I am often asked, in book groups and at speeches that I give, about my husband. What does he think of my writing? Is he supportive? Does he read my books?

Here is a bit about Innocent Husband. (I will call him Innocent Husband in this blog and all future blogs because he is a wee bit clueless about what goes on in his wife’s head and he is not to be blamed for anything I say, write, or do).

Innocent Husband and I met through a mutual friend who was an undercover vice cop busting drug dealers. The cop was one tough dude, good in hand to hand combat, and he responded quite calmly when a jacked up drug dealer put a gun to his temple. But this man had a romantic side, believed in love, and put us together.

Innocent Husband jokes that he was being arrested at the time by this cop. He has an odd sense of humor. Do not believe him.

We have been together for twenty years. I cannot believe I have been with any man for twenty years. Some days I can’t believe I’ve been with any one man for over two years. Surely, I tell myself, we women should be allowed a change in player rotation? Surely we should be allowed to choose a new quarterback?  Perhaps another lineman? Can we get a newer and younger model that doesn’t scratch or burp or bore us with intestinal difficulties?

Alas, I joke. (For the most part).

Innocent Husband likes to fly fish. He has black hair with some “wisdom hair” thrown in. He makes me laugh.  He has nice brown eyes.  He loves the kids and the cat is in love with him.  He calls me a lot. We like to watch movies. We like Yellowstone, coffee, and poker, which I am very bad at and can’t remember the rules.

That said, I have, on several occasions, wanted to hire a knight. Not to rescue me, but to take Innocent Husband out of my castle forever on a white charging horse. And, after twenty years, I can tell you that some years were longer than others, if you know what I mean.

But even as I write that, I have to be fair. I am sure he has wanted to hire a knight on a white charging horse to not only take me out of our castle but to spirit me away to a remote place in Africa where there are no people and no phones, with only hairy spiders to make conversation with and leave me there.

When I am mad at him, now and then I have to stop because the truth is this:  I cannot imagine being married to me.

Here are my most glaring, brutally honest faults as a wife:

1) I am almost rabidly independent. Marriage, the very concept of it, doesn’t actually suit my personality in many ways. That sometimes makes me difficult to live with.

2) I am not patient.

3) I can be – if I don’t really watch it – too critical and a mite controlling.

4) I talk one of my husband’s ears off, then I start on the other one.

5) I can, and will, do things how I think they should be done. If he doesn’t like it, I will do it my way when he is asleep or not looking. He will not remember the next morning that we ever disagreed, or that there was a topic to that disagreement, so I do not get caught.

6) I daydream. A lot. This means I can be a “fuzzy wife.”

7) I go to bed late – usually past 2:00 in the morning. Men like their wives to go to bed with them. I shine a flashlight every single night on whatever book I’m reading because I have insomnia. I must hug him before I go to sleep or I cannot sleep. I know this wakes him up. That must be very irritating for him. He does not complain.

8) I like to be alone often so I can think and write.  This means he is not to be with me.

9) I cannot watch football with him unless the Ducks are playing in the Rose Bowl. I just can’t sit that long. I know he wants my company and it is selfish of me not to watch grown men chasing and tackling each other, but football is so mind numbing and brain cell destroying.

10) When I am on a deadline, and I pretty much consider “deadline time” to be six weeks before a book is due, I am a mess and in my own helter skelter world. It is like he is on Jupiter and I am on Mars. I am in flannel pajama bottoms, dinner is dicey, the house drops into chaos, I don’t wash my hair that much, and I pretty much dive into my storyline and that’s that.

I could go on. I won’t. That’s enough lashes for me tonight.

Is he supportive of my work?

Here is the most supportive thing, in terms of my writing, that Innocent Husband has ever done for me. Years ago, when the kids were all  in school full time, and I was freelancing articles for The Oregonian, I said to him,  quite unhappily, “I need to go back to teaching to make more money.”

He knew I did not want to go back to teaching. Teaching is exhausting. He knew I wanted to become a writer more than I wanted to keep my arms attached to my body.

He knew we really needed the money that my teaching job would bring in.

But Innocent Husband looked at me with those nice brown eyes, gave me a hug and said, “Don’t go back to teaching, honey. Concentrate on your writing.”

And that’s what I did. I concentrated. We sucked it up financially. I kept freelance writing and working on my book, Julia’s Chocolates, into the star – filled hours of the morning.

Without those two sentences from him, I am pretty sure I never would have published. I could not have taught school full time, handled three kids, a house and house work, and written a book. I would have been too scattered, too exhausted, too busy. My whole life would have turned out differently, and I would have been mighty depressed that the career I had wanted, that I had planned for and dreamed of, since I was sixteen, was not going to happen.

That’s a little bit about Innocent Husband.

I think I’ll keep him.