Maria and I have been breaking things since we moved in together. A glass here, a coffee cup there. Over the last three months, the list of broken items has expanded. It's not like we heave pots and thrown them at each other, but nonetheless, everything is breaking down.

I'm not sure what came first, but I'll start with the phone. I don't remember ever breaking a phone in my life, but I must admit Maria uses it much more than I do. She announced that our cordless phone was dead (couldn't hold a charge or whatever), and she replaced it with some retro transparent 80s style phone where you could see all the wires inside. She'd had it since she was a kid. This worked for a while, but she didn't like that it had no caller ID. Her grandparents got here a phone a couple weeks ago for $1.50 at a thrift store. It crackled and never worked properly. Lousy phones, what can you do?

Then there were the glasses. When Maria moved in, I had a handful of nostalgic pint glasses. Sports teams, a theatre group, one from the Caribbean. All broken. Long tall beer glasses. We started with four, and now we have two. High balls, low balls, wine glasses. Smash, smash, smash. I sighed and moved on without complaint. Then she broke an oversized pint glass that I'd had since my only white collar job circa 1999. I thought that glass was virtually indestructible. Of course, glass is still glass, and Maria dropped it on the back yard cement. Smash. I mourned that one for a couple days.

These are all just things, I always say. Even my cherished mementos are just things. Every time something breaks, I joke in a whiney tone 'I can't have nice things!' and move on without much complaint. We don't replace the irreplaceable. We just move on.

Sometimes, we don't even replace the replaceable. Our microwave fritzed out in late July. We looked at each other and said 'Do we really need a new microwave right now?' The answer was no. Strangely, the answer is still no. We've gone more than two months without the little heater upper, and it hasn't been much of an issue. There's been no microwave popcorn, and heating things up on the stove takes a little more time. Really though, it hasn't been that difficult without the microwave. Who knew?

Some of the items have been strange and sad. A little cool ceramic tray I got for Christmas one year. Maria slipped with it in her hands. Whoops! I left my 35mm camera outside one night last week, and it rained. Genius! Even the blender now has a crack in the bottom plastic casing. My old spider plant I had since college finally gave out. I can't say we broke it, but we couldn't keep it alive any more. Everything seems to be breaking down.

All these were little things, but big things break down as well. I knew my car needed front end work for about a year, but it had gotten to extreme levels by August. I finally dropped a grand and propped up the front half again. Cheaper than getting another car, but a grand is a grand. Then there was Maria's mini-van. A busted fuel pump in the spring and a broken serpentine belt and pulley system this week. We always wondered what that squeaking was. Throw down another grand for those fixes as well.

Let's not forget the eye glasses. Maria is half-blind with astigmatism (one of the reasons I think she finds me handsome) and alternates between glasses and contacts. She came to the closing night party of a play I was in and threw down a shot of whiskey at the end that she shouldn't have. She wore contacts that night, but in her stupor she managed to step on her eye glasses when she got home. She later crashed to the floor trying to get to the bathroom, and I banned her from movement for the rest of the night. Many things had broken in the past few months, but I didn't want either of us to bust. If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything.

I don't know what all this destruction means. I just want it to stop. I took the first step and bought a phone yesterday. It's very similar to the one we had before all the damage occurred. Maybe that means things will turn around. Maybe we've destroyed enough items for a while.

And I thought our two-year old daughter would be the destroyer. Shows what I know. It's the big babies who really do the damage.

Chris Jungle can't have nice things.