the man cave

Getting married presumes certain life-style changes. In our case, we wanted to minimize them, insofar as we didn't want to traumatize my daughter or make her feel pushed to the side in any way. I promised her when we got married that she probably wouldn't notice any difference to her every day life at all. We would keep our separate residences during the week--which made a lot of sense, given the commute--and for the most part keep even our household items as they were.

But of course combining households does entail change. In our case, this seems to be manifesting in my husband's avid interest in adding a "man-cave" to our current configuration. He read about man-caves in the local newspaper, where they were described as that room in the house devoted to manly things: namely beer, TV, and sports. He wants to set up his karaoke station in there, as well as a beer fridge, yet another game station (we now have three of these), and I think a few neon beer signs to get the overall atmosphere right.

As this is all taking place in the garage for the moment, I have no problem with it as of yet. I think a man-cave is a great idea, and the best part about it is that it doesn't interfere with my interior decor at all!

The only thing I'm worrying about is the anticipated karaoke volume. The husband-dude and his friends really like to belt their songs out, in full rock-star style. Already I'm worrying about the neighbors. I crept around the perimeter of the house yesterday, assessing the amount of noise that leaks out just from a radio playing in the garage, and I found reason to be alarmed. Just thinking about it stresses me out.

Of course, our neighbors have a lot to make up for themselves. There was a fairly raucous New Year's party a few weeks back that left debris--never picked up by the offenders--all over my lawn and all over the street, and we get "ding-dong-ditched" by their annoying pre-teens fairly regularly, who further make a lot of enthusiastic screaming noises at periodic intervals throughout the day.

But I'm not sure they'll remember all that once the singing commences.