Contractual Cuddles.

august 19th, 2015

Continuing the ongoing experiment to refer to myself in lowercase. Pls continue to indulge!

On Saturday Vlad and i fly to Vermont, and over the next week our families will arrive, and the next Saturday after that my brother Chris will marry us in my parents' front yard. Vermont is particularly relaxed about who can be marry couples in the state. Neither Vlad, nor i, nor Chris need be Vermont residents. Just fill out a simple one-page form and mail Vermont a hundred dollars. Vermont says, “thank you!”

i like to refer to the legal marriage as “contractually‑obligated cuddles.”

“i'm signing a paper that says i have to cuddle you as much as you want, forever!” i say, and Vlad swoons. On the other side, when i make a particularly goofy pun and Vlad groans, i say, “there's still time! You can save yourself! Because the puns are only getting worse!” But his groans are another form of swoon.

All existing problems inside and outside the marriage feel manageable, solveable. Like for instance: there'd been ongoing tension about chore imbalance. i tend to do more household chores than Vlad (dishes, laundry, sweeping, &c). So we introduced a new chore protocol: every night at brush‑teeth time, Vlad loads the dirty dishes from the sink into the dishwasher. Oh it is so nice to wake up to an empty sink! And it turned out that nothing more radical was required to restore a feeling of balance.

Thus for the first time in my adult life, i have become a dishwasher person, using the machine on the regular. This vaguely cuts against my values for reasons of excess energy consumption, but sooo worth it for the peaceful house. And thus i focus on reducing my carbon footprint in other ways. The marriage's carbon footprint.