When Your Partner Works From Home

In my household, working from home is the norm. My husband has worked from home our entire married life and I, in recent years, have balanced my writing commitments with being a stay at home mom. We’re old pros at this; our children have never known anything different. 

Maybe it’s new to you, though, in these strange, uncertain times. While we have office spaces set up and our routines in order, I imagine this isn’t the case for many of you as we all attempt to navigate a new normal.

We’re several years into this routine and have learned—often through trial-and-error—how to balance work and home when they’re both under the same roof. As many of you experience having a partner work from home for the first time, or work from home for the first time yourselves, here are some things that have helped keep our household sane over the years.

Keep a Schedule
Working from home should be no different than a job you commute to. My husband works from about 7:00 am - 4:00 pm each day. He gets up with the kids around 6:30 and gets them started on breakfast while I get ready in the morning. While we both often work in the evenings, it’s after the kids are in bed. Even though his office (and phone!) are so very accessible, they are off-limits for work-related things between the hours of 4:00-7:30 pm.

Setting a schedule is important for my own life, too. I try to get the bulk of my own work done the three mornings a week my youngest attends preschool. The other two mornings we try to get out of the house for errands and playdates. Our afternoons follow a routine of lunch, quiet time, screen time, snack, and outside play and/or indoor creative play.

Dedicate a Work Space
We have a bedroom upstairs that serves as my husband’s office space with—and this is important—a door that locks. If you don’t have an extra room, especially if working from home is a temporary situation, consider converting a corner of your bedroom or infrequently-used room in your basement as an office area. It helps mentally to have an area dedicated to work and could also help your kids understand that when a parent is in that space, they need to focus.

Read the rest over on the Twin Cities Moms Collective as we work to support our local community with resources during the Coronavirus outbreak.

Week One

I’ve been writing things down this week here and there as they come to me. I’ve shared some of this as snippets on Instagram but if you’re interested in reading some more navel-gazing, as my friend Lorren says, then feel free to read on with these lightly-edited words. Maybe it’s helpful to use my own still, small voice to give some words to what we’re all going through at this moment in time.

Saturday, March 14th
My brain keeps trying to compare this to things it knows. 

It’s like the holidays! My head says. And this is sort of true. The kids were off for two straight weeks and grocery stores weren’t always open when I wanted them to be and we mostly stayed home and Tyson was off of work more days than not. 

It’s like the polar votex! It thinks. Then, too, we were stuck inside and didn’t dare venture out of the house. But that lasted four straight days and then it was all over. We could have flown on an airplane to escape it all if we really wanted. It affected only my little region and not the entire world.

It’s like a world war. My brain tries. And, though I’ve never experienced war like that, this seems right. The uncertainty of not knowing what each day, each week is going to bring. Not knowing how long things are going to last or how this is all going to affect us. Knowing that we are just at the beginning of all of this and there will be lasting changes to our society and to our world forever.

My phone alerted me yesterday to tell me my screen time was up last week— 17%, over six hours a day, instead of my usual four-ish.

Two hours more?! Was my initial reaction. Then, Two hours more. Of course. Because these times are unprecedented. Some of those two hours were useful. I’ve been in contact with friends and family far more than usual as we attempt to navigate this strange new world together. My friends and I text each other from across the country to give each other updates on what it’s like in Ohio, in Georgia, in Texas. I look at the news to find the latest update and seem to find a new one no matter how often I look at my phone.

Some of those hours are more negative. The times I’ve spent scrolling because I can’t seem to stop, to see how everyone else is coping, what is going on, how are we all doing this? The time I’ve spent reading too many articles. 

But I’ve got this phone as a link to the world for better or worse. Of course I’m using it more. Of course.

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Sunday, March 15th
I've made up my mind to try to say yes as much as possible. To things that would ordinarily make me cringe. Yes to dragging the Nugget upstairs to make a fort in your room which ends up in the biggest mess and blankets that need to be put away in six separate rooms of the house. Yes to watching Frozen 2 three days in a row. Yes to eating something from your candy stash while we do so. Yes to taking out the paint and the easel and the paint shirts and all the rest. Yes to playing on your tablets. Yes to baking cookies. 

