I Need a Wife

I'm not saying I'm in any rush to get married. In fact, looking at a lot of marriages around me, I often feel I'd be better off avoiding the ordeal altogether (and considering my track record, I'm well on course to do so).

However, I was grocery shopping today, my first big stock up since moving into my new place, and I noticed something disturbing: I'm still buying a lot of the same groceries for myself that I was when I was 21. Easy single serve meals guaranteed to give me a heart attack by age 35 if consumed regularly. Foods that can be eaten right out of the container in mass quantities to substitute for a meal. Canned goods that I should probably just dump straight into the toilet for all the good they'll do me.

Now I would love to break this cycle. Not because I don't want a heart attack by age 35 (heck, depending on the drugs given for recovery, I might want two). But because it seems like the more grownup thing to do. However, this is no easy cycle to break. In fact, the only common denominator I've noticed in the men that seem to have broken the cycle is that they're all married. It's almost as though these wives seem to want their men to be healthier and therefor make sure microwaveable meals are a rare occasion. But I don't have that attachment, so the willpower to break said cycle just isn't there.

There's also the issue of actually cooking. Not that I don't like it, in fact most the time I very much do. But I hate cooking just for myself. For one, if the meal sucks, to people should suffer. And for two, it's hard to make a full meal proportioned for just one person and usually I end up making enough for two or more. And as much as I love some foods, having a five day supply is just too much. Three days straight of any food is too much (unless that food is Moose's Tooth pizza). However, those not-so-healthy microwaveable meals are already made to serve just one person; how perfect.

Another reason it might do me good to be hitched is that my place, when I'm done moving in, will look like it was decorated by a blind man. The only reason anything in my house matches is because I bought it as a set, like my bed and dresser. But matching items are few and far between. However, I've heard rumors that women actually have a knack for this decorating thing. And while nine days out of ten I'll be home alone and it won't matter how my house looks, I'd like to think on that one odd day guests come over, they don't leave feeling like they're walking off the set of a Tim Burton movie.

Anyways, yeah, this is what I was thinking about while walking around the commissary today. Not that I actually need a wife, but that in some ways they may not be the evil entity I so often hear about them as. I've heard rumors of a couple other benefits as well, but getting proof of those benefits could get me in a lot of trouble. Or make me some really weird new friends. Either way, it's not good.

Kinda Like Christmas

One of the things I liked about PCSing when I was active duty was going through my boxes when I got to my new place. I was constantly finding stuff I forgot I had and in an odd way, it made it feel like a Christmas of sorts. It was never anything super amazing; I tended to remember the bigger/more important items I owned. But some small things, such as a video game or a coffee mug, were always rediscovered.

Having had a good amount of my stuff in storage over the last year and a half, I've been finding a ton of stuff I forgot I had while I unpack and settle into my new place. And while some of it is still cool, I'm actually finding myself a bit disappointed with a lot of the items. Now for some of the items, it's because they have a sentimental attachment to a certain someone from the past. But those items actually don't bother me nearly as much as the other stuff. Because it's a ton of junk, at least junk for me.

Dozens of magazines in which I've read nothing more than the cover, old calendars, three to four different souvenirs (i.e. shot glasses, t-shirts, etc.) from the same place (as though I need as many souvenirs as possible to prove I really went to some place), DVDs of movies I know I will never watch again, clothes I've long outgrown, and a host of other odds and ends. At the moment, I'm completely surrounded by junk. I almost feel like I should be on that TV show about people that can't throw anything away.

Having all this junk around bothers me. For one, thinking about the money that's been wasted on all this stuff. And while the reality is if I didn't waste that money on this junk, I probably would've wasted it on something else, I'd like to imagine differently.

For two, this junk is taking up a lot of space right now. And while it is junk in my eyes, I know a lot of it is stuff others could easily put to use. Which means over the next few days (or few weeks more likely), I'm going to be spending a lot of time sorting through stuff, seeing what can go to charity and what can just be thrown out.

On the bright side...

When I was first looking at a lot of this stuff, there was a little fear inside me that much of it was serving as signs that I haven't changed much (if any) over the past few years. Which makes me afraid I may be doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over (such as buying magazines I know I'll never read). But then I realized the fact that I'm seeing it as junk right now shows some change. Hopefully, that's a sign of better things to come. Or at least a little less money blatantly wasted.