His influence

This damned stomach virus is on it's way out, but it has left me with a big case of insomnia and an insane craving for a cheeseburger.

So I'm writing instead of lying in bed thinking and tossing endlessly from left to right and back again.

Before I got out of bed, I was thinking a number of things related to my marriage:

1. I didn't know jack shit when I got married at age 24.  I don't think most people even begin to understand themselves or life until they hit about 29.

2. I can't believe how different a person I am almost 13 years later.  Some of this is the effect of time.  Some is the effect of medication and 2+ years of some good therapy.  Some of this is having my kids.

3.  Given #1 and #2, I am astounded on an almost daily basis that D and I are still married.  And pretty content with it.
I say pretty content because I only know how I feel.  Since D doesn't keep a blog, I can only guess that he is fairly content with our life together.  He hasn't left yet anyway.

4. Do other couples not share things like D and I don't share?
For example, we don't share a last name.  And we don't share the same toothpaste (we each have our own tubes).  We don't share bath towels....eva.  We don't share a laundry basket---he puts his clothes in the baskets in his closet, and I put mine in my closet, which means when he brings his laundry downstairs, it is almost like he's bringing it to a laundromat.

But we do share all of our financial accounts.  Even though both of us know who's in charge, right dear? ;)

5. And finally, I began thinking about some of the ways in which D has had an influence on me in the past 12.5 years.

A love of Sci-Fi/Fantasy--
Technically, a former student got me to read a sci-fi book called Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.  I loved it, which made me think that D, who had long been a sci-fi enthusiast, might just be on to something.  And so I began to wade my way through D's sci-fi/fantasy collection:  the Dune books, the Lord of the Rings books.  Eventually there were sci-fi/fantasy books that I turned D onto, like His Dark Materials trilogy.  And so now D and I have a pretty nice his-and-her collection of sci-fi/fantasy books.

A love of ethnic food--
My parents were not big ethnic food eaters and still aren't.  Dad is strictly a meat-and-potatoes bland diet dude.  So it was D who introduced me to the joy of eating spicy foods, and together we kinda started eating more ethnic foods.  You will rarely find us eating at an Applebee's or other American cuisine restaurant.  If only I had inherited some kind of cooking gene that made the idea of cooking ethnic foods palatable.

A better appreciation for enjoying spending money--
My parents are savers.  Like crazy, insane "never enjoy spending money on anything" savers.  D's dad was a "spend money, enjoy doing it and even go into debt for things you want" kind of guy.  Somewhere along the line in our marriage, D and I have come from the far ends of the spectrum to a middle-ground.  He sees the benefit of saving, which I have always liked to do.  And I have gotten better about spending money and not stressing over it constantly (some of this is very likely the effect of my meds too).

A better ability to be alone--
D is the kind of person who needs quite a bit of alone time, down-time.  I knew that when we married, but never having lived together I didn't really get it.  So when we became husband and wife, I was like, "Hell, I'm by myself."  And I have never been good at entertaining myself (gee, I wonder where N gets it?).  So at age 24, I had to start learning how to entertain myself.  I got my Master's degree, became a teacher, and then we had kids (which I find fills up all those minutes of "don't know what to do with myself" time).  And now I blog and scrapbook and fool around on Facebook.  I can do things alone now, like go shopping, which I never wanted to do alone in my early twenties.  So I guess thank goodness for a husband who liked to lose himself for hours playing computer games.

Ok, Tylenol PM is slowly.starting.to.kick.in.  Yawn.