The thing is, we’re saying no to so many things right now. Especially this week, supposedly our spring break, where I had plans for the movie theater and museums and indoor playgrounds. None of that is happening anymore.

And that’s nothing to speak of next week when there will continue to be no school, no gymnastics, no dance class, no playdates, no eating at restaurants. Next week and for how much longer?

So I’m going to try to say yes to what I can.

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Monday March 16th
It feels strange to know that time is still marching onward. Spring is coming. You wouldn’t know it from the forecast over the next week, but it is. 

Time feels frozen in so many ways. 

It feels weird to see the sunshine blinding us through the blinds in the morning and lengthening our shadows in the late afternoon, to see grass outside our windows, to see March 16th on the calendar.

I saw the first tiny shoots of green sprouting in the remnants of our day lilies outside. The ground is waking up, literally growing up to stretch toward the big blue sky.

Spring is coming. I feel it.

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Tuesday March 17th
My right eye has been twitching since last week. It’s not terrible; I’ll go several hours or even a day between twitches. Sometimes it will do it several times in a row and then go away, for so long I forget about it.

Of course I looked up causes of eye twitching. Stress, it said, right at the top.

I don’t feel all that stressed. I feel all sorts of things, anxious, scattered, uncertain, but not exactly stressed.

Then again, maybe those are all just euphemisms.

Also I’ve been planning the shit out of everything there is to plan. So. That’s a thing.

It could be my body just trying to tell me something, reacting to what it feels in the air and sees in my newsfeed and senses down to my very bones. It seems like too much of a coincidence for an eye twitch to begin right when everything coronavirus here in America was ramping up. None of this is normal. Including eye twitches.

We tried to explain just how abnormal this all is to the kids the other night, even as we answered their questions. They asked us a dozen questions, probably a week ago now, kicked off by Caden asking, “Mommy, what is coronavirus?”

We sat at dinner and talked about what was going on and reassured them that they were safe, we were safe, life was probably going to look different for awhile (we didn’t know just how different then) but we would all be okay. 

We continued eating and it dawned on me.

“Hey,” I blurted. “Just so you know, this is not normal. This doesn’t usually happen. Daddy and I are 33 years old and this has never, ever happened before in our whole entire lives.”

I wondered what they were thinking, these little six and four-year-olds. (Well, the four-year-old didn’t seem to be paying attention all that much.) Did they think this was just routine, that once every six years or so everyone’s lives just shut down? That this is just a regular part of life, like sometimes you just don’t go back to school for the rest of the year? Did they think Tyson and I had any idea what we’re doing?

I wonder what they’ll remember of this time. Will they remember being out of school? (Will they go back to school this spring? Oh, we love their teacher, it will break my heart if they don’t.) Will they remember Tyson and I in conversation about this and not much else? Will they remember us watching the news on TV? Of not being able to go anywhere: not to stores, not to restaurants, not to gymnastics, or dance, or indoor playgrounds, or other people’s houses? 

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Yesterday, Monday, I tried to place a grocery order. I usually place my grocery orders on Tuesdays, for pick up on Wednesdays. This has been my routine for almost two years now. I went to select my time slot and...the earliest I could pick up my groceries is Sunday. Almost a week. And here I thought I was doing good by getting it in a day early.

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Wednesday March 18th
Just 10 days ago it was over 50 degrees outside and we bought ice cream from the ice cream truck that rolled through the neighborhood. From a stranger. In a truck. Who handed us food and we handed him money. With our unsanitized, unwashed hands. In a crowd of neighborhood kids.

That feels like a lifetime ago.

I keep checking myself when I watch or read things. Tyson and I watched The Two Popes last weekend (which was excellent, btw) and one of the first shots was of a huge crowd, packed together shoulder to shoulder as they awaited news of the new pope.

But you can’t do that! my mind cried.

