Observations About Marriage

  • He gets the expensive haircut at the salon with the DJ. I go to the Hair Cuttery. Disclaimer: I did treat myself to a cut from his hairstylist LeeAnn, a 20-something half white-half Vietnamese hipster covered in tattoos and with an asymmetrical cut.

  • He packs twice as much stuff as me. He'll grab a huge stack of paperwork that's been sitting around for awhile and tell me that he will go through them at the hotel. Also, he needs to pack 2 sets of clothes for each day (before and after gym) as well as gym clothes. He may also pack about 5 hardcover books because it's supposed to be a vacation and that is the only time he can read. That may work if we're in Thailand for a month, but not when we'll be in 3 different states in 1 week.
  • When he packs, everything gets jumbled in there. The shoes are at the top of the suitcase next to the baseball caps. The luggage ends up being very misshapen and bulging in parts. He gets mad when I suggest that he puts one of his heavy duffel bags on top of the rolling suitcase to ease the burden.

    When I pack, everything is in its compartment and all toiletries are travel-sized. I've made a master travel checklist for both of us, by season, so that we won't forget anything. I usually have a system of connecting the bags so I only have to push one luggage.
My 2 bags are the ones on the right


  • When we get presents, I like to keep the cards and contents with the gift to help me later when I write thank you cards. He likes to pull out all of the giftcards and cash and keep them together; the cards are usually stacked together in some book. What thank you cards?
  • Why pack stuff to go with us when you can ship it and pay extra? When we moved cross country (twice), his preferred method was to ship things to the destination. Nevermind that we were paying several thousand dollars for professional movers to move our stuff. It's his little ritual. He loves to go shopping for tape and boxes, and then figure out how to fit everything in the box. I'm not allowed to go to the store and post office with him when he does this - it's his thing. I'm just relieved that he knows our mailing address.

    This is what he did with our shower presents. Rather than returning everything and just re-buying them when we got to Atlanta, he insisted on mailing everything (including those 5 hardcover books mentioned earlier).

  • I'm a little OCD and he's much more laid back about things at our house. However, when we are with our families, I become much more relaxed and he gets more anal. Probably because I was the messiest person in my family. My parents and brother all had their little ways of organizing their possessions. My brother, in grade school, even made labels for his filing folders that stored his tests. Gabe's family is pretty laid back about everything while he's a definite go-getter (see Leslie's blog about "Segundo").