Cohabitation

We are certainly amongst most the very fortunate on the planet right now in so man regards. The four of us have about 3,000 square feet in which to spread out, plus a yard and a screened in porch, surrounded by pretty nice wildlife, looking down at a lake. The climate control works well, as does the fridge.

That said, it ain't always easy. A big part of it is that Mary is here almost all the time, even when we are not in quarantine, so the bulk of the house, and the overall running of the house, is pretty much her domain. Which is not to say that she does all of it (though sometimes she feels like she does, and voices that opinion), but she takes the leadership role on it. And she has a strong detail orientation. Little things matter, lots of them. Where and how specific items are put in the dishwasher, for example. This is in normal times.

Under coronavirus, it is all turned up a notch. The handwashing, the counter-wiping, the sequence in which they are done, and other things. It is all complicated further by the world's evolving understanding of the threat we face. It's all very fluid, and more and more detail comes on line concerning best practices in these areas: how one washes one's hand, how one dries one's hands after washing them, etc. Mary reads the most about this stuff, and she is the most disciplined about it, and she instills best practices in us, as we used to say in the management consulting world.

So it's tense, and little squabbles erupt. Learning to back down, walk away, not escalate, go one day, one hour at a time,.. it's an art. My heart goes out to those doing it in the smaller homes.

One specific thing I have to work on. For my own mental health, I very carefully titrate the amount of news I read. I spend very little time on the web sites of the Times and the Post and even the N&O. I read what I need to of the financial press to be informed and check the epidemic's progress at the end of each day, but I can't get into the play by play or I quickly get overwhelmed and consumed. I read books to keep my mind out of it and focused on the long view. This has frankly been an evolving practice under the Trump administration -- I've probably written about it, and I know I'm not alone. In many ways coronavirus just heightens it.

Mary reads the press a lot, as she has done in particular since Trump's election. And she listens to NPR a lot. She does other stuff, but she substantially lives within the newsflow. So when it is time for bed and she comes to bed late with her phone and stares at it in bed and scrolls and reads endlessly about Trump and coronavirus and all of it, I feel it infecting me as well. I want her to read books like me to shut it out and keep it distant. It annoys and angers me.

In the end, the problem is mine, I have to recognize that. She's entitled to read what she wants to. I'm working on it.