Peer Pressure

Shortly after getting home from work today, I headed upstairs to change out of my work clothes into my "rest of the day" clothes. If I have nowhere to go for the rest of the evening, then I change into a pair of sweats and a sweatshirt. Actually, even if I do have somewhere to go, sometimes I still change into a pair of sweats and a sweatshirt, but if that isn't appropriate, then I will put on some jeans and a shirt. This wasn't always my after work routine. I used to be a one outfit a day woman. Whatever I wore to work in the morning (which was usually a pair of dress pants and dress shirt or sweater) was what I wore until I went to bed at night. Not so with my husband. From the first day we were married and he went off to work until this day, the first thing he does when he gets home is go to the bedroom and change from his work clothes into his lounge clothes. Even if we are going somewhere a couple of hours after he gets home, he will still change into his lounge clothes and then will change back when we are ready to leave. When we first got married, I thought this was a ridiculous habit. First of all, it just created more laundry. Second of all, how did he decide how many days in a row he would wear the same lounge clothes? If I wear a shirt all day long, for around twelve hours, then I put it in the laundry. If lounge clothes are only worn 2-3 hours a day, then can they be worn for 4-5 days without laundering? It all gets very confusing. However, the longer we were married, the more I realized that he looked a lot more comfortable than I felt in the evenings. So now I have fallen into his pattern, and if you visit the Wuertley household anytime after 6:00 in the evening, you will find us both in sweats.

This pattern got me thinking today about other habits or "things" that I do solely because I have been around someone else for a long time who do these things and they have sort of rubbed off on me. For example...

Before I was married, I NEVER intentionally ate sour cream, especially on potatoes or tacos. I also never used mayonaise on sandwiches. When we got married, I realized that both of these condiments had to be staples in our household, especially when I witnessed Jason making a ham sandwich with mayonaise lathered on both pieces of bread. I learned to not even offer tacos as a dinner choice if there wasn't sour cream on hand. So now I use mayo on sandwiches, and I even PAY EXTRA for sour cream at La Charreada because I can no longer eat a taco or quesadilla without it.

I had also been camping 0 times before I got married, and never had any desire to do so. Jason, however, grew up camping, so he was somewhat disappointed that I didn't share his enthusiasm for roughing it in the wild. However, he talked me into a pop up in 2002, and now the Wuertleys are camping fools.

And my mother as my witness, I never used sunscreen growing up. Actually, my mother doesn't have to be my witness; the million freckles all over my body prove that statment. Jason, however, will not step out into the sun without lathering in the stuff. After a few vacations of me being miserable and burnt and him being white but free of pain, I crossed over to the world of sunscreen - my kids are thanking me because I let them use it, too.

Snooze button - never, ever used it until I got married. I still technically do not use it because the clock is on Jason's side of the bed, but I do request its use twice each morning.

As I was typing this post, Jason came home from work - and yes, he has changed into his lounge clothes. I told him about what I was posting about, and he wondered if there is anything he does now that he used to not do because of me. I thought and thought, and you know, I couldn't come up with a single thing. Hmmm, what does that say about the two of us?