He agreed.

Don don don da! Bryan has agreed to blog again!

I wanted to call the series My Husband Told You So, but that got vetoed.

I'm going to send Bryan popular articles that I see on Facebook or on my blog roll or just wherever (please feel free to send him some too!). Then he will basically fact check the article with his economics knowledge.

We do this mostly in long car rides, but now, to my great excitment, Bryan is ready to tip-type it up for the interwebs.

Maybe We're Not Those People

Dinners aren't really as deep as they used to be with me being pregnant. Mostly because dinners are either us talking about silly stuff if we're out to eat OR if we're home, I'm laying on the couch while Bryan cooks or runs to get take out.

We have been having out big discussions on our three hour drives to Oklahoma City. We perform at a theatre there regularly, and we enjoy the drive. Mostly because I never know what we'll talk about. One drive we talked about babies (Did I tell you we are expecting a son?). Another we reiterated that our political and religious beliefs are so bizarre to everyone else but nearly identical to each other. Another we talked about what we really need for the baby. Another we talked about capital punishment.

What Bryan said in the car last weekend has just stuck with me. It resonated, and I am taking time to really consider all the implications of what this means. And whether it truly reflects how we feel.

"Maybe We're Not Those People"

Bryan applied for jobs last fall, but we centered our search on South Carolina and Florida - which limited his opportunities to a handful. We felt that we wanted to be around family, to be within driving distance. This was about the time Bryan's mom was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer.

We have been pretty satisfied with our lives in Oklahoma aside from the lack of Target and missing hustle/bustle culture. Our jobs are great, our house is decent, our improv is great, our marriage is sweet, and our bank account is the best it's ever been. We were disappointed this spring when Bryan's job opportunities fell through, but the more we think about it, with a baby on the way and my new job, the more staying where we are as been the right thing.

So where does that leave us for this fall? Do we want out? Sure.

Bryan asked me, "How important is it that we move to a school near family?" My immediate reaction was, "Very!"

Then he did his economist thing that he always does where he asks, "If we were choosing between two jobs, one close to family and one somewhere else, how much more would I have to make at the far away job to be worth it?"

(Note: I sort of hate it when he does this because it makes me really think about what I'm saying. But it's good for me to think about what I say. And it's good for Bryan to understand the intensity of my feelings...or the frivolity.)

We bargained back and forth, and I realized that it wouldn't take much more of a pay increase on Bryan's salary for me to think it was worth it to live farther away. Which led to Bryan saying the phrase, "Maybe we're not the kind of people that live near family."

What?

And then when I stopped rejecting the idea and thought about it, I realized he's right.

We have lived away from family for several years now, and I have lived away from mine since 2005. We are the far away brother and sister, the far away kids. That's who we are. We're the far away family.

We enjoy travel, we are great at packing, at flying, at driving, at planning vacations. We can't handle family for very long, and we are (very) different from our families. If we lived close to family, our entire life would change. We would feel pressure to attend family gatherings, to spend less time with friends or at festivals, to include them in more of our lives.

We would lose our favorite part of our marriage: our privacy.

We have the luxury of skype and phones and cheap airfare to stay in touch with family. We also have the luxury of being able to take advice, roll our eyes and never use it. We can say, "Oh tickets are too expensive," and pass on family events that we don't want to attend. We can spend our money and our time how we like. We can stay out late with friends every weekend. We can spend Sunday mornings how we like. We can do whatever we like. We can enjoy our freedom!

And I think he's right. I value our freedom over our access to family. And so does he.

Does that make us assholes? Nope. Does that make us awesome? Probably. Maybe we're not those people that live near family. Maybe we don't even want to be.

Ware us, and we are in control of our lives and the choices we make. We're those people.

Fights

Bryan and I believe similar, if not the same, things when it comes to lifestyle, politics, family, leisure, education, religion and health.

Our dinner conversations go mostly like this:
"Look at this thing that the world is doing wrong."
"I know! If the government wasn't working itself into EVERYthing, it would be okay."
"Capitalism!"
"Freedom!"
"Hot people!"
"Let's get another PBR."

