"Mawwage is what bwings us togetha today"

I love being married. I love it so much, we're preparing to celebrate our first anniversary on May 25th. Say what you will about being with one woman the rest of your life, I think it's swell and I think it's one of the best things I have ever done. However, I have found that marriage is not without it's pitfalls. So far, I have realized the following about the opposite sex/marriage (I encourage my readers to be forthright if they know any other secrets about women):

1) If you have had fun without them, you're already minus two when you get home. If you have had fun without them and come home late, you had better been saving some stray kittens, cooking at a homeless shelter, or something else Mother Theresa would do. Have a bad excuse, your score card looks like Tiger's...except you're not in the running to win anything but a night on the couch.

2) When they say yes, generally they mean no, or they have a caveat to the yes. However, they don't really let on to the caveat until you proceed with whatever they gave you permission to do.

3) They become more honest about your figure.

4) When they say, "I really don't care if you come, it's okay if you don't (when inviting you to a function)", you better tag along.

5) The longer you are with someone, the less likely you are to pay attention to what they say even when you mutter, "Yep".

Last weekend we had four glorious days off together. Rather than jet setting to a far away place, we decided to stay at home in order to landscape, garden, and cook a lot of new gourmet meals. We were prepared for a traditional date weekend. There was a however. Friday, we were both set to spend our nights apart at two meritable events. Meghan traveled to southern Maryland, to stay with her best friend who was expecting her first child at any minute. She wanted to be there for the big moment, and wanted to help out just to be there to help de-stress the future parents.

Me, I had the civic duty of attending a bachelor party.

Needless to say, I may have told Meghan that I would be home around 10am the next day, so we could start bright and early on our gardening. Since I was riding with my buddy Drew who also had to be home early to spend his wedding anniversary with his wife, I felt it a fail safe that we would arrive home on time if not early.

After getting a delayed start due to the hangover breakfast, and after changing a phantom flat tire on Drew's car, we arrived at 12:30. Not good, not good at all. Already, I was minus two because I had fun without her...

Listen up, you all know it, you've seen the face, but something changes once you're married and you go out and have fun without her, especially if she has been working all day. I'd expect it's minus three once you actually have children. Before marriage we were always told, "So glad you could go out with your boys, great job, keep it up, you need your man time.". Now it's a little different. There's a strain in her face when she says the same thing, the gleam in her eye has left. Don't believe me, ask Hege. He just went to the PGA tour on Friday down in Charlotte, NC. His wife worked all day, and then she came home to their daughter. Think he wasn't down a couple of points after chilaxin' with a bunch of golf pros? And we both knew he was nervous pulling into the driveway. The simple statement of, "Matty, gotta get off the phone, Leslie doesn't like it when I come home after being away on the phone"...Yep, because once you're home, your eye has to be back on the proverbial ball.

It's game time when you hit the door. Bring flowers, tell her she's special, do something to make her remember she is very special, at least tell her you missed her and would have had more fun with her there. I'm not sure why guys...but it works. In the words of my father, "You gotta lie"...and honestly, it's not lying per se, it's just getting a little extra mushy in order to say, "Hey, I really care about you". And since you got married, I hope that you really actually do care about her. If not, you got in too deep too soon. I got lucky, I love my wife, and I love our life together, but you gotta remember, COMMUNICATE those feelings with more than hungover sweaty grunts.

Next, when they say "yes", they really mean "no", except they aren't sure if they mean "no", but after you do what they say "yes " to, they wish they would have said "no". Therefore, you put yourself in the wrong.

Last weekend I was invited for a fishing trip on the Bay with my cousin T.J. I vacillated on this subject for about 48 hours because the trip was during our "date weekend". I even got Meghan invited, and she ended up turning down the invite in order to go pleasure boating with some other friends. Me, well, Meghan said the following, "You really need to go fishing with T.J, it would be nice for you to get to know your new cousin, you need man time. You can meet up with me after fishing, we'll pick you up on our boat as you come in."

And then the story sorta goes like this...You see, what had happened was...well, we got skunked all day. So, the fishing captain decided we'd just keep trolling the boat 40 miles round trip. The trip that was supposed to last till 2 or 3pm lasted till 5pm. Thusly, I never met up with my wife until I drove home at 6pm. The words out of her mouth weren't, "I'm so mad", they were worse. "I'm just disappointed, I really wanted to hang out and now we have squandered two days of the four". Can you say minus a trillion points for something I had no responsibility for, yet somehow it was my fault? Disappointed is far worse than mad. Mad leads to make up sex. Disappointed doesn't lead anywhwere special.

