Living With a Conservative

This is my house. (Although it's a bit snowier outside it right now.)

This is my house where I live with a conservative. Or rather a Conservative. He gets a capital "C" because he's very Conservative.

I am not.

So, in addition to the challenges of living with a significant other for the first time (he thinks I'm too anal, I think he needs to do more to help out), I have to deal with all of the challenges that come when a hippie (I'm not really, but in his world I am) cohabitates with the last guy on earth who actually thinks W. is doing a good job.

Even though we've technically lived here since December, we're only just living together for real because traveling for me and a Bar review course for him have kept us in different places for most of the last couple of months. But now the Bar is out of the way, which means it's real.

As frustrating as I know this is going to get at times, I think living with a capital "C" conservative will be good for me if for no other reason that it forces me to craft just the right arguments and justifications for why I'm doing certain things.

For instance, he questions ... oh ... basically everything I do in an attempt to conserve energy and water around the house. His showers aren't hot enough because I turned the hot water heater down to save energy. What the heck am I doing putting a milk jug with marbles in the toilet tank? Why is it always so dark in the house? Do I really have to reuse plastic baggies and tea bags—aren't they cheap?

All the while, I'm coming up behind him at the sink when he's shaving to shut off the water he left running. And I'm digging the cans he threw in the garbage out and placing them in the recycling bin. Basically, I'm doing everything I can to drive him absolutely crazy. Unintentionally, of course.

I know a lot of what I say falls on deaf ears. But, slowly and surely, I think I may be getting through to him—on some things anyway. He'll never give up wanting his showers hotter. But he actually remembers to throw stuff in the recycling more often than not now. And the other day, when we heard a woman on NPR ranting about how she thinks CFLs are inconvenient because the light takes a few seconds to come on full force, I expected him to agree with her. But you know what? He said she was stupid. Really! He couldn't understand why it was a big deal, because obviously CFLs make sense since they last so much longer (something, of course, he learned from me as I've been swapping our burned-out bulbs with CFLs).

It was a most glorious moment in my life.

He might never completely grow accustomed to my ways, nor do I expect him to come around to my way of thinking on anything. But that's OK. I'll let him keep the shrine to George W. on his bookshelf in the basement if he'll indulge me and my conservation-minded ways.

And I'll savor every small victory I get—like when he actually uses the organic ketchup without complaining it was a waste of money.