The Five Best Sounds I’ve Ever Heard

Ah, hearing. It's such an underrated sense. Vision and taste are the all-stars of the five senses. Smell and hearing are the second-class citizens. Touch, obviously, is the red-headed stepchild.

Hearing, though, gets a big boost in the rankings when you have a baby. In fact, two of the best five sounds I’ve ever heard have been in the past 12 weeks. What were they? Well, let’s cover all five. And to do that, we’ll start at the top, PB, or, pre-baby:

Sound 1: The first time you hear the ocean. The waves crashing on the rocks. The tide rushing against the sand. The seagulls overhead. Since I was little, I’ve always loved the ocean and everything that comes with it. The first time you hear it is unforgettable. And now, decades later, the sound of it can still bring me back to my childhood.

Sound 2: The first real concert you ever attend. I actually didn’t experience a concert until I was in college and wasn’t sure what to expect the first time I stood wide-eyed in front of a live show. I loved the mood. I loved the crowd. I loved the anticipation. Then Bruce Springsteen made a sound on a New Jersey stage and I was captivated for life. Live music has been a huge part of my life – and our marriage.

Sound 3: The first time you hear “I do.” Speaking of marriage, those two words are pretty damn important. You spend a lot of your life looking for the right person to share everything with and, suddenly, two words stand in between you and forever. I remember nearly everything about our wedding day – the food, the people, the speeches, and the weather. Mostly, though, I remember that moment.

Sound 4: The first time you hear your child cry. After the first time, it gets really old … kidding, kidding. Kind of. But that first piercing yell, which I imagine is usually muffled by screams of maternal pain (it was in our case), lets you know you have a healthy (and loud) little bundle of joy.

Sound 5: The first time you hear your child laugh. This …

Three Stories of Great Customer Service

Generosity, my wife often says, is one of the most important things in a marriage. Doing the little things -- putting extra ice in a drink, taking the dog out when it's below freezing, giving a massage when you actually need one -- makes a huge difference.

That mantra holds true for relationships outside of marriage, too. And this past week -- our anniversary week -- we've benefitted from three wonderful examples of customer service:

1. On Tuesday, I thought of the perfect anniversary gift for Bridget. (We hadn't planned on doing anything big because we're saving for Baby Briddon.) My idea was simple: I wanted a graphic keepsake that incorporated my wedding vows. I turned to my friend, Alex, who turned to his friend, Danny, who has a fantastic new business. Danny takes classic books and creates amazing pieces of art. Called Litographs, he prints the entire book within the image on a poster or a book. Decorating a nursery? How about The Wizard of Oz?  Need a gift for a book-lover? Try The Great Gatsby. Check out the whole collection. Danny took my idea, made it into the memorable piece of art above, and refused any kind of compensation for the rush order. The gift made Bridget cry and and made me realize just how kind some people really are.

2. We went stroller shopping a couple weeks ago at a place called Magic Beans in Cambridge. We weren't going to buy, but just felt like we needed to start rolling them around a little bit. One of the staff members, Michelle, spent what felt like 30 minutes with us answering every question we could imagine. She was patient, friendly, and incredibly knowledgable. Nice, right? Well, the reason I'm writing about it is because we received a hand-written "thank-you" card and a $20 gift card from Michelle a few days ago just for stopping in the store. Think we'll buy there? Yeah, me too.

3. We celebrated our anniversary in Chatham and didn't have the best luck with food. To make a long story short, I ordered something that turned out to be a lamb stew. I hate stews. A lot. So, with hopes of turning things around, we went to this little hole-in-the-wall place called the Hangar B Eatery at the municipal airport. The food was spectacular -- probably the best breakfast we've ever had. But what really made the difference was the three, free delicious blueberry muffins we got for having to wait an extra 15 minutes because of the crowd.

Generosity, it seems, is still alive and well. And its made the last week our lives -- which included our first anniversary as a married couple -- that much better.

Lying to Everyone for Three Months

I fibbed a bunch of times in December. So did Bridget. We fudged the truth even more in January and February. Basically, it was just one big, fat lie after another for three months.

"Want to go out tonight and grab a beer tonight?"

"No," we said. "We're not feeling very well."

"You going to that party?"

"Maybe," we said. "But we're pretty hung over from last night."

Lies. Lies. And more lies.

