Hi, my husband and I are beginning to communicate like two house cats who have been Freaky Fridayed into human forms and don’t quite understand how conversations work.

Him: How’s your day.

Me: It’s happening.

Him: Right.

Me: How was your walk.

Him: It was good.

Me: Was it good?

Him: It was good.

…

…

…

Him: I might go to a park later.

Me: (silently staring at him)

Him: You… okay?

Me: I said that sounds nice.

Him: I didn’t hear you.

Me: We could all go to a park.

Him: Yes.

He is a true extrovert and hates working from home. He only does it in the most pinchy of pinches. Like when I had a back spasm and needed to be prone for 6 hours. Or when a yellowjacket stung his foot six times and he couldn’t even get a flip-flop over his foot which definitely resembled a medical glove that someone had inflated to please a sickly child.

I’ve given him back the office he gave me for Christmas. It’s attached to our garage, which means whoever’s working in there is insulated from the children’s needs/sounds. It’s heated and finished, and has a large built-in desk and a bronze floor lamp that was the symbolic Christmas gift, the thing I could unwrap that represented a room of my own and my husband’s priceless awareness that the only thing I wanted for Christmas was time and space. I wrote much of my book in there. Anyway, I gave it back. His wife has priceless awareness, too. When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom: suck it up and give him the office because he needs it more than you do right now, ya big whiner.

I went in last night to Zoom into my screenwriting class and my husband had tidied up everything he’d spread out over the desk earlier in the day: his mug, his water glass, his wireless mouse, the feathery, shiny detritus from the fly fishing flys he tied during short breaks in the day.

He’s thoughtful and kind. I am, too. Nevertheless, we have to create a his-and-hers fight club to get through this thing. Yes, we’re going to have to organize a recreational sparring league to keep the love alive here. Add that to the list of advice you didn’t get on your wedding day. “Never stop flirting. Remember, he’s still your boyfriend… and your nemesis. FINISH HIM.”

And you know what they say: keep your friends close and your fight-clubbing spouse even closer. You’ve got to get inside his head. You have to know what move he’s going to make before he does. You know, so you can be supportive and kind and the bigger person and shit.

We’ve been together for sixteen years so I can tell you exactly what he’s going to do to piss me off over the next six weeks. More importantly, I already know what I’m going to do to piss him off, too:

1. Do I have selective dish blindness? He does the dishes in the morning and leaves the machine open so I can load up dirties as we make them. Then he comes in for lunch and the machine? EMPTY. The sink? FULL. He has literally done everything in his power to make it easy for me to be an adult who cleans up after herself. Why. Why. Why.

2. At the end of the day on his nights to do bedtime he’s going to find me on the couch staring into the blue eternity of my phone instead of cooking a meal. When he says he’s hungry, I’ll call vacantly “You hungry? I can cook something…” without moving anything more than my scrolling finger. I’m not trying to be an asshole. I’m just so tired…

3. When he gets in the shower in the morning sometimes he’ll find my hair stuck to the wall because I don’t want to send them down the drain where they’ll become an unholy scunge nest. Instead, I wipe them on the wall like a bizarre and vaguely threatening art installation. It’s gross.

4. He’s going to discover that I threw away wilted kale. He hates food waste. He hates it so much. Why wouldn’t I just make a soup? Or a stir-fry?

5. I’m going to interrupt his negotiations/conflicts with our children to make helpful suggestions about how he can resolve the issues. I will do this in front of the children. I will do it in such a way as to make clear that it’s not REALLY a suggestion. I have no excuse. I’m trying to be helpful, and then doing the opposite of that, like a person who says “I know, I’ll do the laundry!” And then sets the clothes on fire. In that person’s defense, the laundry is DONE though. WELL done, if you ask me. No but I have no defense, that is the worst thing I can’t stop doing.

6. I’m going to have a laissez-faire attitude about the kids’ lights-out. Yes, I understand that we have precious few hours when the children are in bed and we have adult time for adult things like Succession and sneaking junk food we don’t want to share with our hollow-legged spawn. Yes, I agree that it’s important to stick to a routine. Remember how I said I was so tired, though…

7. I’m going to get resentful and passive-aggressive about how much time he gets to himself out in the office, while every minute of my day is spoken for twice over: once for the things I need to do, and again for the things the children need from me. It will be ugly of me, but also fair and natural, so I don’t know what to do about that one.

No two ways about it, we’re bound to rub up against each other plenty over the next month and a half, and not even in the fun way. He’s feeling hemmed in; I’m feeling homeschool panic. The world is off-kilter and our days are strangely flat and devoid of landmarks. We love each other so much, and like each other a lot, too. The liking is easier when we get to bring our individual experiences of the world home each night to share with each other, but I’ll still like him even when he’s pissing me off and I’m sick to death of his face, and I think on some level he’ll still like me too, even when he gets in the shower and comes face to face with my postmodern hair sculpture and has to take some real deep breaths and maybe bite down on a wash cloth to keep from yelling at the ceiling.

Look, it’s gonna be rocky, is what I’m saying. I’m trying to remember that my husband isn’t just my boyfriend. He’s also my roommate and business partner. There’s a bar of common courtesy that can be lowered during times of relative peace and quiet. When the fit hits the shan though, we’ve got to crank that bar up again. I’m talking white-shoe firm level of professionalism in my marriage right now. I may come out of the bedroom in the morning in a crisp button-down and say, “Good morning, Mr. Anthony! How are the kids?” I may leave notes for him on the counter that begin, “Salutations, esteemed colleague,” and are signed “Best, K. Anthony.” Who knows how far we’ll go! We’ve got six weeks to figure this shit out. Or more.

Okay, I’m signing off and doing the dishes. Love is a verb, people.

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xoxoxoxo