Supafly.com

Candyce has moved in, and the guys have finally moved out. Since she’s working around the clock to finish her senior thesis, her stuff is all over the house in boxes, baskets, and stacks. I trip over a high-healed shoe at least once a day.

Then there are all of the gifts people brought to our wedding and sent us in the mail. All that stuff will make this house nice eventually, but for now, it’s all sitting in boxes. Crate and Barrel boxes. Thousands of them. Cube-shaped white boxes. If I was bored, I could use these to build a Crate and Barrel igloo in the living room.

When I really look back on my life since college, I’ve never had I well-thought-out house. It was usually clean and had some style, but it never became that ultimate bachelor pad every dude imagines he’ll achieve a week after he gets his first house key. You know, that beer-commercial pad where that wows the girl in the sexy black dress.

It’s Biblical wisdom to avoid things that will either be eaten by moths or stolen by thieves in the night. Like all real wisdom, this is true today. Furniture decays fast. A popped seam here, a broken frame there. You spill stuff on it. Technology decays too: you can spend $1000 on a Surround Sound for your “home theater,” and in a few short years you’ll be dragging those speakers onto your driveway for a yard sale. That’s your best case scenario—you own it long enough to get rid of it. That cool electronics stuff is the real reason why people break into your house. I feel like I saved lots of money over the past 6 years by just living simply.

Mother Teresa said it best: “Live simply so that others can simply live.”

All of my roommates are moving out this week. My house always has the most drama on the block—the most cars out front, the rowdiest parties in the backyard. But over the past month, it’s gone over the top. For my wedding, there were dozens of cars in and out of my driveway every day. Now the guys are all moving out, so the driveway is loaded with four cars and a huge U-Haul.

Since there are 3 guys moving out, they’ve each recruited a distinct group of friends and family members to help them out. This mob of people has taken over my house, making laps up and down the stairs with stacks of brown boxes. I feel like I’m in the early scene of Home Alone when Kevin’s extended family has turned his house into chaos.

I need to get this out about Home Alone. There’s a scene early in the movie where the pizza deliver boy defends the $140 bill to Kevin’s dad by explaining that it’s 14 pizzas at $10 per pizza. I was 12 when I saw that scene, and I couldn’t imagine the big city life where pizzas actually cost that much money. Everytime I ordered pizza from then on, I’d think about that scene, wondering when that magical day will come where I paid double digits for a single pizza. In the 17 years since I first saw that movie, it hasn’t happened once.

This afternoon after the Suns beat the Lakers (now we’re up 3 games to 1), I started getting high on the thought of getting rid of clutter in the house that isn’t mine. One habit of my daily life is constantly getting rid of things that I no longer need. On any given week, I spend 2 hours getting things out of my house: donating, trashing, and recycling. Maher does this about once every 2-6 years. When I’m on one of my purging expeditions through the house, I always have to stack his stuff in the corner because I can’t get rid of it. It hit me that I could do a purging finale, the greatest of all purgings.

The project started simple, but quicky got out of hand. This house has about six versions of the same kitchen utensil. So if you have a golden brown grilled cheese sandwich that you need to flip, you can use any of the six spatulas. Since our household is so trendy, they’re each half black and half stainless steal. So I emptied dozens of utensils out of the drawer and sorted them out on the countertop, the same way you’d organize a deck of cards. I kept one of each, eight total. This was so outrageously satisfying that I kept going through the kitchen, one drawer and cabinet after another.

Three hours later, I had packed up three large boxes with pots, pans, cups, coffee mugs, and storage containers.

I emptied the junk drawers of all of Maher’s technostuff: iPod accessories, microphones, CDs, and dozens of AA batteries. I looked at the DVD cabinet like a cheetah looks at an impala. I organized and sealed up three boxes of sci-fi movies that I never have to see again. (Finally!) The only things that were mine were some episodes of the Real World Road Rules Challenge and a season of The Simpsons. I have so many empty drawers now. I knocked out half of the books on my shelves. Now there’s no books on music, only books about design and religion.

All in all, I got rid of at least 400 pounds of stuff today. Awesome.

