A Nice(r than usual) Post About Marriage

In honor of my twenty eighth wedding anniversary next week and because I have to limit my pre-neck surgery typing, I'm reposting a guest entry I wrote for a friend's daughter's blog while she took time off for her wedding and honeymoon. You will notice two things- I make a lot of math references because she's a math teacher and I'm being less snarky than usual. Enjoy!

This Friday, Melissa White (whom I have known since before she was born,) is getting married. She has asked me to write a guest post for her blog while she gets her nails done, practices aisle walking and whatever the hell else girls do in the few days before their weddings. Fortunately for Melissa, I love, love, love weddings and giving unsolicited advice so I’m super excited to write this post!

I married my husband Bill on July 29, 1984. Although 1984 was a regrettable year for fashion, it seems to have been a fine year in which to have gotten married. And July 29 is evidently an awesome day to get married. I share a wedding anniversary with such notably happy couples as Prince Charles and Princess Diana, Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, and Pamela Anderson and one of the dudes she married. What are some of the things that have kept Bill and me together for twenty eight years? One reason that we’re still together is that we haven’t gotten divorced. Unsolicited tip number one—stay married by not entertaining other options.

(First, a caveat for the random reader- if you are in some sort of self-destructive, hellish marriage, for God’s sake stop reading this blog and see a professional! I’m not advising you, I’m advising Melissa anyway.) I have been the wedding coordinator at my church for the last six years (times three weddings per month, times twelve months per year, times six years—you do the math, ‘cause you’re a math teacher and all) so I pretty much have the ceremony memorized. At the risk of revealing a matrimonial secret, the priest gives the same homily at every wedding. One of the best lines in it refers to the times when the bride and groom will hurt each other, not if. Because you will hurt each other. You will fight and you will argue and sometimes you will hate your husband’s guts and wonder how cereal can possibly make that much noise while it’s being chewed and you will want to beat your husband with the spoon he’s using to shovel it into his mouth because his chewing is drowning out the sound of your soul. Okay, maybe that last thing only pertains to me.  But stay. Work it out. Take the option of divorce off the table. Keep that table clear so there’s room for better options. Use those. But 50% of all marriages end in divorce, right? Divorce is a really common and accessible out. Well, yes and no. Divorce is common and accessible but that 50% statistic is kind of inaccurate. You’re a math chick, you should appreciate this—in your demographic, you actually have a better than 80% chance of staying married!

The reason we’ve all heard that 50% of all marriages end in divorce is because a lot of the people that get married are idiots and they bring the average down. When you add everyone’s marriages together including teenagers, Dr. Phil guests and Kim Kardashian, then divide or multiply or whatever you math teachers do, you get 50%. But for a college graduate, over the age of 25, getting married for the first time, who has an already established source of independent income (sound like anyone you know?) the divorce rate isn’t 50%, it’s 20%. And the other good news is that the divorce rate has been on its way down since 1980 and continues to fall. So if you have an 80% chance of succeeding now and your chances are increasing every day, those are some really good odds! It’s also a really good thing to tell someone when they tell you that half of all marriages end in divorce. Because they don’t.

What if Mat’s a totally different person in a few years? He will be. He should be. You should be too. I don’t know why anyone is surprised when his/her spouse changes over the course of a marriage. Being married doesn’t freeze time (insert obvious joke here) and a person who doesn’t continue to grow and learn wouldn’t be all that much fun to be married to. I would even argue that you don’t have to change in the same directions, just “complimentary” ones. Learn new things, pursue your interests, fulfill your dreams, pick up weird hobbies. Don’t be afraid to be alone and explore things on your own. Boring people have boring marriages- come on, you know who they are. Don’t be boring. If you keep developing as an individual, you will strengthen your bond as a couple.

So, what did we learn? Change but stay married and the odds are in your favor even though you will hurt each other. This is not the kind of advice you’ll find in Cosmo, The Secret, The 17 Day Diet or any other publications the cool girls read but it’s worked for me. I wish you many, many years of happiness with the least amount of hurt and loud cereal chewing possible! Congratulations!

Tell the Pod of Dolphins to Move a Little to the Left

I like hiring people to do things I don’t want to do as much as the next vain, narcissistic gal. I live in Southern California and after worshipping movie stars and making bad financial decisions, personal “outsourcing” is kind of our deal. But even I was surprised to discover that the latest fad in paying-for-shit-you-should-do-yourself is hiring a professional photographer to take your vacation photos. If I’d read about this in Star Magazine in an article called, “Katie Hires Photog to Airbrush away Suri’s Tears while in Paris,” that would be one thing. But the article I read was in the Wall Frickin’ Street Journal!