We don't fight very often in our house. Even the little stuff gets handled in a similarly silly way.
"Hey, the house is a mess."
"It's your stuff."
"Yeah, but you loved me and my mess when we were dating."
"We're married."
"Let's split it up, but you owe me."

If it doesn't go like that, it will be a secret internal battle that we each fight. Like, if I notice something is messy, I'll clean it and parade in front of the perfectly clean living room when Bryan gets home. He'll be like, "Woa, looks great babe!" and then he'll take me to dinner, my choice. Or if I'm at the gym, I'll come home and Bryan will have done all the dishes, washed the counters and started dinner. I'll be impressed, kiss on him while the chicken cooks, and he'll get to force me to play Arkham Horror with him. (like last night)


Sometimes....we do fight. Like last Saturday. It was in the car. Even with our GPS and my iPhone, we still could not find the game store we were looking for in a suburb of Tulsa. We drove up and down the same road three times, tried neighboring roads, nothing. We could not find our way to the stupid game store. I was getting angry, Bryan was calm and trying to use my iPhone's Google Maps app. His calm demeanor made me angrier. How could he be so calm in this moment of true frustration?!

My frustration made him angrier, too, but he was keeping it all in. Turns out, we deal with frustrating situations like being lost in completely opposite ways. I would say our biggest arguments have been about which way to go, like that time in New York City about two years ago when we were trying to make it to Becky's place and we ended up in Coney Island at midnight (creepy). Even with all the technology and a smaller city, we still couldn't find the place. And my frustration wasn't helping Bryan keep his cool, and Bryan's cool wasn't making me feel any better.

So we had it out in my little Elantra:
"I want you to be angry!"
"You're angry enough for both of us."
"Do you LIKE being lost!?"
"I'm trying to keep my cool, so we can eventually find this place."
"Arghhhh! We're LOST!!!"

Okay, so typing it out, I was definitely overreacting. When we cooled down and talked about how we need to handle these situations (I'll be cooler, Bryan will be more outright about his frustration), we eventually found the place. Which was good because who wants to hit a game store with sourpusses.

Trade: Marriage Edition

Trade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person to another. And a network that allows trade is a market. My marriage is a busy market.

Bryan and I trade regularly. We have ongoing daily trades like Bryan emptying the dishwasher and me preparing meals. We trade long-term, too, like Bryan's job that moved us to Oklahoma: he chooses where to live and I choose where we vacation. We also trade with money. Bryan is currently paying me not to bring home a puppy. Most of the time our trading is simple and with a little bit of haggling, we can exchange goods or services that make both of us happy.

Recently, I had to trade my pride.

It was awful. But Bryan had spent the last evening with me and my friends being the designated driver while we gossiped about The Bachelor and Tosh.0. Here I was, at the house of Bryan's friend and also economics professor. I'd played all sorts of weird economics games there (Wealth of Nations, Carcassonne, Puerto Rico, Dominion, Pandemic) knowing it was a trade.

Something was different this time. The game on the table was one that I promised myself I would never play. The nerdiest of all games: Magic the Gathering.
Immediately, I started backing out and offering to play any other game. They poured me another glass of wine and peer pressured me into playing. They gave me the devil deck and started explaining the spells, enchantments, creatures, sorcery, graveyards, tapping, wizards and all that nerdy stuff. The game is very complicated and back in the 1990s, it was novel.

First, I ganged up with the other wife and attacked Bryan and his friend. We killed the boys off quickly and then she killed me.

Three. Hours. Later.

It was brutally complicated, but it was more fun than I thought it would be. I liked that my deck had special powers that their decks didn't have. I liked that you could build your deck out of the thousands of cards. I liked that there were demons and devils that could take lives away from players without costing me anything. I liked beating the professors. I liked that some people think the game is evil. I like a lot more of the game than I thought I would. It scared me.

That's kind of how it goes in my marriage to Bryan. He loves to trade things I've never tried (or think I won't want to try) because he enjoys pushing my comfort zone, and he has a quest to bring out the inner nerd in me.

We're operating in a free market: property rights are voluntarily exchanged at a price arranged solely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers. We do not coerce each other, in the sense that they obtain each other's property rights without the use of physical force, threat of physical force, or fraud. Instead, we engage in trade simply because we both consent and believe that what they are getting is worth more than or as much as what they give up.

