Same Number, New Phone, Same Husband…

“It’s a lifestyle change, not a husband change,” mine said to me in the pasta sauce aisle in Walmart a few months ago.

That statement leaped to mind this morning when I tried to figure out what was ringing (my new phone) and how to check the message (I don’t know how yet).

Now to be fair, my husband hasn’t set up voicemail on his new Blackberry yet, either. But at least he knows how. My technologically advanced friends (and they are legion) would argue I could figure it out, but in the marital ‘division of labor’ category, setting up new electronics falls under dh’s purview.

In the bigger scheme of things, we approach tasks very differently. He employs the ‘triage’ method while I'm a ‘big picture worrywart multitasker.’ Somehow we complement each other, cancel each other out or get cantankerous with one another. Or all three.

In the end, things work out. It’s the getting there that can be… challenging.

I don’t remember what precipitated the Walmart argument, but I’m trying to remember to take my husband’s words to heart.

When we made the decision to relocate to a much smaller university closer to family and my husband’s beloved wide open spaces, we dubbed the decision the now much overused phrase ‘It’s a lifestyle change.’

The statute of limitations on using that term is up, but it still gets dusted off and hauled out (usually by me).

But until my husband reminded me he wasn’t going to change his overall personality, I’d kind of expected a marriage miracle when it came to minute things like sorting through mail, etc. And to be fair, many of his irksome habits have improved, whereas I’m sure mine have only gotten worse (whining about the incessant prairie winds!).

In the end, though the process may differ, we get the desired results.

Usually.

You can’t ask for anything more.

Love is in the air…

To celebrate Valentine’s Day week some Facebook users are posting profile pics of themselves and their significant others and updating statuses to reflect how long they’ve been together.

This February 14^th marks 27.5 years of marriage for my husband and me. The picture I put up is from our wedding; he has a lot more hair, I actually have less...and it’s a lot darker.

I can’t pinpoint the year I gave up coloring my hair, but I do know a disastrous ‘pixie’ haircut was the impetus. Even though my gray screams ancient apparently (according to a sixth grader at church youth group the other night, who then hastened to tell me later ‘old school’ is still good…), I’m fine with it and so is my spouse.

And isn’t that what marriage is ultimately about? Loving your mate, follicle foibles and all?

Here’s the thing about marriage: sometimes, even though you love your spouse, you don’t always like ‘em. The thing to remember is rules of umpiring apply to marriage. You can tell your husband or wife you don’t like their behavior (their call stinks), but you really don’t want to tell them they stink.

It also helps if you marry your best friend because the starry-eyed stuff gives way to climbing the career ladder, children, occasionally catastrophic illness...all things good and bad that test a relationship over time.

Years ago I was interviewed by a reporter at a college newspaper for a Valentine’s Day feature. My mom/writing partner and I write women’s inspirational fiction, but we are also the authors of 22 romances together (and she authored 19 previous to our partnership).

Who better to do a story on than a romance writer?

Except of course I said the most romantic thing I appreciated about my husband was that he unloaded the dishwasher for me. He took umbrage with that. Despite my writing pedigree, he has a much more romantic nature than I do. Sure I love flowers and candlelit dinners, but the fact he did the late-night feedings with our second son was far more endearing to me.

He’s a wonderful husband and an amazing father. I don’t like that he rides a motorcycle and operates on a triage system whereas I’m a maniacal big- picture multitasker. However, we’ve been together for nearly 30 years and haven’t struck out yet.

Happy Valentine’s Day to my husband, my best friend.

Marriage 101

The other night I dashed off what I thought was a clever little blog entry. Following are the first few paragraphs:

Talkin’ Tabloids

I’m interrupting the regularly scheduled content of this blog to express shock and dismay about an oh-so-trivial matter. My media savvy college professor husband does not know what Jon Gosselin looks like.

This was revealed to me when I commented to him how the husband of someone we know resembles the TLC-traumatized male half of Jon and Kate Plus Eight. In my defense, I have never watched the show. Ever.

However…I have been known to peruse the glossy tabloids in the supermarket checkout and even to plunk down some hard-earned dollars if the cover promises a story on a contestant on the Biggest Loser or Kirstie Alley’s weight battles.

Jon and Kate’s marital woes had been plastered on magazine covers for so many months that one magazine promised a ‘Gosselin-free edition’ on its cover.

I then segued into talking about my favorite TLC show, ‘What Not to Wear,’ and how I love makeover shows. How the power to transform oneself never ceases to fascinate me.

Somehow I wrapped it all up by proclaiming that unlike Kate Gosselin, I love that man of mine, even if he wouldn’t know a picture of Jon Gosselin from a picture of Celebrity X.

And that’s when I got into trouble.

I like my husband to read my blog posts before I put them up. Husband said he certainly would know the difference between Kate’s mate…and Gilligan. Yes, I used Bob Denver as my example. There’s a slight resemblance, after all. Okay, very slight.

It is important to note that in our marriage I am the mercurial, clever (or so I thought) one. He is the highly intelligent calm one. His feathers are never ruffled, and if they are, woe unto the ruffler. My dh took umbrage with my not-so-clever wordplay, and I took umbrage with him.

We joke about it nearly twenty years later, but we once had a horrid argument about the grammatical correctness of a sentence in The New York Times. Husband said to me coldly: “I could diagram it for you.”

When two journalism majors marry, life can be weird.

Our second year of marriage we rented an old farmhouse in rural Iowa. We were both working at the local newspaper, he in the newsroom, me in circulation then composing. A ‘nepotism’ policy prevented spouses from working in the same department. I was miserable.

That house was so cold we literally had ice in the bathtub and needed to thaw the tub before using it. As the wind howled around us at night, huddled as we were in our long underwear in bed, we wondered what we’d gotten ourselves into regarding marriage. It would have been easy to go our separate ways at that point. But when I thought about what kind of future I wanted, it always came back to wanting babies with the man I’d married. The man I loved. He felt the same way. One night I sprang up in bed and told him I thought he should apply to grad school. He really wanted to be a college professor.

The rest is marital and parental history.

Now it doesn’t even take ice in the bathtub to set me off sometimes. I’m happy to pout over petty annoyances if I’m feeling cranky. But when I think about the imminent empty nest years (and I suspect the blog ‘incident’ was triggered by my realization that my youngest goes to college in just three and a half years…my youngest!), I can’t imagine not spending them with my husband of two and a half decades plus.

Even if he doesn’t know what Jon Gosselin looks like.