“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
-A. Heinlein
Yesterday was the second day of school and I had already made a life changing discovery: my husband will, for all intents and purposes, be dead to me for the next few years. He’s in class from 8-12, then in the library from 12-5 when I’m done with work. We go home, one of us contrives to make something edible, and then I take him back to campus for study groups/work on projects/meet and greet representatives from large firms trying to seduce the students early on/whatever else is going on that night. Then he has homework until at least 11.
So in response, I’m doing what I do best. Mobilizing!
Last night with Venice’s help (J. was at a firm reps meeting) I put together the shelving we bought for the kitchen. Living, as we do, in the ghetto of our university town (it’s not that bad, just old. Nearly fossilized, in fact) we have two cupboards in our kitchen, and the shelves in them are bowed with age. Putting cans or even plates on them for as long as we have has been supremely of foolish of us, but necessity being the mother of desperation, we put off getting shelves for a while. No more! The kitchen is cleaned and organized and, if all goes well, it will stay that way.
I went shopping for food, inspired by the ever fabulous Hammy (Hat Tip to her for this idea!) and loaded up a bowl on our table with snacks. I bough an armload of Ramen and instant macaroni and cheese for days when neither J. or I will be able to muster the strength to make lunches. I’ve stocked up on crock pot ingredients which can all be dumped in together on my lunch break so we have something to eat during the approximate 4.6 seconds J. has at home.
Tonight I’m doing laundry and taking on the migratory herd of cardboard boxes that have been accumulating since our wedding, they’ve been making the rounds through our entire flat and have been grazing on whatever it is cardboard boxes eat in our office for weeks now. Said herd shall be thinned, ruthlessly. I already bought an office filing contraption and have moved critical things like marriage certificates, tax info, and the like in (partly to get it out of the pile on my desk, but mostly to keep J. from throwing it away again).
Why the frenzy, you ask? First of all a house in order is easier to keep in order long term, so if both mine and J.’s potential chore-doing ability has evaporated, let’s get the house put together before one of us has a breakdown rendering us incapable of sustained linear though. Second because it really needed to be done, I’ve been putting the house off since we got married. Third? Because I am an AWESOME wife! Who knew?
Daae says her favorite part of being married is waking up and seeing her husband next to her every morning. J. and I, neither of us being morning people, tend to ignore the alarm and fasten our eyes firmly shut against the light for at least a half hour after we had nobly intended to get up, and then try and urge the other person to take their shower first so that one of us can sleep even longer. 
Now, my family is fantastic, but I’d have a nose the length of London Bridge if I said we were healthy and normal. We’ve had a lot of problems, not that other families don’t of course, and they have spanned generations and decades with a lot of resentment built up. Hey, we make it work, but my family has always been a major hold-up for me in relationships; my parents’ marriage and our dynamic as a family worked, per se, but it wasn’t what I wanted for myself. But it was the only example of marriage or family I grew up with, so I didn’t really expect to be able to break the cycle. I have higher hopes these days but I still get nervous about thinking of being a wife (and MANY years down the road, a mom). I have this awful fear that one day I will be the one sitting in a psychiatrist’s office casually reading a magazine to hide the inward guilt gnawing at me that my kid is in the next room having his brain picked apart to undo the damage that I have done. Ghastly!
Besides finishing trawling Bed Bath and Beyond with a registry scanner yesterday (Target’s our next victim), and deciding to buy a comforter set because it’s half off and on clearance, we also decided to buy a computer (finally, since I’ve been without 
J. and I enlisted Scotticus and my godbrother Bear today (many thanks, gentlemen) for the picking up, maneuvering, and dropping off of our sofa and loveseat today. Huzzah, they’re in! AND I got my landlord (who is probably heartily sick of me at this point, what will all my calls, questions, and obsequious permission asking) to give me the go ahead to paint. Et voila, I have a major weekend project! I’m probably biting off way more than I can chew, but that sort of thinking goes with the whole, “Let’s get married,” theme.
Small Dog Syndrome 