The Suspicious Spouse

Tonight, as Hubs and I sat on the deck with our glasses of wine, he asked, "So you're unhappy?"

"What?" I asked, emerging from my mellow state.

"I found your notes. The ones about being unhappy."

Huh?

"And who's coming to town?" Hubs asked.

Wha?

He started quoting -- from ... something:

"I miss you ... let's get together ... I'm alone ..."

Those words, they sounded so ... familiar.

"... like a lover ..."

And then I realized -- Hubs must have found my jottings for a recent post, When She Calls, in which I compare depression to an old lover who refuses to disappear.

Problem is, my handwriting's terrible, so Hubs could only make out a few incriminating phrases.

Poor man. He really was a little worried.

Needlessly.

In fact, I howled when I finally figured out what the hell he was blathering on about.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I frequently write down my thoughts, just as soon as they flit through my head. Otherwise, I forget things.

I do this when working on longterm newspaper stories -- ledes, especially.

Many a time, I've awakened at night and grabbed a pen on my nightstand so that I could scrawl a thought before slipping back into sleep. If you were to look in my purse, you'd find scraps of paper with seemingly random phrases written on them.

In this case, I'd written down my musings on notepaper from the newspaper. They were even illustrated, as I'd used that same notebook to draw mermaids, clams and fish for my daughter.

No wonder he thinks I'm a raging lunatic. He's finding "evidence" of adultery complete with badly rendered sketches of Ariel.

Sheesh.