Husband Clothes

Hi! I have gotten some very interesting emails this week. My personal favorites are the ones where guys are asking about my husband’s job. Nothing about girls or marriage. No, no. Just questions about jobs and money.

Alrighty. I love talking about jobs. In fact, I have the very odd hobby of job searching. I have a full-time writing job (from home). It pays nicely, and I love it immensely. So, I don’t need a job. But I NEED to job search. It’s probably related to filling a dysfunctional void of some sort–kind of like alcoholism, except instead of never getting enough whiskey, I never get enough job searching. (I just reread that, and it frightened me. Oh well.)

Um…yes, this brings me to my story about my husband’s job. OH, it’s related to animation. (Due to that detail, he may force me to remove this post–should this happen, I apologize in advance.)

If you or your husband wants to work in the movie industry–you could be in for a doozy of a time. Let me recommend Gnomon (wierd name, but very high-quality, famous school.). IF you have like $20-30,000 for your husband to attend a program like this, this could be a quick, easy path for you–assuming he’s talented and a go-getter type. We did not. So, if you are like us, here are some possible challenges you could encounter:

1) As your husband learns his trade, he will be on his computer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and unemployed for at least 3 years. Actually, I suspect this applies to numerous techie job–not just animation. Of course, some men would work in the day learn at night…I’m sure that’s nice for you.

2) Your husband’s going to “need” to buy lots of computer equipment in order to GET projects, and later a job–so this will be around $15,000-20,000 altogether. Not buying the equipment will mean that you’ve survived the 3 years of unemployment for nothing. Again, this pretty much applies to all techie jobs.

3) If you’re like me, you’ll get lucky and live on the East Coast, while all movie jobs are on the West Coast. BUT your husband will get offered contracts, not jobs, meaning you will now get to pay for 2 places, so he can go, but you can stay and maintain your full-time job with benefits in Virginia. (So you would be a single mother to your first child, oh, and pregnant with your second child. Also, you might have horrible morning sickness, not for 3 months like most people, but for 6, while your husband is away). This will last at least 6 months. And it may happen 2-3 times before your husband gets a full-time job.

4) Then you will move to California, quit your job, and never see your husband again because he’ll be working all the time. HAHAhahahaha. (This is a joke, but not so funny.)

5) It’s not over. Now your husband will need to “specialize.” So, get ready for him to go study in Canada at Vancouver Film School for 4 months while you stay in California with your, now 2 children, as a single mom. Oh, don’t expect him to have a valid passport. He might forget to renew it, as he forgets to renew his driver’s license (which he now has 3 of, which is not really legal–but it’s due to living in 8 cities in 9 years). Point being: you might freak out for 4 months while your husband is in Canada studying, as the passport law changes–you will be worried that they will not let him back into the US.

Okay, but it’s not this hard for everyone. It’s also not this easy for everyone. My husband is very talented both artistically and in science, so once he got his first real job, things moved extremely quickly. He has friends who have had the same job for years but want out and can’t find anything.

Finally, he didn’t job search. I job searched. For years, I sent out 10-50 resumes a week, along with demos. Yes, this was very dysfunctional of me. Of course, my husband should have done his own job searching. However, as I mentioned in a prior post, his theory was you apply to ONE job and wait for the answer before applying to the next job. Guess how often companies like Dreamworks answer–NEVER. Unless they want you. That wasn’t the case. Fortunately, it was fine with him to “let” me take over and start sending out stuff like mad. And it worked very well with my job searching..um..hobby.

These things said, this was fuel for our marriage. It was very hard, but at the same time, we are both risk-takers and like setting goals. We are not afraid of tough times and can handle stuff. Now that things have been settled for a few years, life is pretty good. But this is NOT the road for everyone. We have seen a few divorces among friends already due to the work hours alone! Beware of demanding techie jobs…beware.

We paid the deposit on our new apartment, aka townhouse (because it has stairs). My husband is already there, and the boys and I can’t wait to follow. I haven’t seen the “townhouse” yet!

I asked nervously if I’ll have enough room for my computer in the bedroom. (As I have mentioned in prior posts, I am a writer, and our bedroom is my “office,” and our bed is my “desk.” ) I was very afraid that the answer might be no. Then where would I work–the kitchen?? The living room? What would be my new desk–the couch?

So my husband replies somewhat grimly, “Well, the kids’ room in the new place is smaller than the old one. But the new master bedroom is larger than the old one. We’ll probably just need to move the kids’ bunkbed into our room. ” After 8 years of marriage, he still manages to come up with ideas like this. (Obviously, this is NOT the solution, but it is a concern that he could possibly think we’d do this.)

I don’t really think “marching to the beat of a different drummer” quite captures what I’m trying to describe here.

We’re moving in two weeks. There’s going to be a LOT of dumb Husband stuff going on. In fact, it’s already begun.

Our new place has stairs in it. That’s not ideal for my 2.5 year old whose dream is to ride a tricycle down a flight of stairs…So we’re trying to figure out what types of blockades we can use to keep him away from the stairs.

Husband said we should use gates that open and close at the top and bottom of the stairs. That sounded pretty good. Sure. Then I thought, well, but what if one of the boys fell down nevertheless, then they could hit the bottom gate. That might make things worse.

Brace yourself. Husband replies, “Well, the best thing to do would be to put the gate half way up the stairs.” (Yes, he really said this.) He reasons this way if one of them fell, he couldn’t go far. The scariest part is that he then proceeds to look at me with his eyebrows cocked, totally impressed with his idea. COME ON. (And, yes, I am absolutely positive he wasn’t joking.)

Well, I guess I really don’t hate my husband, or I wouldn’t have a blog about him and our marriage, now would I? My husband has many positive traits, but I have created this blog to help me get out my frustration at the other traits.

For example, let’s go over a few irritating things he did and said today. First, all of the corrections he gave me about child-rearing (despite that I am home with the children alone during the 70 hours each week he works, as I am a stay-at-home and work-at-home mother). The other thing is job search-related (and stupid-related, as in stupid husband tries to job search). On the other hand, don’t even get me started about his d&%# job “search.” Let’s stick to his “suggestions” on how I can better care for our children. (It’s kind of odd for him to be critical of how I rear the children when he rarely ever sees them. That’s fine.)

SO, my husband was trying to sleep at 11:00am. The boys and I had already been up for over 3 hours. Our youngest son kept trying to go into the room–this makes it hard for my husband to sleep, so I was trying to coax my son into the living room. He wasn’t having it–he wanted his dad.

So, finally I said, “Let’s go” and picked him up, and he started screaming. My husband half opens one eye and says, “You aren’t doing it right. You have to talk him into it, not just take him out of the room.” OH MY GOSH. PLEASE SHUT UP. Do you think there’s a chance he was joking and knew how dumb it was to correct me in that scenario?