First post about the "kids"

Here we all are!  The big one is Jack, the little one is Max.  I adopted Jack from the local animal shelter about four months before Aleece and I started dating.  Aleece had "loaned" Max to her mom while she was working on her master's in Maryland and had only had him back for about a month before we started dating.

As lovable as both dogs look, they can be pretty devious.  Both dogs are at times the most adorable animal you could ask for, but each also has moments where they are clearly just playing with my mind.

The Division of Labor: Husband Jobs and Wife Jobs (and a little Steve Jobs, too)

My wife and I have a very hectic schedule.  I work every weekday, usually leaving at about 6:45AM and coming home anywhere between 4:00PM and 9:00PM, depending on what I have going on at school. Musical season is even more intense.  As I have mentioned before, my wife is a PhD student and graduate assistant at MSU.  This semester, she had class/work Monday-Wednesday on campus, then worked from home and did homework Wednesday-Sunday.  Before we even look at concerts and festival performances for me and special campus events for her it is clear to see that our schedules are pretty tight.

Like any household, we have to maintain some kind of division of labor with household jobs that need to be done.  We have four animals to care for, which means vacuuming is a must.  We both eat and are committed to the Dave Ramsey budget, which means we do not go out to eat very often, so someone has got to cook.  And we still have to get the mail, take out the trash, scoop the cat litter, do the dishes, do the laundry and pick up after ourselves.  Keeping a household running takes some work!  In actuality, we take turns with a lot of jobs.  Who ever feels like cooking cooks.  Who ever feels like washing the pots and pans washes the pots and pans.

Hello, my name is Chris, and I am a newlywed.

So since starting this blog I've had a little bit of internal criticism to deal with.

Here I am, offering up advice through telling my story of how I am a good husband (at least in my opinion), but as of today I've only been married for 135 days.  We were engaged for a little over a year, and dated for a few months before that.

How do I have any credibility to tell other people about marriage?

Video Games, Drinking Buddies and Reading, Oh My! The three things I do that annoy my wife

Video Games, drinking buddies and reading were my three main activities before getting married.  

I played video games by myself, as well as online with friends from high school and college.

Drinking buddies, well that is pretty much self explanatory.  After work, usually on a Friday, a handful of us would get together and have a few and recap the events of the week.

Reading has been a passion of mine since I was a small child, and I had recently discovered the joys of an e-reader.  My first e-reader was a sony reader, and I was in LOVE.  The portability of the e-reader allowed me to read with the frequency and voracity I hadn’t had since middle school.

None of these activities are inherently evil, but of course they all have their pitfalls.  I know several people who have allowed video games to dominate their lives, destroying success at work, in school and in relationships.  I wasn’t that guy, though I may have been close five or six years ago.  Drinking with the guys after work could lead to problems if I were to start driving drunk, but that has never been an issue.  The potential problem with  reading, is in many ways similar to the problems with video games.  It is only a problem when it is the dominant force in your life, and the reality in the game/book becomes more important than the reality of an individual’s life.

While I enjoyed all of these things, when I was single there were no warning bells going off, nothing to indicate that I was going overboard with any of my “vices.”  When you get married, it is no longer solely about what one person wants.  Of the few fights my wife and I have had, most involve these three issues.  I do believe that both partners in a marriage need to be individuals, but the transition from a single identity into two, wedded identities can be a challenge.

The creation of a new individual identity after getting married is the path that I have chosen -and so far it has worked.  I still read.  I still play video games.  I still go to happy hour.  The frequency of those things is reduced, but they are still a part of my life.

The cost?  Spending time with my wife.  Wow, what a punishment!  You mean I should want to spend time with this person I chose to marry? Yes.  Yes you should.  Nurture each other’s differences.  Allow each other their own passions (I’m certainly not about to help my wife make dresses for her small business, and I’m absolutely not going to tell her to stop and come pay attention to me).  

Be careful not to return from the honeymoon and just go about your life in the exact same manner you did before you were married.  Aside from having children, this is going to be the biggest, most profound change you may ever experience. Let your life change!  Don’t set out to change someone, and don’t cling to every ounce of that old identity either.  

Be individuals together.

How I got from Sunday Jerk to Monday Fanatic

The short answer?  Being married.

The long answer? Read on.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my job.  Sometimes.  Sorta.  Some days I downright hated my job.

Before I got married, there were plenty of things about my job that I did not enjoy.  Some days it was a boss.  Some days it was a parent.  Some days it was a student.  Some days it was the politics of education, so recently put into the spotlight by conservative legislatures across the country.

Friday would arrive, and I was free.  I would spend the weekend with my fiance and our dogs, do homework, read, spend time with our parents, all of the fun things a weekend is for.

Then Sunday would arrive.  As Jon Acuff might say, I was a Sunday jerk.  All day I would stew, dreading my fiance’s return to school (two hours away) and my return back to work.

I would begrudgingly return to my “real” life, where my evil alarm clock was waiting.  (one of my first tweets ever was something along the lines of, “whatever advertiser decided to use an alarm clock in this ad ought to be shot.”  I seriously had a problem with my alarm clock!)

Why does it have to be this way?

I was determined to find out.

Wife Tax

The first thing you need to know is that my wife and I are on Dave Ramsey’s program, baby step #2 - the debt snowball.  If you are not familiar, hit the source link.  

The second thing you need to know is that my wife is a graduate assistant, which means she doesn’t have to pay tuition while working on a PhD. YES! AWESOME! HOORAY!  At roughly $1500 per class, this is HUGE!.  

What isn’t huge?  Her salary.  Her take home pay is about $15,000 a year.  The poverty line is where?  Before we got married, she would have qualified for food stamps!  Luckily, I have a job.

In my job as a high school music teacher, I make O.K. money.  I am not one of those teachers that thinks I am drastically underpaid.  My wages are fair.  Fair means that I use a budget and pack a lunch to work and eat leftovers for lunch.  The key word is budget. Before my wife came along and we got on the Dave Ramsey plan, this is what my budget looked like-

Monthly income, minus monthly expenses = roughly zero-ish, maybe more maybe less depending on what movies and xbox games I bought that month.

Now my budget is incredibly detailed.  My wife and I are both nerds.  We each have in-depth spreadsheets outlining every expense and every ounce of income before each month begins.  Over the top? Maybe, but it works for us.

Most importantly, it allows us to get a head and succeed with our debt snowball.

This is where the dirty word comes in.  Tax.