I keep thinking I can train my husband -- if I write enough about all of the ways he gets underneath my skin; he'll get the message and help me in my endeavors to write the next best American novel. Someone must either shoot me now or run me down with a car -- save the bullets -- although, gas is awfully expensive too ... I digress. My husband is a man and as such will never be capable of taking a hint because subtlety -- even subtle subtlety on the crossroads of direct and blatant -- is lost on simple-minded creatures.

It's tax time, and last year -- despite earning less money combined than I alone earned in a single year waitressing -- Turbotax insisted that we owed the IRS $500 that we did not and do not have. We filed an extension, and Jerod swore on my life that he'd sort it all out. But he didn't follow through which left me completing our 2010 tax return by hand on Friday evening instead of writing. Jerod lounged on the couch all night watching Adult Swim on Cartoon Network. AND do you suppose he devoted any time over the weekend while I was sick in bed filing our 2011 tax return? Of course not. I did that tonight INSTEAD OF WRITING. Jerod keeps telling me how wonderful it will be when I finish my book and every publisher on the planet comes knocking on our door -- not that he's the least bit interested in my work. He'll consider it a massive failure if I don't take $1 million out of the gate. That's never going to happen -- writers aren't worth that much unless they're working on something truly monumental like the screenplay for the next Aliens v. Predators movie -- but I might earn enough to at least pay down our credit cards, and I can stop offering sex in exchange for a week's vacation from the bill collectors. You think it would behoove my husband then to help me write instead of doing what he's doing now -- sleeping on the couch, farting in his sleep.