Same when I read a metaphor in a book recently that went something like, “she stuck around like a virus”. Yikes, I thought, That reads a bit differently right now.

Video of people shaking hands or reading about people having a party or just the idea of a bunch of people going to the store all leave me with the same reaction. But that’s not safe!

How quickly we accommodate this new life, even while it still feels so very, very bizarre.

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I did yoga tonight for the first time in a long time. Too long. I noticed my body in recent days has been tense and tight, my shoulders creeping involuntarily toward my ears.

It needed a release.

As we lay down to complete the practice my YouTube guide told me to hug my knees and “take the biggest breath you’ve taken all day”. It was then that I realized I’d been holding my breath. 

My breath needed a release, too.

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We dropped groceries off to my parents this morning. I made a run to Target first thing, I got one of the last loaves of bread off the shelves and so much was still empty and barren. I had the hand sanitizer at the ready when I got back in the car because that’s a thing we do now.

I got home and wiped everything off. Tyson had mixed up a bleach solution and I picked up cereal box and wiped it down with a damp cloth. Then I looked at him across the room and shrugged. He burst out laughing because what even is this life?

I loaded the kids up in the car so they could get out of the house and we delivered things to my parents. Bread and eggs and peanut butter and a sunny bouquet of tulips, because we all need a little bit of brightness right now. I explained on the way over that we wouldn’t be going inside or giving hugs and we couldn’t play and had them recite the rules back to me. We left their bags of groceries on the front step and talked to them through the glass door instead. It was weird. I don’t have many words lately but weird is one of them.

Friday March 20th
I cried for the first time today. At least tears filled my eyes and I sniffled a lot and it stayed that way for several minutes which for me is the equivalent of a full-on emotional meltdown. 

What triggered it, of all things, was Taylor Swift’s song “Mine”. It reminded me of college, or the tail end of it, right before I Tyson and I got married because the lines “We’ve got bills to pay/we’ve got nothing figured out” were particularly relevant to us at that moment in time. (Ahem still relevant to us at this moment in time.) And it reminded me of graduating with a design degree in 2010 into a recession and how absolutely impossible it was for me to get a job at that time, and all the “no”s I heard and the resumes I blew through. And then, of course, I thought of all the college kids who are about to graduate college right now into the same damn thing (Or worse? What is this?) and I just couldn’t handle it.

Especially the students like me, who were told that if we just followed the rules and followed our dreams that everything would work out, and so we did. And we went out and we got A’s from the first time we ever got report cards and graduated with honors all the way up to walking across the university stage with our cap and gown and special tassels and still, because of the economy, because of that moment in time, we couldn’t get jobs with our degrees in design and humanities and history and architecture.

Anyway, that’s what did it for me. Those college students who are ready to launch and are about to be launched out into a world that’s even scarier than the height of the recession I graduated into.

Unrelated: Brooklyn thinks the opening line to “22” is “It feels like the perfect night to dress up like hamsters” and I want her to believe that forever.

And That's Okay

Brooklyn went through a spurt, a couple of months ago, where she told me several days in a row, ”I care about everybody. Even people in different worlds than us. I care about everyone.”

(First off, lest you think she’s talking about other planets or that we know something about extraterrestrial life that you don’t, you should know my kids use the word “worlds” for “countries”, which I think is fantastic and adorable and I am 1000% committed to NOT correcting them.)

I cannot convey just how seriously she says this. Her voice grows low and quiet and she meets my eyes dead on and delivers this statement with all the seriousness of a person giving a speech to the UN.

I love this about her. I told her that. I gave her a hug each time and told her, “I love that about you. I care about people everywhere, too. That’s an important thing we get to do, is love other people and care about them even if we don’t know them.”

Her teacher, at conferences, also said this is her favorite thing about Brooklyn. That she goes out of her way to help and stick up for everyone in the classroom. If, for example, a student is having trouble sitting still on the carpet and gets moved to sit in a chair, Brooklyn will pipe up to say, “And that’s okay! Because they can still learn in the chair! That’s what’s best for their body right now.” 