We went out for crabs and beer to rectify the situation. Apparently picking crabs is the equivalent to "I love you, you are special" in our household. Minus a trillion went to par I think, until I do something else she says "yes" to, but really means "no".

And when you think you are really good at mind reading, you just get smacked down with the bludgeons of "Marriage Honesty". I'm still licking my wounds from last week.

While training for our honeymoon/wedding day photos/beach shots/six-pack abs we both lost a good amount of weight. Those beach pics were pretty sweet, and I was definitely ripped up and sexy. Even after the honeymoon we did well, trained for a half-marathon and kept those beach bodies for a few more months. However, as the cold weather set in, we started to sit more, exercise less, cook a lot of really rich food, and drink heaps of good wine. Needless to say, I put the 15 pounds I lost back on. Thankfully, I just lost a good 7 pounds in Colorado, but need to lose just a few more in order to get that bad ass body back. And as my own worst critic, I know I need to shed just a little bit more. However, during the weekend I always happen to place myself back up deNILE river, and I engage in cheeseburgers, beer, and fried goodness.

But I guess that will have to stop because the honesty police showed up at our house in the form of my wife as she said, "Yeah, you need to tighten up your abs some more, maybe Pilate's will help". Gunshot wound to the ego...ouch. We all know I'm not a fat guy, more or less I'm completely obsessed with my body, anything less than a 6-pack of abs, and I'm putting myself in the Morbidly Obese section. Suffice it to say, honesty is perhaps the best medicine, but damn it stings like the dickens. And I find it more prevalent the longer I stay married. I could bore you with more examples, but you married boys out there feel my pain.

Tomorrow, we head to Grandma Burton's house. My mother-in-law has decided to cater a lunch for Grandma and her 12 closest friends as an early Mother's Day present. The outsiders can only agree this is a very nice thing. I too think it is wonderful. However, Meghan has been mandated to "Help" at this event. This essentially means she will be preparing most of the food being that she is the gourmet. Since both of us are conveniently off of work, Meghan presented the situation as such, "Mom told me I have to go and help, I have no choice, but you don't have to come if you don't want to".

Stop!!! Hold it right there! To the buffoons who decide to heed that teaser statement, have fun. You will be sorry. Just like the statement, "Don't get anything big for my birthday, we are trying to save money". You might mean it when YOU say it, BUT they do NOT mean it. It is called lip service. You don't get anything nice for their birthday, you're done. You decide to stay at home and not help cook because you can't bear to stand the thought of wasting your day off with Grandma...good riddance, back to minus numbers.

Women are tricky, they cannot be figured out. It's like "Jedi Mind Tricks"...if you have an intuition and it reads, "I don't understand why she would say "yes" or "you don't have to if you don't want to"...do the opposite. If you somehow get in trouble doing the opposite thing, tell her you were just trying to make her happy. That generally suffices for the time being until you can figure out another method to crawl out from the busted up dog house.

Lastly, I find myself listening less and less. This is subconscious as I find myself an intelligent and thoughtful guy. However, I'm started to succumb to the disease I saw my father and grandfather go through. The disease of muttering "yes", and never knowing the words pursed my lips.

The other night we got sushi. Meghan said the following (note, I don't remember any of this), "I got napkins, chopsticks, and soy sauce, you bring the sushi"). And I muttered, "Yep".

As I moved from the kitchen to the living room table I said, "Did you get napkins, chopsticks, and soy sauce?"

My mother and grandmother and everyone else's mother call it selective listening. I just call it "Overload Protection". Face it, men aren't as smart. Their brains work in the process of one at a time thinking. We cannot multi-task. When we try to multi-task we generally screw things up or end up in the fetal positioning with our heads splitting from information overload. Although we are generally physically stronger we are mostly mentally handicapped when it comes to listening and processing what our wives tell us. Admitting your weakness is 99% of the battle. Try hard to listen, and when you fail just get that blank look on your face, shrug your shoulders and say, "You were right, sorry about that".

And those words are sometimes better than those three little words, "I love you". Heck, if you can master combining the two phrases together, you will be married to a happy wife, equaling a happy life for the eternity you promised.