Evidently in addition to having lots of extra cash and a love of frivolous self-indulgence, one of the main reasons vacationers are hiring photographers is so their pictures look good on their “social media” sites. That means Facebook, right? People are paying for professional Facebook pictures? I looked at my Facebook “news feed” and unless my “friends” are traveling with kittens, political posters and inspirational quotes about their mothers, I’m pretty sure they only post crap they find on the internet and photos they’ve taken themselves My-Space style in their bathroom mirrors. I feel a little better not knowing anyone who has ever engaged in this new practice but all of the evidence won’t be in until Christmas cards arrive later in the year.

Yes, families are having professional photo shoots done while on vacation and using them for their Christmas cards. Disney theme parks will even open the doors early for you and your brood so you can tromp through the gate in your white shirts, blue jeans and bare feet before the other sixty thousand guests arrive. Gosh, what fun! You get to wake up super early, dress the kids, keep them clean and smiling, pay $350 an hour and pose for pictures all over a theme park! That’s just about every one of my least favorite activities crammed into one fun-filled morning! And just as everyone reaches the end of their patience and Mommy starts looking for some McXanax, the photo shoot is over and you can start waiting in line after line after line for your never-ending day of amusement park hell. “Stop whining Naveah Heaven Haven! Mommy’s creating memories!”

The pictures accompanying The Wall Street Journal article are pretty fantastic. Most of them are typical vacation photos—a couple riding bikes, snorkeling, lying in a hammock, filling out missing luggage forms at the airport— but it’s the photographer standing waist deep in the ocean, his face and his identity obscured by a moldy fishing hat and a telephoto lens like a perverted Loch Ness Monster that makes the shot. Nothing says, “Relaxing Vacation” like a guy in Bermuda shorts popping out of the bushes every time the honeymooners go in for a kiss. We’re only a wedding magazine article away from inviting the photographer to shoot a little video in the bridal suite as well. What a souvenir for the happy couple to share with Grandma when they return.

Evidently for an extra fee, you can have your pictures photo-shopped and airbrushed. Okay, I love airbrushing! I mean, really, look at my headshot, obviously I’m a fan. If I could be preceded by a soft focus lens as I traveled through my day, I would totally do it. But there’s history in unflattering vacation photos. I went swimming in the Amazon River and the picture of me looking like a drowned rat as I emerged is indicative of what a person looks like in 400% humidity after cavorting with piranhas. In a picture of my 90 lb. daughter attaching tar paper to the roof of an orphanage in Tijuana, the heat rising from the roof is so omnipresent it’s almost another character in the shot. Much as I’d love every angle of my ass to look Shape Magazine cover perfect, that’s just not how it is in real life no matter where I vacation.

As I was ranting and raving about the stupidity of this article to my daughter who is home from college (she’s working for me for the summer, listening to Mommy rant and rave is in her job description,) she said, “I should send you this article I read online about the Six Jobs You Won’t Believe You  Can Outsource.” Why yes you should. And she did.

Who knew how many options there were for paying people to do shit for you? You can rent friends and dates and cats and hire people to wait in line for you. For the right price, you can even get fake paparazzi to follow you everywhere like you were Justin Bieber on the 101 freeway. You can pay a stranger to ask your spouse for a divorce or break up with your significant other (which sounds like a decision that will bite you in the ass for years to come.)  But one of my favorite outsourcing indulgences (not “favorite” as in “That’s so awesome!” “Favorite” as in, “Wow that is pure evil genius! High five Horrible, Awful Human Being Who Came Up With That!”) is an alibi service. The alibi service describes itself as, “a cutting edge full service discreet agency providing alibis and excuses for absences as well as assistance with a variety of sensitive issues.” Basically they will make shit up for you and provide evidence to support your shit—not unlike writing fiction.

I could see renting a cat and maybe paying some dude to stand in line at the post office to make a Zappos return, but the rest of this stuff is ridiculous. If anyone wanted me to vacation with a photographer, I would totally hire the alibi service to lie about why I couldn’t go.

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Perhaps the two of you who follow my blog noticed that there was no entry last week. Evidently the vertebrae in my neck are not being fooled by the hair dying, spray tanning and my other look-young-forever efforts and the resulting revolt has put a damper on my ability to type (the vertebrae/hand connection makes sense if you Google-image search it.) I am doing a full Steven Hawking here learning voice recognition so bear with me. A little surgery here, a steep learning curve there… I’ve got to take some time off but I’ll be back soon.