I’ve been writing this column for several years now and when I meet readers in person there are two most commonly asked questions are, “How do you get away with saying those things about your wife?” and, “Do you get paid for writing this crap?”
My answers are always the same; I married the most tolerant women on the planet and not nearly enough, in that order.
While it’s true that my wife, Sandra, is tolerant enough to keep me around despite my stubborn refusal to grow up; the real reason I get way with all of the shots I take at her is because she stopped reading my columns a long time ago. She said that she refused to feed my ego by reading my columns as long as I refused to nurture our relationship…or something like that; I wasn’t really paying attention at the time.
The truth is that I was very lucky to have married a woman like Sandra; brilliant, talented and way too stubborn to divorce me and admit that all of those people who tried to warn her about me were right. She is a unique individual and probably the only woman on earth who smart enough to keep my attention and dumb enough to want to.
I’ve never met anyone like Sandra; in fact, I’m not sure there is anyone like Sandra. Since I’ve known her she’s been a model, an actress, a sailor, a printer, a mother, a receptionist, a secretary, an inventor, a businesswoman, a Seabee, a bookkeeper, a imagery analyst, a sculptor, a painter and an award winning multi-media artist.
She’s was elected to be president of our neighborhood association in Boise, won a colligate public speaking contest in Mississippi and took third in the backstroke during the Corporate Olympics in Reno. To say that Sandra has eclectic interests would be like saying Bob Saget is not funny; obvious and understated.
Sandra has never been able to remember the punch line of a joke yet she has kept me laughing for twenty-five years. She is equally at home working a table saw and a sewing machine which is good because I can’t thread a needle or cut with anything more complicated than a pair of scissors.
I’ve often mentioned Sandra’s love for a good conspiracy theory. The truth is that Sandra has never met a conspiracy theory that she didn’t like. She knows who really killed JFK, the best place to find Bigfoot and which type of aliens abducted Amelia Earhart (it was the grey ones, the little grey ones).
Sandra is the only person I know who can make piecrust from scratch, build a deck for a house and identify an anti-aircraft battery from a satellite photo. She’ll argue for hours that the lunar landing was faked and that Einstein only came up with the theory of relativity after his wife wrote it on this bag lunch and never crack a smile.
Sandra is a lot of things but above all Sandra is an artist; I know that because she has two art studios in our house and another in the garage. The coolest part of being married to an artist is that you almost never have to go to boring office Christmas parties. The worst part about being married to an artist is she almost never gets paid and she’s going to Europe for advanced training.
Seriously, she’s going to Italy to study advanced art restoration and, although I’m thrilled that she has the chance to go have this great adventure, I’m selfish enough to dread the idea of missing her while she’s gone.
The truth is that my wife is going to Europe for two years and I couldn’t be happier. I traveled around the world and visited six continents when I was in the Navy and I never once worried about paying bills or taking care of our kids because Sandra took care of that. She was the grown up when I was playing.
Now she’s leaving for Europe on Monday to pursue her dreams and have some good old fashioned adventure and it’s my turn to be the grown up; I’m OK with that. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll go visit her and share what I can of her adventure but make no mistake, it’s her adventure.
Have fun and live large Sandra, I promise I’ll be here when you get back; but I can’t promise I’ll be grown up.
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