20 Ways for 20 Years

How to stay married for twenty years…

1.      Know in your heart that you’re right but don’t insist on public acknowledgement.

2.      If you can’t say anything nice, write it down for future reference.

3.      Plan more for the marriage than the wedding.

4.    At one point, you will consider murder, but a slow death is less noticeable and who wants to put him out of his misery anyway?     

5.      It doesn’t work to threaten taking half in the divorce because he may take you up on the offer to have control over more of his income than usual.

6.      Imagine starting all over to train a new husband, or even harder, retrain someone else’s ex-husband.

7.      Holding it all in, carrying grudges, tit-for-tat, keeping score—it’s not healthy. Wipe the slate clean every once in a while.

8.      Count on those pheromones for a strong chemical attraction to help overcome the days when you don’t even want to see his face.

9.      Limit home renovations as much as possible.

10.   Find a partner who makes you laugh out loud because you’re gonna need it.

11.   Have compatible skills, like a business partner: one can fix things while the other knows how to fill out the paperwork.

12.   Unite against the children.

13.   Have a short memory for the bad times and a long memory for the good ones.

14.   Let a spender show you how to enjoy daily life and a let a saver prepare you for the future.

15.   Forget the following five words: All you need is love.

16.   Remember the following five words: patience, tolerance, empathy, humility, earplugs.

17.   If one’s an early riser and the other a night owl, that’s all the better for some alone time.

18.   The same disposition toward social interaction helps because whether you're both social butterflies or homebodies, it’s about being together.

19.   Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. It’s a marathon not a dash. Don’t lower your standards but maybe your expectations. Don’t give up too easily.

20.   Mix together a lot of love, loads of laughter and whatever life has in store, then let simmer and savour for another twenty years, at least.

Peeps and Sheoples

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Last month, I had resolved to complain less using this blog as my outlet, but it’s so darn easy. And I'll be brief.                

Everybody wants a record of where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing. Have a click on the typical privacy statement hidden in the deep folds of the website you’re on. Your computer has already gobbled up the info needed to remind you of the last three items you’ve browsed, what your local store address is, and on many sites, you have to unclick the ‘remember me’ tab to opt-out instead of opting-in (a perpetual pet peeve of mine). And even though I’ve repeatedly unsubscribed to their messages, I will often get a marketing email, just to keep me in the loop, in case the 15 times I’ve asked to be removed from the mailing list was just a typo. If you want to buy something or sign up for their service, prepare to be stalked. Not only will they share your email address with companies they feel you would like, how thoughtful, but first you must acknowledge their 5000-word terms of agreement that says they can collect any data they want, including your ISP to locate your address and your browser history to see what kind of websites you go to. Who needs nosy neighbours when our every move is being monitored by our computer. At least the old busybody next door isn’t selling your purchase history to marketing firms without your implicit consent. I’m not sure if it’s paranoia or common sense to cover my integrated web cam (maybe iTunes just wants to put a face to my name and credit card number?) More often than not, many people freely give personal information away rather than appear rude to the checkout person asking for your postal code before they can proceed or your phone number to record all your purchases in one convenient place. What companies offer in return, if anything, does not seem worth it. Yes, we’ll give you this download for free, you just have to allow us access to your hard drive, or the generous 5% discount you’ll receive on your $15 purchase from Old Navy for providing your email address gives them access to you long after your purchase of clothes that didn’t even hold up one season. Some cards are better than others, but several points cards, all designed to collect data on your purchasing habits, are almost insulting: when I spend a total of $1000 in merchandise over time, I get $10 off my next purchase, which expires in one month; or, for thousands of dollars’ worth of gas, you get a free bottle of windshield wiper fluid. Feeding off our need to feel a part of the club seems to be a strong motivator for our actions and companies have capitalized on it. Contrary to Mitt Romney’s statement: “Corporations are people” and the US Supreme Court’s decision to uphold this notion, this law does not make them your friend. Follow us on Twitter, take our survey, win a contest, Facebook us, stop in for a complimentary BBQ hotdog—no, thank you. If you were on my side, you would give me a discount without signing up for a three-year contract, not make me bend over backwards for a 10% discount on your lucrative mark-up, and stop calling me to say you’re in my neighbourhood cleaning heating ducts and would be happy to fit me in to the appointment schedule. I can’t help but think you may be disingenuous when you call me twice a year and I tell I don’t have a furnace but you don't listen.

Okay, so I had a little more to say about this matter than I thought. But now, I really have to go because I'm the 1,000,000th visitor to this ad at the top of my screen and as you know, opportunities like this don’t come around too often.

Wonders of My Small World

This month, I wanted to reflect on what I am grateful for. And happily, there are so many to choose from that these are only the things I could easily come up with in one sitting:

Butterflies landing on my shoulder

Patterned grooves of fossils

Intricate spider webs created overnight

Quiet smiles of a funny moment memory

Lime green inchworms curling and stretching

Skyping someone who’s 14 hours away

Shoulder massages that hurt at first before relaxing you to your knees

Warmed, glistening milk chocolate chips waiting to be stirred

Moths with giant hairy ears perched outside a window

Impromptu philosophical discussions while sharing wine and cheese

Hummingbirds hovering close by

Crisp new books inviting me in

Fiddleheads unfurling into maidenhair fronds

Many hands that make light work of a big job

The riot of colourful leaves before their bittersweet end

Juicy wild raspberries

Easy access to music recorded live on stage

Being on the same wavelength

Monarch caterpillars gorging on butterfly weed

The earthy smell of shaven black walnut wood

The deep colour of a clear blue night

40 years of birthday cards from my grandparents

The suspension of an outside world and slow absorption back to reality after leaving the movie theatre in the middle of the day

Greeting my husband in a crowded public space from across the room with a smile

Beautiful stone tiles that serve as organic artwork on the walls

Watching the hard-fought win of a closely-matched game

Discovering you have the same question as other Googlers, and better yet, finding the right answer

My blog readers…thanks for hanging in there with me.