My husband (the architect) asked me to share what it’s like to live, eat and sleep with an architect. Since I’ve only been married to one person and it’s Eric and he’s always been an architect, I don’t know if life with an architect is any different than life with a doctor, engineer or sanitation worker, except maybe the smell. But, here’s what it’s like to live with my husband, the architect.

• He complains about overhead electric lines running across the country. He thinks they are primitive, cheap decisions not progress.

• He likes native landscape and raw land. If it was up to him, he’d never mow or weed eat around the house and the grass would grow wild. I weed eat so the house is not overgrown with plants.

• His home-improvement projects take a long time because he plans everything and takes a lot of time assembling it. His garage storage project took several months. The kitchen backsplash project took a week. His well house took a year to plan and about 6 months to build. In fact, when I wrote this he still had not painted the final coat, but wet and cold weather slowed him down. He hasn’t started the dog house yet, but I’m sure it will be really nice when it’s finished.

• He’s critical of his own work and laments over your designs and doing a great job for you. He loves what he does and loves to share it with people.

• He gets up in the middle of the night and runs to the home office because he thinks of another way to design something. He’s always thinking about design.

• He thinks about waste and ways to reduce it in our home and yours. He examines our groceries and decides if he can buy something with less trash. We used to buy bottled tea, but he decided that was too much trash so now we buy the mix which sells in one small recyclable container instead of 12 bottles plus packaging.

• He spends long car trips discussing design options and will talk them to death. I’d rather read, but I listen to his ideas and nod approvingly. I’ve learned to multi-task well so I can pretend-listen and read at the same time.

• He always wonders how something is put together and talks about the right way to do it versus the way people do it. He can find instructions to support his opinion and will review them before he builds anything.

• He’s like a kid on Christmas day talking about your projects and what he wants to do. He’s like a kid whose toy you took when you decide to do something else.

• He eats his breakfast in front of the computer to read about design or building news and sometimes sprints from the dinner table to the computer to jot down the next revolutionary design idea.

• He designs everything. Your house, our house, our kid’s homework, newsletters, greeting cards, t-shirts even the way he organizes his clothes in the closet. Sometimes I don’t want everything designed, but he can’t help it. Design is his instinct. Even though our house is a little different, many visitors compliment the style and appearance because he designed a beautiful house, but mostly because he listened to me.

Like I mentioned at the beginning. I don’t know if living with an architect is different than living with any other vocation, but I have to admit it has advantages and is special.