Marriage Trade

Bryan is not just an economist in the classroom or on paper. He's an economist everyday in all aspects of his life, even marriage.

Most people say marriage is full of sacrifice, but they don't know the marriage of an economist. Bryan doesn't believe in sacrifice as an effective method of dealing with things or people. When you sacrifice, you are giving up something valuable for something less valuable. That's the nature of the word.

Bryan uses fancy economic terms words to describe this. A Pareto gain is something that you can do and any everyone wins. Kaldor gain is when someone wins and someone loses, the gains to the winner outweigh the loss of the loser. According to Bryan, sacrifice is the opposite: the loser loses a lot and the winner gains very little.

Trade and bargaining ensures that all Kaldor gains become Pareto gains because there is compensation. For each thing you'd like to have in marriage, you'll have to compensate your partner. This leads to conversations with Bryan that go something like this. "How much do you want to go to Patron's? $10? $5?" Sometimes it's hard for me to put price tags on experiences or items or choices, so Bryan has altered his approach with services, freedom and gifts.

In order to show the success of our trading, here are some recent trades made in the Buckley house:

I plan our improv schedule, apply to festivals, do the marketing and Bryan packs for trips, prints out posters, tells me where to put them, gathers all props (bells, slips of paper, whistle, etc)

Bryan got Starcraft and I got a weekly stipend to eat out with girlfriends

Bryan mows the lawn and I make an intense, fancy meal.

I clean the kitchen and the bathrooms; Bryan does the laundry and the dishes.

Bryan makes the budget and keeps stats; I do the shopping and the bill paying.

Everything has a price. This is one of Bryan's foundational thoughts.

Why An Economist Can't Love Dogs

Since we moved to Oklahoma, we have moved into a house with a fenced in backyard and we're doing well financially. I thought it fitting to convince Bryan that we needed a dog. Bryan has been anti-dog since we were dating. Partly because his family is a no pet family, but mostly because he's an economist.

Today, I sent Bryan a quiz from Animal Planet that tells you what breed dog will be the best fit for you. I thought maybe if he could find a dog that matched his personality and desire for little effort he might find his way to my side of the camp. Oh, boy, was I wrong!

Instead, this is his email:

Alright, I played your game. My result was:
A welsh corgi
http://animal.discovery.com/breedselector/dogprofile.do?id=1170

This does not mean I want a dog!

This site says the cost of owning a dog runs about $1,000 per year. $14,000 over the life of a dog.
http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=2+2106&aid=1543

The cost of a 1 week Mediterranean Cruise:
$2,000 for plane tickets to Spain
$2,600 for the cruise
$2,000 for gambling, drinking etc

Total: $6,600
http://www.royalcaribbeandeals.co.uk/fusion/detailship.pl?shipid=369&sid=7477

So would you rather have 2 amazing trips and have $800 left over for clothes or a dog?

Ha ha ha. See, I can play this game too.

Love you, my pet.

He beats me on the money and the facts. And that cruise sounds incredible. How can you argue love and affection of a dog against the reasoning of an economist? I'll have to keep trying.

An Economist's Birthday

My husband The Economist celebrated his birthday yesterday exactly how he liked.

His present arrived in the mail on Monday, and after a fascinating argument about opportunity cost, he convinced me to let him open it. Why should I let him wait two days to enjoy something that he could enjoy now?

Then, there was his cake. Of course, every year I make something different but it revolves around his favorite flavor: chocolate. This year, I made Snickers Cupcakes. It made sense to use two complementary goods to create one highly demanded product (man, I should be an economist!). These cupcakes are superior to all other cupcakes in that once they are baked from scratch, I cut the center out to fill it with Snickers pieces and frosted them with homemade frosting made from one pound of sugar. Sweet lord, they were sugary! Due to the diminishing marginal returns, we could only enjoy one.

For dinner, we went out to dinner the local steakhouse (there's only one in our small town). It was nice, and Bryan had one of his favorites: a thick, messy burger. We enjoyed some consumer surplus because the dessert was free!

Okay, that's enough of my attempt at economics. Next time, I'll be sure to get Bryan to help me, but it's his birthday, so a man should rest.