By Mary Jo Spiegel
Enquirer contributor

Let me give you the warning no one gave me: Marriage is hard.

Oh sure, my already married sisters pulled me aside and suggested that my spouse's quirks, while charming on our wedding day, might become grounds for murder a few years down the road. I didn't really listen, being too preoccupied with figuring out how to actually sit in that big white dress.

Anyway, after 10 years of matrimony, I'm pushed to the point where I'm buying Dr. Phil books. I'm even reading them, right up to where, in about the second paragraph, he suggests I'm part of the problem. Yeah, like that's possible.

The "problem" leaves motorcycle parts on the dining room table and for reasons unknown wedges his dirty socks between the sofa cushions for guests to discover.

I know this sounds incredible, but charming as I am, my husband has a few complaints of his own. Like how I do the dishes. He has big issues with my dish washing skills.

"That's it!" he shouts, glaring at my precarious stacks of clean and dirty dishes in the sink, drainer and machine, as a juice glass threatens to topple. "Just leave the dirty dishes alone. I will do them!"

And it hits me ... Dr. Phil's got it. I don't have to be right to be happy. I will choose not to argue and never touch another dirty dish.

I'm so happy I think I'll make my version of chocolate cheese pie from Farm Journal's Best-Ever Pies (Doubleday; out-of-print). The fact that it dirties up a lot of dishes is mere coincidence.

Chocolate Cheese Pie

CRUST:

11/2 cups graham cracker crumbs

1/4 cup brown sugar

6 tablespoons butter, melted

1 ounce unsweetened chocolate, melted

FILLING:

1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips, melted

1 cup heavy cream, whipped

Make crust by stirring together graham cracker crumbs and sugar. Stir in butter and chocolate. Press mixture into 9-inch pie pan and refrigerate. Make filling by beating together cream cheese and sugar in electric mixer. Mix in salt, vanilla and chocolate, beating well. Fold whipped cream into chocolate cheese mixture by hand. Pour filling into crust and refrigerate at least 4 hours. Keep cold. Makes 8 servings.

E-mail maryjo@saucycook.com