It never fails. I’m doing something ordinary, nay, completely mindboggingly mundane, and my husband approaches to ask the most dumb-assed of questions: “Whatcha doin?”

It doesn’t matter that my activity at the moment should be fairly self-explanatory, since he likes to ask this question while standing outside the shower door or while I’m elbow-deep in dish suds at the kitchen sink. It’s sad that my husband has lived forty years without realizing people shower or wash dishes. It’s actually quite alarming that he asks me this same question from just outside the bathroom door, like I’d be sitting on the toilet enjoying a Ruben sandwich instead of relieving myself.

I’ve learned to counteract his stupid question with my own equally stupid response. Every time he asks me that question, I’ve learned to answer, “I’m having sex with my Hungarian boyfriend.” This has only backfired one time, but it was epic.

Since I work from my home office, we have a family rule: when Mommy has her headset on, you can’t talk to her because she’s on a business call. But when Offspring the First recently violated the don’t talk rule to ask me, “Whatcha doin’?” both she and the CEO of a Big Six publishing company heard me automatically reply, “I’m having sex with my Hungarian boyfriend!”

The bad news is I had to have the facts of life discussion with my daughter a little sooner than I’d originally planned since I had to explain what sex was. And what Hungarian was. The good news is I have now have a six-book deal with a major publisher to write nasty erotica.