I do, I did, now what?

A few years ago, before I was even remotely interested in marrying someone else, I picked up a book called "What Wendell Wants: How to tell if you're obsessed with your dog" by Jenny Lee. Since I was, at the time, obsessed with my dog, I read it. I LAUGHED MY ASS OFF. Holy cow it was funny and definitely me. Well, I liked the author, so I picked up another one of her books called "I do, I did, now what? Life after the wedding dress". I read it and couldn't really relate to it, since I was then angry and bitter and didn't think I'd ever get married. I liked it, though, but I put it down and forgot about it until my sister was planning her wedding. I gave it to her, and I am pretty sure she read it, but I don't know what she thought of it. Since I'm planning my own wedding right now, I decided to re-read it, so I got it back from my sister.

Wow, is it a perfectly suitable book!

It's not about wedding planning, and it's not about how to have a perfect wedding. Or even a perfect marriage, really. I gathered that a lot of it is appropriate venting about her husband and how she copes with it all. And she said in the book that no one really told her what it was like to be married. She'd ask people and the subject would change. So she wrote the book in order to let people know what it's like to be married.

My favorite section is the one on housework. She writes specifically how her husband is very messy and does things like leave the condiments out of the fridge so they can gather bacteria and spoil. She writes about her methods to change that, like leaving little notes on the condiments to be put back and how that didn't work. So she stopped buying him condiments. She writes about the messes he made, like leaving a half-eaten apple on the couch for days, and how she didn't want to be a nagging wife but she didn't want to be his mother adn pick up after him either. So she decided to beat him at his own game and became very messy herself. After the piles started gathering, he caught wind of it all and decided to clean up a bit more.

I'm not a messy person, but I'm not overly clean either. I don't like clutter on the floors and I don't like shoes on the floors. Otherwise, I can let a mess sit there a bit before I clean it up, but I always clean it up. Jared seems to not mind clutter at all, and things just pile and pile until it drives me crazy. So I started picking up his shoes, which were always left out and would collect into multiple pairs of shoes, and putting them in the dog's cage. When he can't find his shoes, he knows where to look now. And just recently, b/c I got tired of picking up his pajamas off the floor when the hamper is RIGHT THERE, I just took them and hid them. He came home one day and wanted to put on his pajamas but couldn't find them. I told him I hid them. He didn't like that. He was actually very angry.

But I can tell you, his pajamas have made it into the hamper every night since.

I'm telling you, I am taking a lot from Ms. Jenny Lee. I like her style.