I kind of feel like a Dad whose kids are moving out of the house. They’re all off to the next chapter in their life. I wave goodbye at the driveway then step back in the house, lock the door, and keep watching the NBA playoffs. My life is comfortable because I’ve worked hard to make it that way.

It’s been 2 weeks and 1 day since I got married. People ask me, “How is married life?” So far, these are what stand out to me:

• Finally someone else turns off the lights. Like me, Candyce understands that you turn lights off when you leave a room. After all, energy isn’t cheap, and it’s terrible for the environment. This is why over the past 5 years, my daily routine is flipping off lights as treck back and forth through the house on any given day. This was not big deal in the old house because it was smaller, but my house now has a trillion light switches. I can honestly say I still don’t know what some of them do. But at least I got Candyce flipping switches on my team.

• I spend less time on the phone. When Candyce and I were just dating, we would call one another and give updates about where we were and where we were going. The goal was to find a bracket of time when we could hang out. As the day went on and it became clear that there wasn’t going to be anytime, the conversations shifted to telling one another about our day because that was our hangout time. These calls were nice and all, but a human is not meant to talk on the phone. We were meant to talk to one another. Also, people don’t call me anymore for random, silly things. I might have to downgrade my cell phone plan, and I’m utterly thrilled.

• I eat at home more. We both lived busy lives with her at school and me working and traveling, so most of the time the only time we spent together was during a meal. I mean, you have to eat, right? We’d meet for lunch sometimes, and almost always for dinner. Now that we finish our days together, it’s easier to eat at the house. This will end up being more healthy for both of us, and incidentally it’ll make my wallet happier. Paying two mortgages for 10 months makes you paranoid about spending more than you need to.

• I’m officially out of the dating game. You don’t realize it until you are out of the game, but pretty much everything you do as a single person is drivin by the desire to get the right mate. Today I went to the mall to pick up my re-sized wedding band, and I was amused by all of the dating energy floating through the building. It was a mad house of men shopping for women shopping for men. I’m not apart of that anymore.

• I see a new side of womanity. I like to make people laugh, and sometimes a waitress will think I’m flirting. If it has a place, I’ll bring up the fact I’m married. I never force it because that makes everyone feel weird. As soon as the girl finds out I’m not out to get them, it’s amazing how the conversation changes. It’s like I get to see a whole side of women I’ve never seen before: they aren’t threatened.

• I’m not pleasing the world anymore. People don’t like to think that they live to impress others, because this was a daily habit for most of us in high school. And nobody wants to go there again. But you can’t deny the reality that our world of people, ideas, and trends influence us. And most of us want to become a part of that world of influence. Now that I’m married, I am able to shut that ambition down when I want relax in my house with Candyce. (I have to be honest here: this might change if I get bored after relaxing too much.)

I’m getting married on Friday. I want to gush with emotion and anticipation, but there’s a serenity that’s come over me in the past few months that is unlike anything else. I just know what I need to do. I still share the lovely feelings for Candyce, but those feelings are now strengthened by a sense of duty and confidence. It’s a startling adventure to become a new man.

So how does it feel to know that I’m getting married in three days? The closest experience is when I knew I was a few days away from going on The Real World. I knew it was going to happen and it was going to be a big deal. I learned a lot about what I was committing to, and I tried to imagine what it would be like. I knew then, and I know now: my life is about to change. Lucky for me, a life with Candyce is a whole lot more exciting that season of reality television.

What’s beautiful about my life right now is that everything takes on a new meaning. This house that I type in will be me and Candyce’s first house together. How exciting is that? My parish isn’t just a place that I went to church in my 20s. It’s the place where I met—and got married to–the girl of my dreams. My favorite worship songs will now becomes the songs that narrate our wedding Mass.

The genuine souls who first greeted me when I moved to Arizona are going to be there to witness my lifelong vows to Candyce. Some of my buddies from Boy Scouts when I was 11 will be here when I’m 28 to be my groomsmen. My brothers and sisters are here because they unconditionally love me. That’s a feeling I cannot describe, to know that they care for me so much. I am going to make Mom and Dad proud. I am going to give them a new daughter. It’s like I’m entering a whole new realm of beauty on earth.