Crazy Eights

John and I just passed our eight-month anniversary of being married. We both agree it feels like we've been married much longer than that, but that is beside the point. I always hear people say how hard the first year of marriage is, but I just don't see it. Maybe I'm just spoiled with an amazing husband who treats me much better than I probably deserve -- he cooks, cleans (including cleaning bathrooms and mopping, might I add) and helps with the decorating. Yeah. He's pretty great. Here are some things I've learned in the relatively short amount of time that I've been Mrs. Morrey:

1. Getting out of bed in the mornings is much, much harder to do when you have to pry yourself away from your cute, sleepy husband and his snuggliness. I think that since we've been married I've been on time to work twice. I've also noticed that I'm grumpier on Monday mornings than other mornings (not that I enjoy mornings in particular. Old habits die hard, and I am definitely a night owl). I have come to the conclusion that the increase in grumpiness is caused by the simple fact that I have just been able to spend two glorious days with John in their entirety. And then Monday comes around and I am forced to go to work and not see him until 8 or later that night, due to his dedication to going to the gym to play basketball for hours on end and lift weights after work every Monday night. Curse him and his healthiness.

2. Putting a frozen pizza in the oven for dinner totally counts as cooking.

3. Money and finances stress me out way more than I thought they would. Perhaps that's because I went from being a carefree single girl with no debt to married with a mortgage and subsequent household expenses right off the bat. And an enormous water bill in the summertime that almost makes me want to cry right now thinking of.

4. John is probably a better wife than me. Since he works from home two days a week, he does a lot of the grocery shopping, cleaning and cooking. Now if I could just find a way for him to carry and give birth to our babies, life would be perfect.

5. Air-drying certain things does not work out so well. Socks, for example. And towels. Nobody wants to put a pair of crusty air-dried socks on their feet or use a crusty air-dried towel. Thank heavens we have successfully reached adulthood and wisely used money we received for Christmas to purchase a new dryer, instead of using it for something fun, like a vacation. Because dryers, my friends, are fun. Crusty, air-dried socks and towels are not.

6. I never get tired of looking at my wedding ring. Call me superficial, I don't care. It's pretty and sparkly and John gave it to me.

7. Eating at a dinner table is overrated. We survive just fine by eating dinner while balancing plates on our laps, sitting on our fabulous microfiber couches and bonding over HGTV, shows about morbidly obese people trying to lose weight and Emmy-award-winning comedies.

8. Dating does not end once you are married. I'm not referring to the fact that you should still make sure you "date" your spouse, I'm referring to the fact that, in essence, you "date" other couples in order to find new, married friends in your ward, neighborhood, etc. We were invited to dinner at our bishop's house a couple of Sundays ago along with another young couple in our ward (our bishop is younger than John, by the way--hello, future apostle), and I remarked to John as we were getting ready to head over there that I felt like I was going on a date--the pressure of trying to keep a steady flow of conversation going, getting to know each other's backgrounds and family life, trying to impress each other...And just now, I remembered an episode of The King of Queens where Doug and Carrie wanted to find some new friends so they scoped out the local hardware store and other such places that marrieds tend to frequent and basically hit on them, trying to score a phone number. So funny. T.V. is so true sometimes.