While you were out, your husband won the internet

12 years – the amount of time I’ve been married and traveling to trade shows. It took 9 or 10 of those years and tears, but I think we’ve finally found our swing. Fall is my busiest travel season, and our anniversary is in September. Needless to say, I’m always out of town on our anniversary. Last year, I commissioned a song (shout-out to Songfinch!) about our 11+ years of being together and put photos to the music. It was a total wife PWN moment.

This year, however, Hubs won the internet. He started out thinking it was funny to post photos of his bad food choices while I was away for 15 days. The more time went by, the weirder the photos got. Of course, they were all in jest and Hubs can survive without me, but he found amusement in pandering to our friends’ concern for his health and well being.

You can view the progression of photos on Imgur.

Then on day 14, lightning strikes and Hubs experiences his 15 minutes of internet fame. He spent the day training our dog to sit in a box, and that is what clinched it in my opinion. Our dog sitting in box while Hubs roasts Spam over a fire in our driveway made it to the front page of Reddit and had over a million views. From there, he is picked up by @thefatjewish on Instagram and is the front page image for a meme album on The Chive. Friends start texting that he showed up in this or that feed. People he hasn’t talked to in years see his photo and reach out to say hi. Someone creates an illustration of his photo. I can’t make this shit up. He won the internet…for 15 minutes.

With this fame came some serious internet trolls and some serious misconceptions of my work trips: “Work trip,” you mean she’s banging her coworker? A man child who can’t live without his mommy? No wonder she left! She’s totally banging some guy on the side and calling it a work trip.

The internet sure likes its banging. Anyone who works the lawn and garden trade show circuit knows it’s a bunch of old white dudes. No thanks. #tradeshowthuglife is by no means glamorous (hence why the hashtag is so funny to me), but I’ve made some great friends along the way – none of whom I am banging. Apparently I’m doing this “work trip” thing all wrong!

In all seriousness, work trips take a toll on a marriage. It has taken many years for Hubs and I to get to a place where we can laugh about it and poke fun at how he survives.