Guys: Study Now So You Don’t Mess Up On Big Day

For many of us, the day we get married is the happiest day of our life. Better even than the day Oregon played Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl.

Then again, Oregon lost.

Still, there’s no denying it: Marriage is great. It’s the getting married part that’s often so difficult to face.

So to help all you young men out, Anthony Marsh and Jay Blumenfield present “The Groom’s Handbook: How Not to Screw Up the Biggest Day of Her Life” (Simon & Schuster, 127 pages, $9.95 paperback).

Here are a few of what the co-authors consider proposals “one should not utter - ever.”

“I think you are probably as good as I am going to get, so uh, I guess we should get married.”

“Well, I guess now that your cute sister is taken, I’ll have to settle for you.”

“Without a wedding nobody gets any cool presents… so let’s get married, OK?”

And finally, only half in jest:

“Look, if it doesn’t work out we can always get a divorce.”

Just for moms: If you’re not a subscriber, you might have missed the July/August issue of SingleMOTHER, the bi-monthly newsletter devoted to the issues of single women parents.

And that would be too bad because the issue, which is published by a North Carolina-based organization called the Single Mother’s Information Network, features the publication’s semiannual state-by-state resource roundup.

Unfortunately, in the list of support groups, no listings exist for either Washington or Idaho. If you have a group and would like to be listed, then subscribe to SingleMOTHER.

A year’s subscription costs $15. Write to: SM, Box 68, Midland, N.C. 28107.

Who really does the work? According to a poll done for the syndicated television show “To the Contrary,” 65 percent of married men claim they split household chores equally with their spouses.

Only 47 percent of married women agree.

“I wonder what laundry day is like in the 18 percent of households where spouses disagree on this point,” said “To the Contrary” host Bonnie Erbe.

Notable quote: Today’s gratuitous shot at men comes from the newsletter The Do(o)little Report”: “Men are buying more of their own clothes,” says editor/publisher Sandra L. Beckwith, “(and they look like it).”

, DataTimes