The hardest part of pregnancy so far -- and please note that this is written from the perspective of a male who hasn't undergone an enormous body alteration -- was not telling anyone we were expecting a little one. We told our families at Christmas and then took a tight-lipped oath for the next 11 weeks. The reason, of course, is that if something bad happened with the baby, we didn't want to have to tell everyone about it.

And man, was it hard to keep my mouth shut. After all, it is the biggest news of our lives.

You have, I believe, eight positive "big news" moments in your life. Think about it:

1. You get into college -- perhaps the one of your dreams. 
2. You get your first job. 
3. You get your dream job. 
4. You get married. 
5. You have your first baby.
6. You have additional babies. (I realize this can happen several times, but the first is likely to draw the biggest response from the world.) 
7. You buy your first home. 
8. You retire.

And unless strange circumstances prevent it, you can share non-baby news as soon as it happens. No one buys a home and starts telling people two months after they've moved in. No one wears an engagement ring for four or five weeks before spreading the news. (This is especially true in the Facebook era when eating brunch on Sunday is cause for tagging, photos, and three status updates.)

But baby news is under wraps until that glorious 12-week mark hits and you're a little further out of the woods. So, I'd just like to take this opportunity to say I'm sorry for lying those 40-50 times from December 16  until a few weeks ago. More specifically:

• Colleagues, I never had those dentist appointments. 
• Bridget held the same half bottle of beer for three straight hours at the company holiday party. (For the record, I drank the first half.)
• Friends who threw that lovely apartment warming party in January, Bridget was home in bed two miles away -- not visiting friends in whatever city I said. 
• Everyone who asked if we were trying to have kids yet, yes, yes we were. And it appears we were successful. 

Phew! It feels great to get this off my chest. I promise I'll never lie again. At least until we start trying for baby No. 2.

The 18 Reasons Why 2012 Was The Best Year Ever

Without question, 2012 was the greatest year of my life. And, well, our lives. Bridget and I became "The Briddons" in March and it's been nine months of growing closer. That's not to say we both aren't the same independent (and very different) people we were in 2011, but most sentences now begin with "We." So, in looking back on 2012, here are the 18 things that made it our best 366 days ever:

1. We celebrated five wonderful weddings -- including our own -- with friends and family. We may be biased, but we think ours was the best.
2. We never have to deal with the stress of planning our wedding again.
3. We ran a half marathon.
4. We're healthy.
5. We -- and Oscar -- survived the great hambone disaster of 2012. (In short, my mom, excitedly gave Oscar a hambone, which he excitedly devoured. We all smiled and laughed. Then we realized dogs are never, ever supposed to eat cooked bones. It was a tough and fairly disgusting couple weeks.)
6. We locked up our love on the Seine River in Paris.
7. We stayed in the nicest hotel room ever in Enniskery, Ireland. There was a damn TV in the bathroom mirror. In the mirror!
8. We enjoyed a week of paradise -- and ate about eight pounds of ribs and sushi -- in sunny Mexico.
9. We sat on a riverbank on a glorious sunny day in Breckenridge, Colorado, which, for my money, is the nicest town in the United States.
10. We bought a leather couch. (Weeks ago, Bridget and I decided it was best to wait until next Christmas to make the purchase. So, naturally, I'm staring at it in our living room right now.)
11. We saw the Lumineers, The Head and The Heart, Bon Iver, and Ben Harper -- four of the best concerts in recent memory.
12. We won the New Yorker Caption Contest. (One of the coolest things about this was when the guy at the framing store let out an unsolicited laugh when we brought it in.)
13. We went to a San Francisco Giants game, a Red Sox game, a Patriots game, and a Celtics playoff game. (Mike went to the Celtics game, but, you know, the whole our thing.)
14. We booked our one-year anniversary weekend at the Chatham Bars Inn. 
15. We went to Cambridge, 1 and West Side Lounge a whole bunch of times.
16. We got a MacBook Air and an iMac. (We really, really like Apple products.)
17. We started a blog. This is our 42nd post.
18. We were fortunate enough to do the first 17 things.

We only hope that 2013 can somehow rival 2012. It's a tall order, but if Kanye and Kim Kardashian can make it, hell, anything is possible. Happy New Year, everyone!

