They say there is a spender and a saver in every marriage, but that’s just a nicer way of saying one person is sensible, and one person… isn’t.
At least that’s what I’m thinking when my husband Josh comes bounding into the kitchen one gray February afternoon, a look of excited determination on his face. It’s a look I know well, and it usually means I need to brace myself.

“Abby,” he says. “I have an idea.”

My husband has a lot of ideas. After nineteen years of marriage, I’ve learned to listen to them with a mostly undisturbed equilibrium because often these ideas peter out without too much fanfare or fuss, although occasionally they’ve sputtered on longer than they should have, which takes another, more stalwart kind of patience.

“Okay,” I say as I start slicing some mushrooms for the casserole we’re having for dinner, even though two out of my four children don’t like mushrooms. I like them. I glance into the adjoining family room, to see if any of our four kids is sprawled there, listening with a silent, wide-eyed alertness, because they have the unfortunate tendency of either reacting with melodramatic horror to Josh’s idea (moving to the Falkland Islands) or unfettered excitement (buying a school bus and tricking it out like a camper van to travel the country) and neither is helpful when it comes to the notions that can occasionally grip Josh like a fever.