In a couple of weeks, I’ll have been married for twelve years, which is an achievement by anyone’s standards. Twelve great years. Knock wood. How have I done it? Clean living and common sense, and an exceptional wife. And I would consider the following truths to be self-evident. But in case they aren’t, this is for you, young men of the world. Good luck to you.

1) Establish behavior while still in the dating phase. You and your friends go to Myrtle Beach golfing every year. Poker in Vegas, fishing in Scotland. Get it on the books. If you do, even 40th birthdays in Amsterdam are possible. Ahem.

2) Marry someone hot. It helps. (Except if you are my wife GG, in which case it would be, “Marry someone funny. It helps.”)

3) They can criticize their family. You cannot. Chill out on that.

4) Under 30, no kids for five years. Over 30, no kids for three years. Smart, no kids. (Awww….)

5) She can choose the furniture, fine, but you select at least one comfortable chair and all of the electronics. And the coffeemaker.

6) Don’t be a dick. If she trusts you don’t give her reason not to. The wedding ring stays on at all times. No harmless flirting. Because it isn’t harmless, that’s why. I have covered this ground with some of you in the past.

7) No cursing at each other. None. Period. Walk away.

8 ) Your friends are your friends. Don’t let her come between you and them, but understand where the insecurity is coming from and work on that. When I was single, I used to be good friends with Carla Bruni Sarkozy, and now we never talk. What a brick. Thanks, GG.

9) She plans the wedding and you plan the honeymoon. Make it a good one.

10) Never—and this is important—never admit that another woman is flirting with you. It’ll somehow wind up being your fault. And when your wife says something to the effect that, “she’s a tramp” do not defend her. That’s a double-fault and those are bad.

11) Just apologize. Long after you’ve forgotten the incident, she will still be stewing. You don’t need that.

12) None of her friends are “hot.” Not ever. Some are merely, “pretty, I guess.”

13) If the truth hurts, don’t tell her the truth.

14) Don’t sleep on fights. You sleep like crap and then you wind up cranky fighting the next morning and have to go to work afterward.

15) Love. Honor. Respect. The roadmap is right there.

Bonus:

16) Develop a pre-existing medical condition that could get you out of painful events on a semi-regular basis. Bad back or migraine is good to keep in your back pocket for when her best friend from childhood is in town (Let me just say for the record, that I have been getting migraines since I was a kid and I actually like my wife’s friends. From childhood. Just want to make that clear.)

The subject of a dog gets batted around like a shuttle cock in our apartment.  GG wants one by the time I finish writing this, if not sooner. I would like one if he came with a Sherpa who would care for him. Seriously.

We used to have an English bulldog, Georgie G, and eventually he went super-crazy and needed to move upstate to our friends. His problem, in a nutshell, was that he hated to go outside and built up so much anxiety that when you stood up to leave, he wouldn’t let you.  And he would use anything within his power to keep you in the apartment. Anyone who has a bulldog knows how stubborn and fixated he or she become on something. But it wasn’t until began to attack our friends that the situation became intolerable. We brought in dog whisperers, and trainers and psychologists and you name it; they all said the same: put him down.

Luckily, our friends insisted on taking him in. They had three other dogs and he got to go for long runs every day. (He recently passed away. Sadly. Okay, they had to put him down because he was even crazier, but I don’t want that sad news to detract from my story.) But it was tough on us. And eight years later, it’s still pretty fucking tough, which leads to my hesitancy. Not that I think another dog could wreak as much havoc on two lives as George—the last couple of years were rough, man— but that it’s a lot of responsibility for two people who are not really…available on consistent basis.

And in today’s world and economy, the notion of doggy day care makes me want to hurl myself in front of a subway car. I am not working so that my dog can sleep in a room filled with other dogs. No way.

Eventually, I will weaken and we will get a new best friend. And I will be here bemoaning the problems it will foist upon me. And you’ll be like, “Jesus, what a crybaby.”

And once again you’ll be right.

Most of my favorite actresses happen to be British. With the exception of Joan Allen, who is American, the Aussie Judy Davis, and my favorite Martian, Zooey Deschanel, the rest of my fave use words like “extroooodin-reee” and purse their lips like, all the time.

I just saw the new Potter film and Helena Bonham Carter stole the show yet again. Her villainess Beatrix Lestrange was far more savage and scary than any bad guy I have ever seen (with the exception of the original Nosferatu, Klaus Kinski. Brrrrr…). I was expecting to watch her do her thing and wasn’t disappointed; she really kills it in every movie she is in. He turn in Sweeney Todd was off the chain, even though her singing sounded like a fork being dragged across a plate. But in this movie—which I bracing myself to be bored by— she delivered. Boy oh boy, did she ever.

I had heard the movie was boring, but I didn’t find it so. Those three lead kids can act about as well as the Pillsbury Dough Boy on Nyquil. In their defense, it’s not like they give them a ton to do anyway. But watching that Harry Potter kid pretend to smile is as painful an activity as seeing Gwyneth Paltrow being interviewed about anything. And, uh, Hermoine? Stop trying to cry. And lastly, Weasley, acting doesn’t mean moving your eyebrows up and down like a ventriloquist dummy. Scabbers the rat was written off because he used to out-act you. But anyway….

