Watch out for pretty rocks
We
celebrated our eleventh wedding anniversary last weekend. I don't
recall the eleventh anniversary having a specific name, but it's worth
celebrating anyway in this fragile and random world.
So maybe I'll next write a post as an ode to my beloved wife, who I was
extremely lucky to find (we first met in the Internet, and this was the
era when something like that really wasn't a routine occurrence) and
who has since then stood by me for all these years.
A good marriage is a good thing. A prudent and virtuous wife such as mine is a positive force of life who brings peace and happiness to the household. I can only thank the Fates that I have never had to endure the endless problems that I can so often read and see other people facing. A home is supposed to be a safe and happy place, one to which it is always nice to come to. It is strange how many seemingly intelligent people out there don't seem to grasp this simple fact, but almost seem to make their lives worse on purpose.
What a long and eventful ride it has been so far. We were both just young adults when we got married and moved into our first little apartment, me just starting to work at the local university and she first learning Finnish in a course for new immigrants (and the welfare state graciously picking up the tab), then landing herself a job at a translation company. You know, it is pretty much automatic to get the residence permit to live in Finland simply by marrying somebody who lives here, whereas if you try to get to Canada, marrying a Canadian only gives you to right to apply for the residence permit in the first place, and there are many hoops to cross before you get to land. But let's not delve too deeply in comparisons of various nations, since there are all these fond memories...
[Ilkka lifts his eyes from the computer and looks up into the air. The picture goes out of focus and the harp sound effect starts playing. The picture then focuses back to the year 1994, where Ilkka and his wife are made up to look twelve years younger, and they sport the stereotypical hairstyles and fashions of that era, for the convenience of the viewers.]
For example, I remember vividly this one time when I was visiting her in Canada about a year before we got married. We were driving around with her best friend, a short brunette named Janeane... hmmm, I wonder what she is up to these days? Anyway, we stopped by at this convenience store. When we heard "My Sharona" playing on the radio on the store counter, we just had to ask the old guy behind the counter to turn the sound up, since it is such a great song. We danced to this song around the store as if nobody was watching, paid for our pop and candy and rushed out to the world, totally filled with newfound optimism and hope for the future.
[The harp sound effect plays again as the picture goes out of focus and the narrative returns back to the present day.]
Boy, that sure was fun. Quite a lot has happened since then, but thanks to our smart lifestyle choices, these things have generally been positive and improved our quality of life. You know, since otherwise we wouldn't have done those things, like, duh. Often we have noticed in unison that pretty much everybody is stupid except us, for example, when it is a nice and warm Sunday and people are flocking to the church while we are enjoying the day, or when some tired-looking woman angrily shrieks at her wild and out-of-control children.
Because of the irreversible forces of entropy, after all these shared years we are both more mature and more adult. Occasionally my wife's mannerisms have even started to vaguely remind me those of her various older female relatives, but sometimes (especially when she laughs that lovely little laugh of hers) she is more like the young innocent woman who I first fell in love with. Interesting. For example, a few days ago when she came home from work, she told me about her coworkers who were spending their time on the Internet, so she google-image-searched a picture of a scary clown and emailed it to them, telling them in the email that if they continue to goof off during the workday, this clown will come at night to eat them. Listening to her tell this story in her usual nonchalant way, I thought to myself "Oh man, and this woman is my wife". I keep imagining her workdays to be somewhat like those depicted in the show "The Office". Is there anything more humorous and intellectually stimulating than working in a cubicle? Maybe I should try it sometime and see for myself.