And it’s one of those moments where you realize that they’re listening. Because that’s exactly the type of language we use at home.

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Home has not exactly been a haven these days. It’s cluttered and messy and I’m not sure you can actually walk in Caden and Brooklyn’s bedroom right now. Every time I tackle one space I think three more become overwhelmed with papers and LEGOs and stray socks. (Seriously, where do they come from?)

There’s no winning here.

Tyson has been busy with transitions at work and also working on another project in the evenings. Our February was chaotic, a month in a series of chaotic months. I’ve been busy with writing and volunteering and attempting to stay on top of appointments and keeping Nolan occupied with things other than “watching every episode of Ninjago” and “eating literal spoonfuls of sugar from the canister on the counter”.

Last week, Tyson and I had that conversation of “Hi, I’m really busy, can you do more?” “Hi, I’m really busy, can you do more?”

The house is supposed to be our shared responsibility and yet it’s been easy to fall into the trap of self-pity and frustration lately. It’s been easy to think I’m doing more than my fair share, that if he helped more it wouldn’t be this way, that if I just literally never sat down I could get on top of it.

Of course, none of these things are true.

There’s definitely no winning there.

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“And that’s okay!” is basically Brooklyn’s catchphrase.

“This boy at school likes to wear pink. And that’s okay! Because pink is just a color,” she’ll say.

“Caden likes to put his snowpants and boots and jacket on in a different order than me. And that’s okay! That’s what works best for him.”

“I don’t like cucumbers. And that’s okay! Because I like other foods.”

”It sounds like your friend had trouble controlling their body,” I’ll say, after she tells me about a friend who was removed from the classroom, “You and Caden have a pretty easy time controlling your bodies, and it sounds like your friend has lots of energy and has a harder time sitting still than you do.””And that’s okay!” she’ll say. 

And it is.

+++++

“And that’s okay!” is a pretty great mantra to live by. You’d think I would know this already since I’m the one who gave the phrase to her.

I was originally writing this with a different ending in mind. Though let me assure you the endings to the essays I write frequently surprise me. Rarely do my drafts get written so clearly and predictably that they travel from A to B to C in such a logical, unsurprising order.

I thought I was going to end by talking about how I often want to read instead of tackling one of the 34 tasks swirling in my head or to get takeout instead of making dinner because even though I love to cook doing it every. single. night often seems like just a bit much, and how sometimes I just need a moment but you don’t often get that moment with small children and so you react in ways you wish you hadn’t just a second later. And I was going to tie it back to how our house is a disaster but we’ll figure it out because that’s what we do. And that’s okay! Because we all do these things and that’s okay. We’re human and we can embrace our humanity. This is all true.

However. I’m not finishing this piece at the same time I started it. I jotted that opening paragraph as a note in my phone a few months ago and that feels like a different time entirely. And also I wrote that paragraph about our house being a disaster last week and it already doesn’t seem quite so important anymore so it’s going to sit up there like a loose end. (And that’s okay!) Instead, I’m writing these very words right now in light of coronavirus and what feels like a very uncertain, bizarre, weird time. Just when I think we’ve hit peak crazy something else happens and here we are, finishing an intense week in a series of intense weeks, cluttered houses and all.

So instead I’ll end with this:

Sometimes we need to sit with our feelings and emotions, particularly when they’re confusing and conflicting. And that’s okay.

Sometimes we scroll longer than we should through social media and read six articles too many about the same damn thing. And that’s okay.

Sometimes we have to mourn the loss of things, like predictable schedules, events we were looking forward to but are no longer, trips and travel plans being no more, our daily routines being upended in ways we didn’t expect. And that’s okay.

Sometimes we despair the clutter in the corner or the crumbs on the counter even when there are much bigger things going on in the world. And that’s okay.

Sometimes we forget that our anxiety can be quelled with things as simple as “taking deep breaths” or “making a fresh cup of coffee”. And that’s okay.