I was particularly vexed that they wrote budding hottie Cho Chang off for another red-headed piece of cast wood, Bonnie Wright, who plays Ginny Weasley. But, hey, perhaps if I was 16 I’d feel differently. Doubtful, though. Katie Leung, who played Ms. Chang had some presence and really knew how to deliver her lines—all three of them. And guess what? She’s British. Imagine that.

With that last statement I may have hit rock bottom.

Every night at around seven pm or so, I go out onto my deck to water my garden. Across the street, and one flight down, there is a woman who I fear is a drug addict or depressed. Or a ghost. She is rail thin, in her 30s or 40s, and she comes to the window and stands there, arms crossed, and rocks back and forth. In a nightgown.

She doesn’t appear to be looking at anything in particular; just into space, while I stand on the edge of my terrace, smoking a cigar and watching her. She was there tonight and she looked up at me, slowly, as if she were underwater.

I nodded as if to say, “hey, you exist” and she looked through me. Didn’t move away, just went about her business of nothingness. Whatever she appears to be going through, she wants to do it alone.

Perhaps someone else would try and poke around about who she is and why she does this every day. Or try to help. Not me. I try and mind my own business. And besides, I have about seventy-five more chances this year. My plants are very thirsty.

I respect her privacy, admire it even. I just saw Montel Williams on Oprah and he cried about his MS like he had no arms, legs and an eye patch. He said he was on to give others strength, but it looked like he was more concerned with hysterically sobbing about not being able to dance anymore. Even Oprah was skeeved out.

Whatever happened to suffering in silence? Apparently it lives across the street from me.

I mumble, which is as bad a habit as there is, as it projects both a lack of confidence and an air of laziness. The truth is neither: I just think some of the things I say sound crazy. And in the time it takes a person to say, “beg pardon?” I can decide on repeating, or simply saying, “never mind.” Seriously, that’s my plan for perpetuating an air of sanity: mumbling. I know, my brain is like a computer…

I used to be much worse. I spent years raging about people, places and things—all under my breath. It got so bad that it took people five years to realize that, whenever I was in Brooklyn, I was actually riffing for hours on end about how lame it was/is/will be.

Lately, I have been winging it and save for a few recent faux pas’ (the most recent of which was “the Korean incident” (detailed on Twitter, fools) followed swiftly by my characterization of Copenhagen as a “two-night city” to someone who lived there for a year), I have done okay. I have pretty much been saying what is really and truly on my mind, in conversation and on job interviews, and nothing bad has happened. Yet.

My wife has always been much more forthcoming, blunt, some might say. (That’s a Fox News tactic that really means, “I might say” or more accurately, “I say.”) But it works for her. She delivers her opinion as something less than that in a very charming manner. Backed with steel. Over the years I have learned from her, how you owe it to people to be honest to them (KV, there are entirely too many photographs of your sandaled feet on the Facebook….sorry, that just came out) but I have very far to go. GG flaunts a Jedi-like ability to put things gently, but clearly.

She would kill me for writing this, because she says it makes her look bad (which of course it doesn’t; everyone is jealous of her), but I’m not afraid. And now I have witnesses if something happens to me.
What did you just say? For God’s sake, speak up.

Now that I am once again on the crab, financially speaking, I am wary of returning to my profligate ways. I had settled into a nice routine of not spending dick, as they say in France, and I am hoping to continue that. Although I must say that the trip to Italy was a dishearteningly glorious way to start.

My problem, as Dr. Lecter would describe it, is that I am covetous. I like nice things. Watches and cashmere are my kryptonite. The word ‘wool” does not exist in my lexicon. (And I making you want to puke yet?) But nice is misleading; I think Nikes are nice. Occasionally I surf EBay for Dunks that I covet, but the list gets shorter as to which I will actually pull the lever for. And three weeks ago I spent $50 at Economy Candy.

I will drop more than I should on the three S’s: shoes, sweaters and sunglasses, but my rationale is that they are worth it. And let’s not get started on my Mets tickets. Expensive? Uh-huh. Worth it? More than occasionally debatable—I can hear you harrumphing, GG—but mostly yes they are.

So I guess that is what it is: something needs to be worth it for me to take the financial plunge, especially in these trying times. Like that 24-pack of Chuckles. Both of them.

I guess that perhaps the question is, am I worth it? That is a lot of candy.

Spent the day gardening. It was splendid. I started early and ended late, and afterward I went to the Mets game in which they won by a grand slam in the 8^th inning. The batter’s name was Angel Pagan, and at the time he whacked the ball from the yard, I was pondering the fact that he may possess the most oxymoronic name in the whole world.

I have been wondering what to write about all day. I decided to perform a public service and remind people that  Shark Week begins tomorrow. There’s a new show about those crazy shark attacks in south joisey in 1918, as well as a part two to their flying sharks of South Africa, a phenomenon so terrifying that my palms sweat while it is on. Watching those beasts launch their bodies from the water, vainly grasping at the rubber carcass of a phony seal, is jaw-dropping. And not just for them. Ba-dum-dum.

GG and I have been kicking around going to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup, but decided against it. Despite the fact that July is their winter, and I wouldn’t be going in the water, knowing that those bad boys are patrolling the beaches, looking for a slow-witted seal or…sinking-fishing-boat riding me. I have nightmares about being stuck on a fishing boat off of Cape Town.

That would be just my luck, now wouldn’t it?