Creating and Mate-ing

I’ve always known that my husband Chuck and I are at our best when we’re doing something creative together. We especially enjoyed the creative project of raising our two sons together. Since they’ve grown up, however, Chuck and I have struggled to find another way to collaborate. He likes to cook but I would rather eat his delicacies than make them together. I like to draw; he appreciates visual art but doesn’t create it. We’re both writers but we work in very different genres.

After a few years of looking for the right avenue of co-expression, I think we may have found it: making podcasts for a blog we’re calling “foragers on the edge.” We’re just getting it up and running, but so far we’ve had great fun creating two short podcasts: one on our dance lessons at an Arthur Murray studio in the Quad Cities, and the other on a recent trip to the Quad City Botanical Center.

Here are some of the new things I’m learning and relearning from and about my mate of 33 years: 1) our peculiar qualities that can sometimes be considered flaws quickly turn into assets when we create together, such as his way of plunging ahead and my way of doing and re-doing until it feels closer to right; 2) there are some pretty cool (and free) services out there for creating podcasts, including Audacity (free audio editor and recorder) and Clickcaster (podcast storage site); and 3) damn, we have fun when we make things together!