1) If your friends all hate your future or present spouse, they are almost always onto something. Your friends often know you better than you do. Get out while you can, or at least get a third, fourth, and fifth opinion.

2) Never fight with your spouse in front of in-laws. They will often take it much more seriously that the two of you do, and they are much less likely to forget.

3) On a similar note, do not make fun of your spouse in front of other people, particularly physical imperfections or aspects of his or her life that cannot be helped. It is not particularly couth, for example, to make fun of your significant other’s body parts. Not only does this make your spouse look bad, but it makes you look bad as well. For one, it makes your spouse look stupid for marrying you. Two, it makes you looks stupid for marrying someone with, as an example, a small penis. And three, while it may be all in fun at the time, long after you forget it, the other people will never forget it.

4) Keep bedroom things in the bedroom. If your wife is a “screamer,” that’s probably sounds cool to tell the guys, but once again, once you tell the guys, they will never forget it, and may, in a drunken moment at one of your parties, bring it up in mixed company, or in front of your wife. If your husband likes for the two of you to secretly have sex at other people’s houses, that may also sound cool to tell the girls over drinks, but once the cat is out of the bag, your girlfriends will always remember this about the two of you, and may be very reluctant to leave you alone at their house for any period of time.

5) Don’t expect your spouse to ever completely understand you, or for you to ever completely understand your spouse. I have been married six years, and I still don’t understand why Jinny thinks boogers are yellow, or why the smell of skunks is a great smell. She must have smoked a lot of pot before we got married. That would explain her love of the pine scented air-fresheners, too. Likewise, she doesn’t understand my spotty record of perfectionism or my love of projects. (That’s okay, I don’t really either.)

6) Being a newlywed normally sucks, or is at least problematic at best. Get over it. If it doesn’t, either you people are on another planet, or you have been together already for a hella long time. It’s hard enough to have a roommate– now remember you now have a roommate of the opposite sex that shares your bank account and owns half of your assets. Oh, and, by the way, you can never have sex with anyone else ever again. Even if it doesn’t seem like it sucks, and you are all lovey-dovey, ask your partner. They may be having a harder time with certain aspects of the new arrangement that you are (Honestly, I wasn’t aware that the first year sucked until Jinny told me). The problem is that girls dream of their wedding day from the moment they are conceived, but forget to think about what it will be like to have to clean the cat litter box after getting back from the two week honeymoon. Guys normally have a “deer-caught-in-headlights-look” to them; very few men ever dream of getting married. They were too busy just trying to get into girl’s pants to think any further. The important thing is that once the changes settle out and both of you start to get comfortable with the way things are, things will get better.

7) Any chick that really wants a ring to cost two full months of your salary isn’t worth it. She’s a money-grubbing whore, and she won’t get any better once the marriage contract is signed.*

8) Do not compare your spouse to your mother or father. It is tempting, but don’t say “My Mom used to make French toast the other way…” It breeds feelings of inadequacy and ill-will on the part of your spouse toward your parent.

9) Her parents always become more important, unless she is an orphan. It probably has something to do with the mom being at the woman’s bedside right after childbirth, though I am not 100% sure on this.

10) Once you are married, you can no longer confide in anyone outside your marriage about personal intermarital problems. This means that if you and the hubby have a fight and you tell your mother, for example, while you will forget the argument within hours, she never will, and she will hold it against him for a very long time. This is true with all family members and close friends. In a nutshell, once you are married, you are trapped to hold in arguments and problems within the marital unit, or suffer endless silent criticism from relatives. If this is an untenable situation, don’t get married. This is probably the only reason Jinny’s family thinks I am a better husband than Nico or Jonathan.

11) You never get laid on Thanksgiving. It’s probably because all of the coats are on the bed.

*Unless you make virtually nothing, in which case, why in the hell are you getting married in the first place?

“Henry was all douched out last night, and he had a smug Woodlands grin…”

Really, there wasn’t an option for my true answers to some of the questions. Answers like: “I only give flowers when they aren’t expecting them,” and “If they’re still asleep when I get there, forget it. I’ll come back some other day, when they can be ready to go out when I show up.”

I think that would have put me firmly in the “You’re a bitter and hateful person, and love only yourself” category.

How You Are In Love

You take a while to fall in love with someone. Trust takes time. You give and take equally in relationships. You need your space and privacy. You don’t like to be smothered. You love your partner unconditionally and don’t try to make them change. You are fickle and tend to fall out of love easily. You bounce from romance to romance.