When it comes to sociopolitical attitudes, my wife is nowhere as... extreme as I am. But she can sometimes be surprisingly conservative, for example whenever she sees something that should be common sense, but perhaps isn't any more. For example, I did mention her the recent infamous description of a certain group of young citizen activists who represented diverse strata of our local community, and she said that I must be making the whole thing up because nobody can really say something that stupid. Another time when we were shopping at Wal-Mart, there was an announcement on the loudspeakers made in such a strange and thick Asian accent that you really couldn't understand a word of it, so she said in frustration that people should speak proper English to work in service jobs, an opinion which I am sure must be some kind of thoughtcrime these days. I know that she occasionally reads my blog (once she threatened to organize a feminist consciousness raising seminar in our living room just to annoy me, and another time she asked me to show her Steve Sailer's site when I had donated $100 to his fundraiser drive), but she is not really into any of this blogging or any kind of expressing opinions stuff. Why rock the perfectly good boat, her attitude seems to be, and it's hard to find fault in that. In the elections, she told me that she always votes for a party that has zero chance of winning the seat, just so that she can't be blamed when the winner turns out to do something stupid. Even so, perhaps I should one day ask her to guest-blog here. We could be, like, a husband and wife power-blogging team.
Being two very introverted people who respect each other's boundaries and interests (I don't ask her to pretend to enjoy things that I am interested in, and she returns the same favour), I'd say that together we actually make a pretty solid team. During these years we have naturally accumulated countless personal married-couple mannerisms, inside jokes and other semi-automatic habits. Many of these are derived from TV and the Internet, our two main windows to the wide world. For example, after we had watched the first few seasons of Scrubs and went out for a nice Saturday dinner, while we were waiting for our appetizers my wife started mock-mocking me for having lost my new watch somewhere. (We later found it between the armchair and wall, where it had fallen.) "Where is your watch?" she asked me, smiling devilishly in full knowledge that my watch had already been missing for a week. Feeling a little bit like Dr. Cox who is being jabbed by Jordan, I shot the perfect comeback "Where are your youth and dreams?" Not missing a beat, she sighed and admitted that she probably walked straight into that one. Married couples can do stuff like that.
But enough of this speech, it's time to celebrate. Here's hoping for another eleven years together, and then another eleven after that, and so on.
A good marriage is a good thing. A prudent and virtuous wife such as mine is a positive force of life who brings peace and happiness to the household. I can only thank the Fates that I have never had to endure the endless problems that I can so often read and see other people facing. A home is supposed to be a safe and happy place, one to which it is always nice to come to. It is strange how many seemingly intelligent people out there don't seem to grasp this simple fact, but almost seem to make their lives worse on purpose.
What a long and eventful ride it has been so far. We were both just young adults when we got married and moved into our first little apartment, me just starting to work at the local university and she first learning Finnish in a course for new immigrants (and the welfare state graciously picking up the tab), then landing herself a job at a translation company. You know, it is pretty much automatic to get the residence permit to live in Finland simply by marrying somebody who lives here, whereas if you try to get to Canada, marrying a Canadian only gives you to right to apply for the residence permit in the first place, and there are many hoops to cross before you get to land. But let's not delve too deeply in comparisons of various nations, since there are all these fond memories...
[Ilkka lifts his eyes from the computer and looks up into the air. The picture goes out of focus and the harp sound effect starts playing. The picture then focuses back to the year 1994, where Ilkka and his wife are made up to look twelve years younger, and they sport the stereotypical hairstyles and fashions of that era, for the convenience of the viewers.]
For example, I remember vividly this one time when I was visiting her in Canada about a year before we got married. We were driving around with her best friend, a short brunette named Janeane... hmmm, I wonder what she is up to these days? Anyway, we stopped by at this convenience store. When we heard "My Sharona" playing on the radio on the store counter, we just had to ask the old guy behind the counter to turn the sound up, since it is such a great song. We danced to this song around the store as if nobody was watching, paid for our pop and candy and rushed out to the world, totally filled with newfound optimism and hope for the future.
[The harp sound effect plays again as the picture goes out of focus and the narrative returns back to the present day.]
Boy, that sure was fun. Quite a lot has happened since then, but thanks to our smart lifestyle choices, these things have generally been positive and improved our quality of life. You know, since otherwise we wouldn't have done those things, like, duh. Often we have noticed in unison that pretty much everybody is stupid except us, for example, when it is a nice and warm Sunday and people are flocking to the church while we are enjoying the day, or when some tired-looking woman angrily shrieks at her wild and out-of-control children.
