Thirsty

My husband and I don't work together very well when it comes to writing. We both produce brilliant stuff (as evidenced by this blog) but we have very different ways of producing it.

I tend to sit down and just get everything out of my head and onto the computer. I don't really care if it makes 100% perfect sense or if it flows well at this point. All I care about is getting my ideas out there. Then later I go back and edit until it's reached its level of perfection. You can see various stages of this process on my blog- it all depends on how quickly I lose interest in what I'm doing. For things like school papers, or articles for work, I have plenty of time to go back and re-edit and several occasions until the final product is to my satisfaction. I have to admit I don't do that much here, so what you see is usually in Phase I or maybe Phase II if you're lucky. And sometimes I even spell-check here.

My husband takes his time and forms each sentence deliberately and as if he will have no time to edit. When writing the first draft of a document, just one paragraph may take him 20 minutes to spew out. Not to say he's stupid or slow. He just thinks everything through very thoroughly before jotting it down. Granted, the process of editing his creations is usually quite easy, but the first draft is very time-consuming.

So I'm not saying either of us is right or wrong in our method. But I will say that when we try to work together, I get bored pretty easily while waiting for my husband to put his thoughts into words. I don't sit still much when I write. But I sit still a lot when he writes.

Last night was a prime example of this. He's writing a grant proposal so he can create a Jazz History curriculum at the college he works for. This is a very important document since he's asking for a lot of money. So I understand his need to be careful with how he sounds.

He asked me to help him, which usually means I type (since I'm light years faster than him) while he dictates, and if I have anything that I think doesn't sound right, I pipe up and we figure it out together. In theory, this plan should work. But I get antsy.

Last night, as I'm waiting for him to form his thoughts, I got bored and started looking around his studio. My attention was drawn to his desk, unsurprisingly, since that's where I was sitting. Sitting there right in front of me were 3 water bottles, all about 3/4 filled, a glass that was about 1/8 full of water, and 2 empty beer bottles. On his desk. Downstairs, in his studio.

Being the witty person that I am, I couldn't let this slide.

Do you have enough water on your desk?

He gave me a look, then went back to his thoughts. I sat there staring at the collection of bottles and glasses. A minute later:

Seriously, do you think there's enough water on this desk? I don't think you have enough drinks sitting here.

I got an irritated command to be quiet, and went back to staring at the mess. I picked up my bottle of water off of the piano next to me, finished it off and added it to the collection.

TB, do you have any water?

I think it was this point that he told me to just sit there and shut up. Or something similar. I was still bored though, so I asked him for his cell phone.

Thankful for the distraction, he took it out of his pocket and handed it to me. He probably assumed that I wanted to look through his photos, since I do that fairly regularly to see photos of SB that he takes when we're not together.

I snapped a photo of the wet bar that was my husband's computer desk and sent it off to Bucky with the caption "I'm Thirsty." From his phone. I am fairly confident that Bucky is fully aware that when she receives a text or picture message from my husband's phone, it's usually me sending it. I will say that I'm over my phase where I would take his phone and send text messages to random friends of his regarding the "pretty pink panties" he likes to wear, or his "unspoken yet fiercely strong love" he feels for his buddies. But Bucky still gets the random text from his phone.

In between all this, we had gotten a fairly comprehensive paragraph down for the grant, and my husband dismissed me, saying that he can work on it on his own, and then we'll look at it together lately. I hightailed it out of there and went to bed.

This morning as I was getting dressed I noticed TB's phone sitting on the ledge. I checked to see if Bucky had responded. About a minute after the message had been sent, she responded with Clearly.

I imagined TB sitting at his desk and receiving that message, completely unaware that I had sent her anything from his phone. I could see the wheels turning in his head as he looked at his text history and saw the photo. Then 2 minutes later, he responded to Bucky that the two of us need to stop using his phone....he's reclaiming it.