Deborah’s salt and pepper shaker-babies look exactly like that. I shuddered when I saw them. I was all set to bury her gift in the back of a closet, but Nicholas was all: “They’re family heirlooms! What if Mom comes over and asks where we put them? We have to keep them on the table.” And I was all: “Are you friggin’ kidding me? These things are repugnant.”

At any rate, I ended up sticking one of them under Nicholas’s mattress. The lump was just unobtrusive enough that I didn’t think he’d realize there was a lump, just that his back felt achy in the morning. If I’d hidden both shakers, Nicholas would know something was up, so I kept the ugly pepper baby on the kitchen table and threw a potholder over it.

The following day, the saltshaker was back on the table where I clearly did not want it. I was still stewing when we went out to dinner at Walk the Plank, a seafood restaurant. I pretended I needed to go to the bathroom, but instead I flagged down a waiter and told him it was Nicholas’s birthday. I asked if the staff could sing to him, which they did, while he wore a tri-corn pirate hat of honor and nearly collapsed from mortification. On Facebook Live. (It was INCREDIBLE—they put a lobster bib around him that had this little plastic parrot on the shoulder, and when he blew out the candle on his cupcake everyone yelled “Tharr he blows!” Lmao forever.)

I thought, Okay, we’re even now. Not so! I woke up to a notification on Instagram. He’d posted a picture of me while I was passed out on the couch. It’s brutally zoomed in so that you can count my every pore, and I do not look remotely cute. I’ve got a six-inch string of drool dribbling out of my open mouth, glistening in the half light. He uploaded the shot in black and white and captioned it with three hearts and Aren’t I lucky? I get to gaze upon this absolute work of art every single day. #LivinTheLife #MarryingMyBestFriend #TrueLovesKissFromARose

That picture has accumulated more comments than anything I’ve ever posted, and when I think about it I want to watch his blood drip into a bedpan. I want it to coagulate into a gelatin that I pour over a lemon cake, which I’ll consume using utensils carved from the stone that resides where his heart should be.

My next move wasn’t premeditated. I’d been driving home from work when I saw a little brown dog in the ditch licking the cardboard box for a Whopper Jr. He wasn’t wearing a collar and there weren’t any houses nearby, so I assumed he was a stray. Anyone would assume that! When I picked him up and gave him lots of pets and nuzzles, Nicholas’s voice ran through my head: Don’t get any ideas.

I got lots of ideas. My ideas had ideas.

I brought him home and cooked a frozen hamburger patty for him, since we didn’t have dog food and he appeared to like burgers. He fell asleep on my lap. According to the Internet, he is probably a mix of Jack Russell terrier and beagle. I decided to name him Whopper Jr. and I loved him more than any human I’ve ever known. When Nicholas came home, he found me carrying Whopper Jr. in one of Nicholas’s nice work shirts, which I’d fashioned into a baby-wearing sling. He said “Oh my GOD, where did you get that,” and I said “You’re a daddy! He looks just like you,” and Whopper Jr. sneezed on the pinstriped shirt-sling. It was so cute.

Nicholas didn’t care about the dog’s cuteness. All he cared about was that we’d have to get him neutered and vaccinated and chipped, and dog food’s not cheap, just so you know, blah blah blah. Whopper Jr. peed on Nicholas’s Sherlock Holmes coat (it was his own fault for leaving it on the floor) and Nicholas L O S T it.

Unfortunately, Whopper Jr. turned out to be Brownie, who’d escaped his backyard. The next day (after the dog and I bonded all night and I took over a hundred pictures of him wearing hats and sunglasses, sitting in baskets) Nicholas brought home a sign he ripped off a telephone pole that featured my new dog’s adorable face, surrounded by three smiling children. He reunited Brownie with his owners for me, because I was too emotional to do it, and when he got back into the car his eyes were red. He’d already fallen in love with the dog.

“We should go adopt a dog from a shelter,” I’d said.

“Now is not the right time to get a pet.”

Something that sucks about being part of a couple: Your partner has veto power and you don’t get to just flow wherever the wind takes you. You’re not allowed to have kids or pets unless both of you are on board. You can want a dog more than anything in the whole world but if your partner says no, you’re out of luck.

Which brings us to the pettier half of the list.

I replaced our dentist-recommended Sensodyne with charcoal toothpaste, which earned me an incredibly gratifying rant. He was ten minutes late to work that day because he had to lecture me about charcoal toothpaste, which he doesn’t believe in using. That’s how he says it: “I don’t believe in that.” Like it’s the Easter bunny. When I started to laugh, he got even madder. “DENTAL HYGIENE IS NOT A JOKE, NAOMI.”

In retaliation, he hid all of my shoes, which meant I had to wear slippers when Brandy and I went out for brunch. To get back at him, I took the dress shoes that he wears every day to work and tied the laces into a tight bow, then dabbed the middle of each bow with super glue. Watching him try to untie his shoelaces and getting progressively more and more pissed ranks right up there in the top five of Naomi Westfield’s Life Highlights. I don’t regret it even if he did end up nailing all of my underwear to my bedroom ceiling with a staple gun.

The Junk Yard is officially dead and I’m officially unemployed, so I have no reason to wake up in the morning anymore except to exact Nicholas sabotage. The effort has absorbed one hundred percent of my focus. Honestly, if it weren’t for the prospect of ticking him off I’d probably be steeped in a deep depression right now.

I contemplate this as I stick my sleeping fiancé’s hand in a bowl of warm water and tiptoe out of the bedroom.

Ten minutes later I hear a fabulous yell. I smile and stir my Fruity Pebbles. It’s going to be a great day! I check my phone for the fiftieth time in an hour, hoping for a missed call—a voice-mail from Print-Rite, a paper store in Fairview looking to hire a receptionist to work four days a week, six hours a day. The pay’s a joke, but at least they’re not demanding I have fifteen-plus years of secretarial experience and a bachelor’s degree. I can’t tell you how many entry-level positions I’ve been circling in the newspaper, getting hopeful and calling them up for details only to hear I need a PhD and half a century of experience in their specific field.