11 Reasons why being 28, married*, unemployed**, and living with your parents is totally awesome.

1. Human Contact: When I first moved to Flint for grad school, I lived alone in a little house by myself.  My dog had not learned how to speak English yet, so it left me with little human contact since my social life consisted of school, the hospital, and the library.  It would be an understatement to say that it sucked pretty bad, my husband still living in Colorado and all that.  No longer an issue: moving in with the two people in the world who feel obligated to talk to me has helped out considerably.

2. Doggie Mental Health: My dog was in need of a therapist due to the unavoidable long hours at the hospital/library and neglect that ensued.  She no longer needs doggie Prozac since she now has her grandparents to spoil her, take her for daily walks, and give her bed-time snacks.

3. Healthy Food:  Scrumptious, delicious, homemade dinners that always have my daily servings of vegetables included.  No longer do I have to eat Pizza for 3 days straight because the thought of cooking real food makes me want to cry.

4. Sense of security: Since moving out of the city of Flint and into my parent’s house, I no longer have to sleep with a loaded shot gun in my closet.  This makes my sleep much more enjoyable as it’s been at least four months since I’ve woken up in a sweat thinking that my house is being broken into and, “Holy CRAP- I don’t even remember how to use the shot gun!!”

5. Marriage helper: Now you might wonder how living with parents could HELP a marriage- but my parents do the bulk of the ‘Listen to Suz complain/ramble/cry/yell about school’, and therefore saves my husband from having to listen to it.  So when I have days like this, I’ve got two built-in therapists.  This is good for our marriage- trust me.

6. Doggie Physical health: My poor pooch gained about 7 lbs upon moving to Michigan due to the dramatic change in her exercise regime.  She is currently feeling much better about her figure now that she’s getting daily walks.  She’s still a little ‘curvy’, but not quite as jiggly as before.

7. Self esteem booster: No matter how awful I’ve done on a test, or what awfully dumb thing I’ve done at the hospital, my dad still thinks I’m the smartest person out there and it is ALWAYS totally  someone else’s fault.  I then pretend that’s true and continue on my merry way thinking I’m super intelligent and clever.

8. Homemade Goodies: The last time I’ve had access to this much homemade goodies was about 10 years ago when I moved out of my parents house.  Belgian waffles, chocolate chip cookies, homemade brownies, rice krispy treats- does this even NEED and explanation??

9. Dog poop: Or lack there of.  It somehow magically disappears from the back yard.  I’m feeling a little bit guilty about this one, but obviously not bad enough to do anything too extreme and..you know, go and pick it up.

10. Free Time: Free time is not something that I’ve had in abundance since starting school.  Since I now no longer have to spend my free time grocery shopping, cooking, or cleaning I have a few more minutes to do fun stuff.  Like spend it with Jack Bauer.  Or this blog.

11. Built-in Blog Following: This might also fall into the ‘help for the marriage’.  I’ve got two built-in blog readers, who basically have to read whatever I write because I’m their spawn and they feel like they have to.  I then get little notes with grammar and punctuation tips from my mom and exclamations of how I’m so smart and witty from my dad.

I wonder if they realize that they might never get rid of me….

*married, yet with a husband who lives a few thousand miles away

**In the interest of ensuring that I don’t sound TOO pathetic- I am in a grad school program that ‘strongly discourages’ its students to have a job.

Tagged as: Maile, Suz, The Dog