Because of the irreversible forces of entropy, after all these shared years we are both more mature and more adult. Occasionally my wife's mannerisms have even started to vaguely remind me those of her various older female relatives, but sometimes (especially when she laughs that lovely little laugh of hers) she is more like the young innocent woman who I first fell in love with. Interesting. For example, a few days ago when she came home from work, she told me about her coworkers who were spending their time on the Internet, so she google-image-searched a picture of a scary clown and emailed it to them, telling them in the email that if they continue to goof off during the workday, this clown will come at night to eat them. Listening to her tell this story in her usual nonchalant way, I thought to myself "Oh man, and this woman is my wife". I keep imagining her workdays to be somewhat like those depicted in the show "The Office". Is there anything more humorous and intellectually stimulating than working in a cubicle? Maybe I should try it sometime and see for myself.
When it comes to sociopolitical attitudes, my wife is nowhere as... extreme as I am. But she can sometimes be surprisingly conservative, for example whenever she sees something that should be common sense, but perhaps isn't any more. For example, I did mention her the recent infamous description of a certain group of young citizen activists who represented diverse strata of our local community, and she said that I must be making the whole thing up because nobody can really say something that stupid. Another time when we were shopping at Wal-Mart, there was an announcement on the loudspeakers made in such a strange and thick Asian accent that you really couldn't understand a word of it, so she said in frustration that people should speak proper English to work in service jobs, an opinion which I am sure must be some kind of thoughtcrime these days. I know that she occasionally reads my blog (once she threatened to organize a feminist consciousness raising seminar in our living room just to annoy me, and another time she asked me to show her Steve Sailer's site when I had donated $100 to his fundraiser drive), but she is not really into any of this blogging or any kind of expressing opinions stuff. Why rock the perfectly good boat, her attitude seems to be, and it's hard to find fault in that. In the elections, she told me that she always votes for a party that has zero chance of winning the seat, just so that she can't be blamed when the winner turns out to do something stupid. Even so, perhaps I should one day ask her to guest-blog here. We could be, like, a husband and wife power-blogging team.
Being two very introverted people who respect each other's boundaries and interests (I don't ask her to pretend to enjoy things that I am interested in, and she returns the same favour), I'd say that together we actually make a pretty solid team. During these years we have naturally accumulated countless personal married-couple mannerisms, inside jokes and other semi-automatic habits. Many of these are derived from TV and the Internet, our two main windows to the wide world. For example, after we had watched the first few seasons of Scrubs and went out for a nice Saturday dinner, while we were waiting for our appetizers my wife started mock-mocking me for having lost my new watch somewhere. (We later found it between the armchair and wall, where it had fallen.) "Where is your watch?" she asked me, smiling devilishly in full knowledge that my watch had already been missing for a week. Feeling a little bit like Dr. Cox who is being jabbed by Jordan, I shot the perfect comeback "Where are your youth and dreams?" Not missing a beat, she sighed and admitted that she probably walked straight into that one. Married couples can do stuff like that.
But enough of this speech, it's time to celebrate. Here's hoping for another eleven years together, and then another eleven after that, and so on.
Isn't calling people with kids stupid very much a freeriding attitude you like to bash so much? Someone has to have kids in order to society to function (and this will be true in the foreseeable future) and kids sometimes are annoying. It's a tough job but somebody absolutely must do it and I think people deserve respect for that even if some people choose not to have children.
Posted by Anonymous | 2:40 AM
Congratulations!
You have clearly found yourself a good wife (and she has found a good husband, I'll take your word for it).
I have also sensed that you believe in marriage as an institution so that even the world is changing, it is good that people keep getting married instead of just living together. Am I right? Could you write someday about the practical issues (so that this will not be just another request for Dr. Philkka ;)) of marriage, perhaps from both the Finnish and Canadian point of view?
I am looking for something to read after nomarriage.com, which I think I originally found through your blog.
Posted by Rebyk | 2:42 AM