he has me cornered and all, but I won’t engage. Those two minutes where I lock the door and ignore the kids banging on it are sometimes the only two minutes alone I get all day. Everybody, go away!

  SHOWERING (OR NOT)

  I love the smell of Crappy Husband’s sweat, but I don’t know anyone who likes the smell of overripe feet.

  Really, it was more of a request than a question.

  EXERCISE AND LOSING WEIGHT

  You know what it takes for me to lose weight?

  Exhausting exercise every day and a diet of kale and water.*

  After two weeks:

  *I don’t really eat only kale and water. That would be stupid and unhealthy. Though probably fairly effective.

  This is what it takes for Crappy Husband to lose weight:

  He thinks about losing weight so he’ll throw in a push-up or two between gorging himself on high-calorie, delicious foods.

  After two weeks:

  DIRTY CLOTHES

  After I wear an article of clothing, it goes in the laundry basket to be washed.

  After Crappy Husband wears an article of clothing, it doesn’t go into the laundry basket. It goes anywhere but the laundry basket.

  When Crappy Husband comes home, he randomly takes off his clothes while walking through the house. This means his pants will wind up in the dining room, his socks on the kitchen counter and his shirt on the couch.

  Why? Why?

  His measure for whether clothing is dirty is totally different than mine too. To me, if something has been worn it is dirty. But to him:

  Only when it reeks is it laundry basket–worthy. As I mentioned in Chapter 2, even then it doesn’t go in the laundry basket. Just next to it.

  THE SUITCASE

  When Crappy Husband returns home from a trip, he puts his suitcase next to his dresser. A day goes by. Another day goes by. More days go by. More. The suitcase just sits there. Annoying me.

  For two weeks.

  I refuse to clean it out for him. This is totally not my job. I’m not going to touch it. The suitcase eventually gets hidden in the corner of our room.

  Several months later he has to go on another trip and gets his suitcase, which is still full. His last trip was months ago!

  UNDER WHERE? UNDERWEAR

  If you want to know if a couple is married or not, just look at their underwear.

  When we were dating, I wore matching bra and underwear sets every time we were together. I acquired quite a collection. And a large credit card debt to prove it.

  Now I have one pair of “good underwear” and one decent bra for special occasions only. And they don’t match.

  He, on the other hand, still has tons of pairs of underwear. They are the same ones he was wearing the year we met.

  They all have holes, saggy elastic and are see-through now. But hey, that just makes them sexier.

  GROWING OLD TOGETHER

  When I was single, I wanted to “find someone to grow old with” and I had visions of sitting on a porch swing together with gray hair sipping lemonade.

  That was a terrible goal. If I were smart when I was young, my goal would have been to “find someone to stay young with” because getting old isn’t actually very much fun. And we don’t even have a porch swing.

  We do, however, sit on our patio and sip wine (it’s like lemonade) and this is what it is really like to get old together:

  We can also have entire conversations determining who is more tired.

  (Apologies to the person who is older than I am and is now all bent out of shape after reading this. Sort of like how I get annoyed when I hear people in their twenties sweating turning thirty because they’ll be SO OLD. I know. It’s all relative. How old am I right now? Well, I’m the oldest I’ve ever been. So really, how could I know any better?)

  APPENDICITIS

  I’m eight months’ pregnant. I’ve also fractured my metatarsal, which means I have to wear a huge plastic boot on my left foot. This adds a limp to my waddle.

  One night we go out to eat at a new Chinese restaurant and afterwards Crappy Husband says his stomach feels weird. We blame the food. But it continues to feel weird and in the wee hours of the night Crappy Husband determines that he might have appendicitis.

  I drive him to the hospital. When we arrive in the emergency room, we’re yelled at by various staff members and well-meaning passersby that we’re in the wrong place. Labor and delivery is somewhere else.

  After finally getting the message across that we are not here for me, Crappy Husband is seen by a doctor. It turns out he does indeed have appendicitis and his appendix needs to come out immediately.

  Surgery goes well and he has to spend the following night there to recover. I decide that I want to stay over too.

  Early in the afternoon, I ask for a cot. No cot comes. I ask again. None. I ask again. And again. All the nurses keep telling me that one is coming. It is just that they are very busy and
all the cots are being used. I’m not angry. I’m just tired. And uncomfortable.

  At midnight, I give up and fall asleep on the cement floor on an extra sheet from the closet.

  At about 3:00 a.m. a nurse comes in to check Crappy Husband’s vitals and finds me there:

  But even she can’t source a cot. She finally steals a few sofa cushions from the staff lounge for me to lie on. They smell like ass but feel like heaven.

  The next day, Crappy Husband is discharged and starving, so we head to the market to get some groceries. He is very sore, so I urge him to stay in the car but he wants to come in. Looking at him, you’d never know he just had surgery.

  I buy several bags’ worth of food and start to carry them out. He can’t lift anything, of course, and certainly not heavy bags.

  Just then we realize how ridiculous this must seem to others.

  He looks like such a lazy jerk, making his hugely pregnant and injured wife carry everything! I fought the urge to announce to everyone that he had just had surgery.

  I took pride in the fact that, despite being hugely pregnant and having a fractured foot, I was the stronger one between us at that moment. Of course, a month later, he had healed and our son was born, and then he carried the groceries.

  CHAPTER

  PARENTING

  Nothing shakes up* a marriage like a baby.

  * I don’t mean shakes up like what you do with a martini shaker, resulting in a delicious beverage. It’s worse. It’s more like building a roller coaster over your house that constantly rumbles and shakes all of your belongings onto the floor and then you have to glue the pieces back together. Messy, but worth it.

  NAMING THE BABY PROBLEMS

  One of the coolest things about having a child is that you get to name the child! All by yourself! Anything goes!

