Observing Cepheid variables isn't a big deal unless you're doing it as part of a program such as that of the AAVSO. Unless you're in the AAVSO program, all you see when you take a casual look at a variable star is just another not particularly interesting star. You need to look at the same star periodically, each time noting how its brightness compares with those of comparison stars in the same field.

A particularly interesting type of variable star to observe is the eclipsing variable, wherein two stars are in orbit about each other with the earth in or nearly in their orbital plane so that one star passes in front of the other periodically. You can record an eclipse in the coarse of a single evening, observing it at, say, 10 or 15 intervals as the eclipse approaches, then speeding up the observations to every two or three minutes until the eclipse ends. To know when to catch an eclipse, you need an ephemeris for that star, telling at times and on what dates eclipses are expected. Conditions in eclipsing binary systems occasionally suddenly change, causing their periods to change. The AAVSO seeks to record these changes to provide data that they might use to figure out what caused these changes. The AAVSO provides ephemerides for this purpose. For ten years, I provided the AAVSO with these charts. Their now being provided by someone else who still has access to a large-scale computer. Now retired, I no longer have such access. In fact, I'm no longer a membger of the AAVSO even though I still have the 8" reflecting telescope that I made around 1978. I now use it only occasionally to enable people at the senior retirement facility where I live to see the first-quarter moom, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The skies here in St. Louis aren't any good for anything else.

If you have dark night skies where you live, there are 104 Messier (pronounced "mess-e-aye", it's French) objects to look at. They include galactic and globular star clusters, gaseous nebulae, planetary nebulae, and galaxies. Thery're something else.

I don't recommend gettting yourself killed by your wife for buying a bigger telescope too soon. That sort of thing tends to put a real crimp into stargazing.