Episode 87

Marriage

Banal? That rhymes with something.

You'll also note 'moving on' isn't represented. Just take that as a given.

Now far be it for me to criticize marriage (My parents are happily married, and I would someday like to be), but the 'ultimate goal' in practice is far more mundane than the macro-level accomplishments many couples front. And that's fine. Life is often mundane.

I just hope it's not as bad as it looks. Obviously, partnerships are all individualized, but if it ends up where my every day off, I end up working harder than my actual 'money days' I'll seriously consider dropping the whole goddamn thing.

There's someone at work I could talk shit about, but I'd rather focus on my neighbor, and it's a new neighbor. In the past year, every weekend, every nice-day when he gets home from work, I see his chubby-ass climbing ladders, installing gardens, decks, painting, mowing, trimming, and that's just the outdoor-shit (their weekly trash is a roadside display of brown, heavy-duty bags of indoor renovations.) Now then, I've been in that house, and it wasn't fucked up.

All the while his wife, who is way too pretty for him, oversees his labor and directs with pointed fingers and hands on hips between jogs around the block. Now I can only assume the specific dynamic, but body language says a lot. He might even feel grateful or happy about it all, and she might actually respect him without his efforts, but the whole scenario is something out of suburban hell.

Which is probably why me and Nicole worked so well together. We were equally lazy about lazy things and equally driven about the bits that mattered.

So as I criticize 50 years of 'TV nite,' I'm not about to go the route of Sisyphus-esque renovations on shit that didn't need renovating to appease my 'lucky-to-have-her' wife. I'm sure you've noticed, I have WAY too much ego to relegate my time to someone else's whims. She'd be just as lucky to have me. I'll help. I enjoy helping, but goddamn if your projects are more important than mine. To my credit, all I need is a couple hours a week and a couple pots of coffee. Just don't pull some bullshit where I'm re-sanding the floors because 'your' dog is a fucking spaz, and I'm repainting the wrong shade of trim around the garage for the third time, expecting a fourth go.

Marriage shouldn't be a gulag.

— comment —