Besides for blogging a whole lot less, most folks probably wouldn’t be able to tell how I’ve changed since being married. I still mountain bike almost every day, spend a whole bunch of time in the woods and cook full time to make a living. I also take showers and brush my teeth more frequently thanks to marrying someone who is not the hippie of my fictional dreams. If it were me alone in a 2 bedroom place there would be no furniture and I’d still be sleeping on the floor in my sleeping bag. I would probably never turn on the heat and the only way you’d be able to tell anyone’s living legally in the house would be from the extensive ongoing gardening operation out back.
I didn’t have much trouble adjusting to the whole toilet seat thing, sure I piss all over the floor and hear about pretty often, but at least I don’t leave the toilet seat up. I’ve been told my entire life that the best way to make your wife happy is to wash the dishes, everyone was wrong, in fact if I wash the dishes or do any sort of cleaning I get in trouble. Sharing the housework is a myth, women can get pretty crazy when it comes to cleaning. My idea of cleaning is to shove everything under the bed and take one wet paper towel and run over things with it.
Of course, now that I know how clean my wife likes her dishes, I’ve started to notice how dirty most people leave their dishes and glasses. Don’t worry folks, I don’t care about your smudged wine glasses or plates with slight tomato sauce stains, only my wife does. Thank God she doesn’t drive much, or else I’d have to have a women’s touch in my car. The car remains filled with maps and outdoors gear, I don’t put the rear seats up much.
The other important thing that’s changed about me is my unwillingness to allow my wife the freedom of coffee consumption. It’s a hotly debated topic and every time I hear about a gingerbread latte from Starbucks or anything from Starbucks, I cringe at the loss of precious money that could have been used to keep up my $20 a pound coffee bean thing that one in the food industry in the Bay Area always gets caught up in. Then there is the fact I have to drag my ass out of bed to grind the beans, measure them out and actually make the coffee, but I hate to see her suffering through a coffee nightmare. I’m not sure if it has more to do with me wanting to save her soul or with me not wanting her to spend money on crap.
Yes, I buy flowers on erev shabbos like every other frum man in the country. I even shave on erev shabbos to, we have this deal that my hair can do whatever it wants as long as I shave, right now it’s in streimel mode and on the way to becoming long again, though I doubt I’ll have a pony tail by the time the warm weather comes and my annoyance at the sweaty mop will force the inevitable summer haircut.
I’ve noticed some people change the way they dress when they marry, choosing or being forced to dress better, neater and nicer on shabbos and holiday’s. I’ve been forced into buying shabbos sandals and wearing clothes that are not due to be laundered. Like any former quasi homeless man, I still take clothing out of the hamper and wear things twice as long as most folks would wear them, but I need to sneak it.
I’ve noticed that lots of young married folks start only hanging out with other young married folk and in this way I’m not sure I’ve changed. I don’t really hang out with anyone actually, but I still hang with single peeps and don’t really like the whole “young marrieds” (in large frum communities they call them that) thing.
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