Fun at the dinner table

My husband Brad and both work...a LOT. The concept of the 40-hour work week died long ago in our house. But we're both happy in our jobs, and we're ambitious, career-driven people, so it's just fine with both of us at this point in our kidless lives.

We try to avoid talking about work at the dinner (or late-night snack?) table, since we hardly see each other during the week and don't want to spoil our couple time with job talk. But the downside to that is neither of us really has any idea what the other person does. Sure, I know he's a video editor, but he never discusses the projects he's working on. Well, unless something goes wrong.

A couple nights ago, Brad came home at 9 p.m. after a long day of editing. He was tired and hungry, and his work wasn't quite over -- he needed to test his DVDs to make sure they played right. As he heated up dinner, I threw them in the DVD player. For the next 30 minutes I watched this series of videos that he created and by the time it was over I was almost in tears.

I never get to see Brad's work, so I honestly had no idea he was so talented! Even those short little video clips obviously required brilliant editing skills, which he's obviously developed over the past two and a half years of being an editor. My heart swelled with pride knowing that these videos made by my husband would be shown to hundreds of people in a few days. I kept asking, "did you do that part?" until he got sick of answering "yes!" I don't think he had any idea that I'd be interested in his work, so the whole situation was highly amusing.

It was a good lesson for both of us. I joked that I was going to make Brad look at a slide presentation I put together so he could be equally proud of me. But seriously -- the next time I do something I'm proud of, I'm totally going to share it with him.

You don't need to talk about work every night at the dinner table. But sometimes, it's nice to give your significant other a window into your world.