Why? Warum? Neden?

So why, seeing as we were mated for life like so many angel fish and black vultures, did The Amazing Bob and I finally go all legal on our most awesome union.

Health Insurance.

These were the pre-Obamacare days -- pre-Romneycare too. Our Slick Dick ex-gov, Mitt, just loved to brag long and loud about how he single handedly made health care affordable and available to all us fine residents of the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This was his signature achievement -- the big, swaggering cincher to clearly show that he should be crowned King of America.

As soon as his Tea Party/Koch Bros./Insurance Industry overlords clued him in on affordable health care being as desirable to them as an air biscuit in a Smart Car, he denied having anything to do with it. Of course. To be fair to the old fraud, he had fuck-all to do with it beyond watering it down.

But I digress...and shit. 

TAB needed health insurance and I had it. Made sense to get hitched so he could be on my health plan, eh? This was the marriage inducement enzyme for a lot of my pals. Yeah, we all would have done the deed eventually anyway but this was the catalyst, the fire under our respective asses. And our mothers were grateful.

Still, I was freaked out. Perchè? kodėl? pourquoi?

I was petrified that I'd become my mother again. I was scared poopless of losing myself inside this 

epitome of mainstream normalcy. I'd start wearing gingham aprons, matching socks and sensible shoes. I'd be baking meatloaves not a certain sort of brownie. I'd only paint people with clothes on or *gasp* still lifes! I'd natter on endlessly about home renovations and play dates for the cats. I'd forget that Mission of Burma was one of the best damned bands of all time.  

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK -- the end is nigh!!!
And then I went out for a pint with my very dear and spectacular married buds Cynthia and Giovanni. I confessed my fears and asked for advice.  

Cynthia got right to the heart of the matter, 'What are you -- insane? This will be your marriage not anyone else's. Why should it be anything other than what you and Bob want it to be? And why would anything change from how things are now? It's just a piece of paper -- your love and commitment to each other is already set in your very DNA.'

Oh. OK! My fear fever broke and TAB and I started having fun with it all. Should either of us change our last name? Naturally this led to a long ass discussion on patrilineal naming conventions. He was perfectly willing to change his name from Grant to Maderer but then he'd have the exact same name as my grandfather and that felt kind of oogie. Plus, it seemed to me, we were a new ship on the ocean of life (godDAMN, I'm deep) so we should have a last name that's new to us both. 

We finally came up with the perfect last name. We'd be Bob and Donna Snark! Yup, took a good six days before we could stop laughing on that one. It had to be ixnayed since, clearly, Bob and Donna Snark sound like the sort of folk who live out by Arlee, Montana where they run a little Sinclair filling station just off 93 South.

We kept our original names because we just didn't feel up to moving out of New England.