It always makes me sad when I hear married people complain about the amount of time their other half spends on their hobbies. I think hobbies are an absolutely necessary respite from the daily grind. My life is certainly better off for them. I enthusiastically believe everyone should have some kind of hobby. Certainly, filling one’s days with the drudgery of work and household chores is not very satisfying. I often wonder what people who don’t have hobbies do with their non-working time. Go to the gym? Perish the thought.
My husband and I are both hobby fanatics. He has his model trains, his tractors, his “camper project” (I’m secretly hoping that one never comes to fruition….), but he knows the house rules: “Is there fire? Is there blood? No? Then don’t interrupt me when I am quilting.” Sometimes I feel a bit guilty about the time I spend with my sewing machine, but then I think of all the time this gives him for his hobbies: fixing old tractors, working on the truck(s), generally making a huge mess in the back yard. As long as he’s not setting a can of oil down on my stack of fat quarters, I really don’t mind what he’s doing. He’s happy working on his projects and I have mine. I think it makes us more compatible. Everyone needs time to do their own thing.
Over the years, he’s developed a system of not asking me to come quick and do something but rather he prefaces each request with, “When you have time…” or “When you get a minute…” Me being the consummate engineer by training, that time might not actually come until 20, 30, 75 or more minutes later. Technically, he did say “when you have time”. I can’t help it if that took 90 minutes! He knows I married him for better or for worse. But quilting, my dear, is forever.
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