A Tribute to my Loving Husband

Behind every married writer is a loving, supportive, and devoted spouse, who waits patiently for their time in the limelight and to have conversations that don’t have anything to do with characters, plots, or looming deadlines (of a writing nature). Even better is when the spouse goes out of their way to not only wait patiently, but to make things happen in support of said writer.
So as a writer I cannot tell you how much I depend on my computer. And I’m kind of weird about the whole MY computer thing. We have five computers in the house but only one is “mine.” The one people have to ask permission to use (especially after it crashed during a download for my daughter’s school project. Ugh.) Even my husband asks me before he runs off with it. But even though I can claim it as mine, it’s a little old. We bought it when I went back to school, and seven years later I finally have my degree…and one very old computer.

But hey, it still worked–sort of–so who was I to complain. The kids needed clothes, and musical instruments, and had band trips to be paid for. So I simply asked for a new working mouse since mine had ceased to operate. The wireless kind as well as the keyboard kind, thus uh hem…making it difficult to write. (Just so you know…that didn’t stop me. I reverted to the old fashioned way with notepads and pens; as opposed to fighting for time on the kids’ computers).

Well, alas…having the generous husband that I do I not only received a new mouse for Christmas, but the new laptop it was attached to. I cried (of course) and then took turns hugging the box and my husband. The kids were excited as well, but probably more due to the fact that Mom’s old laptop was now up for grabs. Knock yourself out kids…you may be ready to by the time you’re done trying to use the mouse on it.

So I was in heaven and my husband was my angel. Only one problem…

My new laptop turned out to be um…worse than my old one. Go figure. With the luck we’d been having in our house (or rather literally WITH our house) as of late, I should have known. But never fear…

I have a loving and incredibly patient husband.

He’s also an engineer by profession…and the ultimate Mr. Fix It. So not only did he fix my brand new computer (which unfortunately required opening it up and physically rebooting the keyboard–with permission of the technical support team mind you), but he did it with a smile and I love you–to me, not the tech guy.

Now you have to understand that the brand new computer was not the only thing he had to fix these last two weeks (of his vacation no less). The gremlins had already gotten into our house before my computer.

As opposed to elves, or faeries or the workings of seven pairs of hands and two sets of paws, our house and appliances have been suffering miserably at the hands of some unruly gremlins as of late. And during a most inconvenient time.

For weeks the lights in our house have been dimming, and the house really isn’t old enough to warrant any type of wiring problems. But alas, we have five computers (six now), three game systems, Christmas lights, and regular lights (I feel a twelve days of Christmas song coming on), and all of the children home for vacation and using the whole gammet listed above. So of course we were convinced that the gremlins were in fact power drains…and had it confirmed when a few days after Christmas half the circuits in the house blew.

Okay…so it was a bit strange that only half of them blew, but we thought perhaps we had just managed to overload those particular circuits. My husband being the awesome Mr. Fix It that he is, instantly went to work. Ten new circuit breakers, one fried geckko, and a lot of hot chocolate later (yes I know it’s Texas, but it’s actually been cold here people) we discovered the problem wasn’t us.

Before we could get too frustrated with the haunting of our house, the work expended, and reminding the kids not to open the refrigerator until we could move it to another outlet…
the Energy guy knocks on our door and tells us the transformer in our yard is faulty and that one of the neighbors called with our same problem. So about half an hour later we were up and running again with our gremlin problem solved.

Cue laptop gremlin and the ultimate fixing there as well.

I don’t know about your spouses, but unlike my old laptop he’s not up for grabs. I plan on keeping him around for quite a loooooooooooooong while.
Go get your own.

Have a great day. (I know I will.)