A Bowling Ball Named Homer, and other References that Make Up My Marriage

Last month, my husband and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. Tenth! I’ve now officially been married longer than I’ve done just about anything else. Longer than I’ve lived in one place, longer than I’ve attended any school. Wow.

So–lately I’ve been thinking about my marriage.

My husband and I are nerds. “Geeks” might be the more precise term. As in we get really excited about odd things and get kind of obsessive about them. Most of our geekery is separate, but there’s one thing we tend to geek out on together: television. More specifically, animation. Cartoons made for grown-ups.

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30 for 30: Read a Book I’d Never Think to Read (First Try)

I have never been into mysteries. My parents read us quite a few Hardy Boys books when we were little, but I mainly enjoyed those because my parents were reading them to me. Even as a kid, I often thought there’s a lot of silliness that goes into mystery writing, and not the good kind–this is silliness that doesn’t seem to know it’s silliness. Put on a feathered hat and dance around: great. Put a pair of boys with flashlights in an old mill while they wonder what the heck this place is for three pages: [eyeroll].

That’s sort of how I felt about the TV series Midsomer Murders when it was introduced to me a year or two ago. I came in on the SILLIEST episode: a group of bell ringers were being killed off one by one because–can you guess?–some other bell ringer wanted to win a bell ringing competition. Totally solid motive, right? For mass murder? I hated it immediately. But we were at my parents’ house and they wanted to watch it. And then the next night they wanted to watch another one, which was a little bit better but which lulled me to sleep (partially the TV show, partially I was pregnant).

I never thought I would watch that show again.