  Unless you are married to or partnered with or otherwise on speaking terms with the other party responsible. Then, unfortunately, it is customary to allow them to have an opinion. Sigh.

  And opinions he had. He nixed every name I suggested for one stupid reason or another.

  Suggesting names became like a word association game. He always knew someone or it reminded him of a movie or a song or a street he once skinned his knee on when he was seven. Every name had something bad connected to it.

  And sometimes his veto was just in the form of a rhyme.

  Frustrated, I’d ask him to make some suggestions:

  He was usually super-helpful.

  WHO WILL THE BABY LOOK LIKE?

  We spent hours daydreaming about what our first child would look like.

  Will he have curly, light brown hair? Or straight black hair? We looked at baby photos of the two of us and tried to imagine.

  When Crappy Boy was born, days of grueling labor and complications ended in a cesarean section. They quickly whisked him away to a warmer table.

  Does he look more like me? Does he look more like Crappy Husband? I didn’t get to see!

  He then went on to say that he looked like his brother and his great-grandfather too. Finally, a nurse pointed out that the baby in fact looked like him. Imagine!

  (Now I’m told that both my kids look like a balance of both of us, but I know people are just being nice. I was merely a vessel for his genetic material. All of mine got tossed.)

  TAKING CARE OF CRAPPY BABY

  This is how I take care of Crappy Baby:

  And I still get a ton of other stuff done.

  This is how he manages to take care of Crappy Baby:

  Was this because he was so completely enraptured that all his focus and attention were on the baby? Sometimes. Maybe. Nah. Babies are like paperweights for men. He’s not enraptured: He just can’t move. The presence of a baby in his arms makes him incapable of doing anything else.

  WHAT I THINK HIS DAY IS LIKE AND WHAT HE THINKS MY DAY IS LIKE

  Sometimes I get jealous when he goes to work. With other adults. He gets to have stimulating conversations!

  It is probably like this:

  And of course sometimes he gets jealous of me staying at home, “relaxing.” He thinks it is probably like this:

  Really, we’re both off.

  This is what it is really like for him at work:

  And this is what it is really like for me at home:

  But at least we have something to talk about when he gets home.

  FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

  Kids ask a lot of questions. I would guess the most common one they ask is something like this:

  But the most frequently asked question to Crappy Husband has got to be:

  Mostly because I often say yes to the cookie one.

  HOW BABIES ARE MADE

  I’m all dressed up to go out on a date night with Crappy Husband. We’re about to leave and drop the kids off at their grandparents’ house.

  Apparently, I don’t get dressed up very often.

  WE’RE SO UNCOOL

  Nothing turns you into an old person quicker than having a child.

  The whole family is in the dining room, looking at the new anatomy set that Crappy Boy got as a gift. He points to the bones between the hand and the elbow and asks why there are two bones there instead of just one.

  Crappy Husband explains a little bit about the radius and the ulna and then gives Crappy Boy the thumbs-up sign and says:

  But Crappy Boy just looks confused.

  Finally, he says:

  So I explain that it means “cool” or “awesome,” but that people don’t use it as much anymore.

  Then Crappy Boy says:

  And he goes on to say that Pops, his grandpa, says nifty sometimes.

  Rad.

  BEDTIME ROUTINE

  We take turns doing the bedtime routine with the kids, but Crappy Husband isn’t very good at it.

  The only person he can get to sleep is himself.

  MY PARENTING VACATIONS

  It is the end of a very long day. The kids have fought nonstop. The house is a disaster. I need a vacation.

  Don’t worry. I always return from vacation early.

  PARENTING METHODS

  Crappy Husband doesn’t read parenting advice books, he doesn’t read parenting advice blogs and he certainly doesn’t care about the various “parenting styles” that parents label themselves with. He thinks it’s mostly a waste of time.

  I, on the other hand, devour everything, especially when we’re dealing with a new, challenging behavior by one of the kids. Since Crappy Husband doesn’t read the books, I give him a brief synopsis of each one and it always goes something like this:

  I tell him all the things we’ve been doing wrong and what we should be doing instead.

  Then he reminds me that last week it was something different and that next week I’ll be saying something totally new. It’s like I’m in my very own Parenting Book of the Week book club. By the time I narrow down how I truly think we should start dealing with the behavior, it stops.

  OUR WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

  I remember our last pre-kids wedding anniversary. I was pregnant with Crappy Boy.

  We went to a fancy restaurant, just the two of us. We daydreamed about how great it was going to be to have a family.

  More than a handful of years and two kids later, we recently celebrated another anniversary. This time at home. With the kids.

  Here’s to having a family!

  We were right though. Having a family is pretty great. Just rarely during dinner.

  CHAPTER

  SEX &

  ROMANCE

  Insert dirty joke here.

  HOW TO MAINTAIN A HEALTHY SEX LIFE

  We have different thoughts on how to keep our sex life robust.

  I’d like this to happen occasional
ly:

  All in the same day. In case that wasn’t clear.

  Crappy Husband would like this to happen occasionally:

  Every day. In case that wasn’t clear.

  For variety, he’ll also settle for sex and a pizza. And I’ll settle for candles and flowers.

  Marriage is about compromise.

  FOREPLAY THEN VERSUS NOW

  When we were dating (and married without kids), this was his preferred method of foreplay:

  He’d enter a room and loudly announce the existence of his penis.

  This worked enough times that he still does it. But now, two kids later:

  It isn’t nearly as effective.

  For me, when we were dating (and married without kids), this was my preferred method of foreplay:

  A glass of wine and a massage worked like magic to put me in the mood.

  Now, two kids later, this same combination still works like magic.

  Works like magic to put me to sleep.

  THE QUICKIE WINDOW

  Quickies happen when you are married and have busy lives.