reformation, regression, and marital bliss

The Man of God has turned over a new leaf recently and started rising before the dawn, for personal discipline and spiritual growth or something, I don't know because I was asleep. The problem is, a herd of buffalo wearing tap shoes and cowbells stampeding in front of an army of war-whooping Indians with trumpets would be quieter than him if they galloped through my bedroom every morning. One other time that we were on this leaf, I wrote about it... To the Church of Richy. 

Every now and then I think we need a stern sister wife, or a principal or something, somebody who would enforce the rules... because we stink at it. I remember back in high school, trying to be accountability partners. Let me say this, high-schooler. Your boyfriend or girlfriend is a LOUSY accountability partner, that's why you picked them. And I'm wise to you. 

We make these plans, and then we desert them. Usually one of us is still on the Life Improvement Train, and that spouse looks scornfully at the one falling by the wayside, with their Sin Oreos and their Hulu. The "offending spouse" looks back with pity, "I remember when I was living by the law," we answer. "Such bondage!"

"You planning on using that treadmill?" he'll ask. "You call that fasting?" I say. 

And I was raised with an understanding that people who break fasts are on a greased slide to hell, so I am a little more wary about making commitments. He, on the other hand, has been "forgiven much" if you catch my drift, and so willingly and readily throws himself into commitments like fasts or daily schedules and breaks them and restarts them with equal abandon. I'm not sure which one of us is worse off. 

We have improved. I'm not sure if it's because we're getting older and more mature by default, or that whole Years of Tragedy thing we did, or if our small efforts have grown us, somehow. I have high hopes that we will be lean mean fighting machines by 90.