So why didn't anyone mention that we really ought to apply for a Homestead Exemption when we bought our house? Your obligatory rich Texan Patriarch previously owned the place for his son to occupy while doing Extreme Offroadin' and Chuggin' Brewskis with Chad and Josh, Dude! Studies at UT so he didn't get any exemptions. Maybe our realtor and mortgage adviser assumed we'd know about such things or perhaps simply thought it unlikely a married couple would buy something downtown and under 1,500 sq ft as a primary home. Ah mean, that's barely size for a man cave....

Okay, that's something else I didn't know about. Never heard the term "man cave" until I was watching the news last night (during the 58 minutes of filler that follow the one proper story deemed worthy of carrying on Fox 7). Apparently real American men don't merely have dens any more where they smoke their pipe, watch Chuck Norris movies and weep over their high school sporting memorabilia when they want to wallow in their manhood and compensate for the couple of hours a day they spend with the wife and kids -- they need an entire basement-sized hideout where they can set up a bar, a pool table, a wall-sized TV, a display cabinet for manly things and a home cinema system.

I assume this is mainly a suburban thing, and meant for Tim Allen types rather than imported metrosexual wimps like moi, but I really don't get it. And shouldn't a properly equipped house have a female equivalent too? And if so, when do American couples get to be with each other? When they're not out working ridiculous hours, thye're driving twenty miles to the nearest WalMart to get a bottle of milk, picking kids up from a thousand afterschool activities, church, church events... When a real suburban American couple get home are they supposed to rush off in opposite directions to their segregated sanctuaries with or without their same-sex buddies, a brief nod in passing, maybe a promise to email their calendar for the following week, see if maybe they can find ten minutes to be together?

Do you have a man cave or the womanly version? Do you spend most of your time at home avoiding your spouse? Are we doing this married life thing wrong?