My Husband, the Roommate

My wonderful husband’s recent post about chores got me thinking. Thinking about just how important this division of responsibility is to the health of our relationship, and to my overall happiness.

When I met Mike, I was in a place where I was really enjoying being alone and independent for the first time in my adult life. And I very clearly remember thinking that the only way I would be in another relationship is if that relationship made my life easier instead of more complicated. Because my life as a single lady was proving to be really terrific. There is something so delightfully liberating about only having to worrying about your own mess, literally and figuratively.

But then I met Mike. And the thing about Mike is that he is just a really great partner. And this manifests itself in some very boring but very important ways. Chores, for example. When you are falling in love with someone I think it is rare that you fall in love with the way they take out the trash. And when you are making a checklist for the qualities to look for in your future spouse, it is likely that “funny” and “attractive” rank higher than “great toilet scrubber”. But for me, these things really matter. And the fact that Mike cleans the house and makes dinner and takes Oscar out for his final pee of the night is perhaps more important to my happiness than I care to admit.

I don’t think that I appreciated this when Mike and I first started dating. In fact, I thought he was kind of a weirdo because he insisted on cleaning up before, instead of after, dinner. Like, “Let’s let this pasta get cold while I scrub this pot real quick.” And the fact that there was no clutter in his apartment kind of freaked me out. But, luckily, it turns out that Mike is not the serial killer I feared he was, but is just a very neat person. And that works for us. Well, truthfully, it works better for me than for him because I tend to be messier and he is in a constant low level of stress because of the socks I leave in the living room. But I digress.

What I’m trying to get at here is that I’m finding that our marriage functions on two levels. There is the foundational love level. The, “We have the same hopes and dreams and we are crazy about each other and want to spend the rest of our happily ever after together” level. But then there is what I will call the “roommate” level. This is the, “You make my life easier because you just took out the trash” level.  And since Mike and I spend an extraordinary amount of time together in a 750 square foot apartment with a very furry and very needy dog, this is the level that we operate on a lot of the time. And if things aren’t working on this level, it all falls apart. It’s not the most romantic thing in the world, but it is real life.

I’m not going to sit here and say we’ve got this thing down. I mean, there’s obviously the sock issue, which could still prove to be our undoing (I swear I’m working on it, Honey). But the basic building blocks are there. And more importantly, we’ve worked out a division of responsibility that feels fair and reasonable for both of us. Yours may be different. But the important thing is that your life feels easier instead of harder when you are with your partner. Because yesterday, when I was lying on the couch nursing a hangover from the fabulous wedding we went to the night before, I was thanking my lucky stars that I ended up with a man who gladly did the grocery shopping and made dinner so I didn’t have to. In return, I promise to listen to an endless amount of fantasy football grousing. If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

Choosing Chores

First off, this picture is stupid. And this couple is full of crap. No one gets excited (!!!!) about chores. No one smiles when they do chores. And no one uses those perfect "chore clothes" like bandanas, cuffed jeans, or well-worn waffle shirts. So I really dislike this couple.

I don't, however, dislike chores.

This may seem odd (particularly to the fairer sex that may be reading), but I have always felt good about getting things done. I used to turn around when I was mowing the lawn because I could see what I'd accomplished. Same goes for washing a dish or vacuuming a floor. Food scraps are disappearing and dirt is being sucked. There's progress.

Now, it's not that I look forward to doing these things, but I think my willingness to do them makes Bridget's heart smile. Often, as I'm doing something to better the apartment, she says, "Who's the best husband?" (And I'm fairly certain she's referring to me.) I truly believe the breakdown of chores is one of the most important parts of a relationship -- marriage or roommates. No one wants to live with Pig-Pen. No one wants to live in a sty.

So here's our breakdown, which I think has contributed to a very successful 5.5 months of marriage:

Mike: Take out the trash, pretend to know how to fix things, cook (most of the time), vacuum, and grocery shop

Bridget: Do the laundry, put furniture together, cook (the rest of the time), pay the bills, and clean the bathroom

There is, of course, some overlap (she often comes grocery shopping and I often fold towels), and I didn't include stuff like dusting, unloading the dishwasher, or cleaning the floors, which are usually coin flips. But this breakdown plays to our strengths and, for the most part, keeps us both busy, content, and free of aggressive dust clouds.

So what do you think? Who is getting off easy? And, more importantly, how do the chores break down in your humble abode?