Since the Blogthings quizzes are kind of weak, I went ahead and took the REAL 500 Question Purity Test. The results:

Take the REAL Purity Test

The answer to my question “What the hell is a ‘Wishbonebush’?” can be found here.

There is no such thing as a Cokeberry, though.

In the interest of fairness, here is the opposite point of view.

The following, in no particular order, is 20 reasons NOT to live in The Woodlands.

Some of the reasons were initially apparent to us when we first moved here, while some of them have become obvious when we compare our current situation with our living experiences in previous locales.

1) Holy shit! Pavillion traffic!
2) George Mitchell doesn’t run the place anymore, and the new developers aren’t as concerned about tearing down “a few trees…”
3) If you don’t want a natural landscape, it’s 64 bags of pine needles every October.
4) The irritating but everpresent Nouveau Riche
5) It may be cool, but it is still in Houston’s ETJ (extra-territorial jurisdiction). This means it could be annexed.
6) Beware of the dark trails at night.
7) Kingwood is to Porter as The Woodlands is to Tamina.
8) Good luck finding a “greasy spoon” that serves all day breakfast anywhere within 30 minutes of here.
9) Gasoline is, on average, at least 10 cents per gallon more expensive than in Spring.
10) The fascist Woodlands Community Association, which is about as well run as Italy under Mussolini*.
11) Stupid street names. What the hell is a “Wishbonebush”? A “Cokeberry”?
12) Speaking of Fascists, the Republican Leadership Committee of Montgomery County, who feels that is their job to hide any naked boobies and wangers that may be exposed on statues. Oh, and they like to take issue with books at the library, too.
13) McMansions. Million dollar houses on postage stamp-sized lots.
14) Out of towners can’t seem to find anything.
15) Entergy is the only electric option. You can’t, at least in my part of The Woodlands, pay another electrity provider.
16) On side streets, the street lights are too dim and too far apart to actually be useful.
17) Garage sales and yard sales are forbidden.
18) No one has their own mailbox.
19) All these damn people who keep moving in.
20) If you live in the 77380 zip code, half of the all the computer mail systems in the world refer to your location as “Spring” instead of “The Woodlands.” A minor irritant, I know, but c’mon.

*No, he really didn’t get the trains to run on time.

The following, in no particular order, is 20 reasons to live in The Woodlands.

Some of the reasons were initially apparent to us when we first moved here, while some of them have become obvious when we compare our current situation with our living experiences in previous locales.

1) You don’t live in Harris County.
2) The mall is really close. Movie Theatres too!
3) There are way too many places to eat.
4) Jury Duty and the main court system are both in Conroe (where parking is free), not downtown Houston (where I recently paid $14 for 2-1/2 hours).
5) The airport is close by, yet the planes tend not to fly directly overhead.
6) Trees! Shade! Green!
7) Lower electricity bills because of the shade. (Really! I set the AC for 74 degrees and I have never had a bill over $300!)
8) “Natural Landscapes” means less yardwork.
9) You never have to worry if another strip center will pop up in the field across the way.
10) Regardless of what you might have heard, the taxes and subdivision fees are actually quite modest on a modest 4 bedroom home.*
11) They paint the back of the signs brown, and you get a cool brown trashcan.
12) You have your own freeway exit flyover ramp. One minute you’re on I-45, the next minute you are in The Woodlands.
13) Esplanades are left as natural as possible (with wildflowers and trees).
14) FM1960 is easily avoided.
15) Homes range from $90K to $10 million+. (though the two are obviously not next door to each other.)
16) No one can find your house, unless you give them directions.
17) There are two major hospitals within a mile of each other.
18) The Woodlands Pavillion can be a great place to see shows (when the temperature is okay and the grass is dry).
19) There is a large, multimedia-rich library.
20) If you have the luxury of working in The Woodlands, you never have to leave the community. You can buy groceries, eat, play golf… whatever. All without leaving.

80,000 people can’t be wrong, right?

*mileage may vary, but on a $109,000 house (assessed at 93K), it is only $452 year for subdivision fees. My father in Cypresswood pays a flat $1000.

Did I mention I gave at least two girls mono in high school?

Your Kissing Purity Score: 20% Pure

For you, it’s all kiss and no talk. You’re in a permanent lip lock.