What Would You Say About Your Husband in a Book?

I have often accused my husband of Party Sabotage. It comes up every time we have people over, whether it’s just a few friends or a group of 30 for Christmas.

I don’t know if it’s a Mars/Venus thing, or if we have different priorities, or what. All I know is that I tend to focus on things like food, a clean(ish) house and, of course, setting up the bar. He tends to get wrapped up in, shall we say, some of the smaller minutiae of entertaining.

Like what? OK, fine, I’ll give you a few examples, since you asked.

• Replacing light switch plates.
• Cleaning out the crawl space under the house.
• Organizing the garage.

It’s a thing between us. Mostly because we don’t host our social gatherings in the crawl space or the garage. I try to appreciate that he’s being a perfectionist and wants the house to look good when people are here, but really: I can’t get past the fact that NOBODY HAS SET UP THE BAR.

Every time this happens, my first thought is “How can I blog about this while staying married?” Well, not really. My real first thought is that I’m never hosting Christmas again. And then I think about the blog. Or maybe it happens at the same time. Anyway.

You know where I finally could have shared this story? In a new book!

This one.

Does the title sound sort of familiar? Yes, the fabulous Jen of People I Want to Punch in the Throat is back with a new anthology, and I’m so thrilled to be a part of it.

The last one was about motherhood. This one is about the men in our lives.

I’m in excellent company! The line-up in this book is just phenomenal. These ladies have some hilarious stories to tell about their menfolk. I hope you’ll read what they have to say.

My husband has been a really good sport about this whole thing, starting from the moment I said this: “So, uh, I am going to submit a piece for a new anthology. And the topic is husbands.”

I had a lot of criteria: I didn’t want to talk trash about him just to be funny. I wanted to write something I could live with after it was put out there for strangers, friends and family to read. Above all, I didn’t want to embarrass him.

And then I remembered: He doesn’t get embarrassed. Well, that made things a hell of a lot easier. Still, I learned something important: It’s not easy to write a funny and accurate story about your spouse that meets all of these criteria.

Did I write about my home’s Party Sabotage streak? I didn’t. Mostly because I thought of an even better topic to tackle when it comes to my husband.

I can’t tell you, but you know who can? Amazon. Here’s the official book description:

The second volume in the best-selling I Just Want to Pee Alone series!

Don’t get us wrong, we love the men in our lives – we do (most of the time). It’s just that sometimes we would like them to go away. Not forever or anything like that. Just for an hour … or a day … or a weekend. We want some time to ourselves to read a good book or take a walk or do anything other than try to make a dent in the never ending mound of dirty clothes that keeps piling up on his side of the bed. We just want to be alone. All alone. Is that too much to ask?