Sometimes all we can do is take care of the present moment. And that’s okay.

Sometimes it takes a six-year-old, using the words you’ve given her, to remind you that we need to take care of people in different communities, in different demographics, in different “worlds” than us. And that’s okay.

Sometimes we need to just be and rest and exist without putting pressure on ourselves to produce or perform. Especially when it feels as if the whole world has lost its mind. And that’s really, really, really okay.

Life Lately

I’ve been trying to write this since mid-January, starting and stopping and jotting down little notes here and there. This “life lately” edition spans far more weeks than I ever intended.

Maybe that speaks more to how life has been lately more than anything else. February saw everything. In addition to the kids’ birthdays and our Florida trip, my grandma passed away. We also had appointments on top of appointments smooshed in amongst the regular chaos of life. I’m not sure we had a single “normal” day in the entire month. February was relentless.

I’m ready to put February aside and look ahead. Spring is here it seems. The temps are steadily moving upward and sunshine seems to be more of a daily occurrence here than a novelty. This past weekend we were outside in the sunshine with temps in the 50s and it felt good—so good—to be outside again. The snow is almost gone and it’s the first time in four or five years where it feels as though we’re going to have an actual, real, live, proper spring, instead of suffering through a frigid spring break in March and freak snowstorms in April.

All the credit to the ice cream man who rolled through our neighborhood on Saturday. He knew that if he rolled through Minneapolis suburbia on a sunny, 56-degree day at the beginning of March he could sucker people into some $4 ice cream. And he did.

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I know many of you are still processing and reeling and sad and angry after Elizabeth Warren officially dropped out of the Democratic primary race last week. Hi, I’m right there with you. I don’t want to wait 4-8 more years for a woman to be the presidential candidate again. I don’t want to watch this election cycle be yet another battle between old white men. I have no more words for it all myself, so here are some thoughtful reads:

“I Am Burning With Fury and Grief Over Elizabeth Warren. And I Am Not Alone.”
“It Will Be Hard to Get Over What Happened to Elizabeth Warren”
”The Enthralling Brutality of Elizabeth Warren”
”What Elizabeth Warren Taught Us”

Also “The Electable Female Candidate”. Which is funny, but, y’know, also not at all.

The intro to Pantsuit Politics Friday episode last week was life-giving. Just listen to the first few minutes. Seriously considering Sarah saying “A woman president is inevitable…I believe that to my core…it’s going to happen sooner rather than later” as the alarm on my phone.

+++++

Other reads from around the Internet:

“Will the Milennial Aesthetic Ever End?” (TBH, I hope the pink never, ever goes away)
”Why Girls Need Pockets”
”What are we teaching boys when we discourage them from reading books about girls?”
”A Graveyard Full of Camels”

Also re: coronavirus. Or COVID-19, but, I really like the way coronavirus rolls off the tongue. (Also am disappointed that we didn’t think of “coronavirus” as a euphemism for “hungover” a long time ago.) Anyway. Because 2020 already feels a bit like a dumpster fire, this is also a thing on our collective radars. I appreciated this article. It sets just the right tone of “yes let’s be mindful of this but also it’s mostly fine and let’s not lose our sh*t” that my not-at-all-an-alarmist self appreciates.

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My go-to pancake recipe is this from the New York Times. I’ll be making these at least once over spring break.

Obsessed with this pasta dish. It feels fresh and bright and healthy(ish) with all the veggies. I use 1/2 lb. of sweet Italian sausage and a healthy sprinkling of Parm is a must.

Also been making this simple smoothie on repeat. I usually have most of the ingredients on hand and have been making one in the afternoon for Nolan and me to share at snack time. Definitely recommend adding a handful of ice before blending it all up.

+++++

Updates on the “what do you want to be when you grow up?’ question:

Caden: an artist
Brooklyn: a Kindergarten teacher
Nolan: “a mommy and I’ll say, ‘You can watch whatever you want’ all day.”

Guess he’s taking issue with my whole “read books and play with toys” stance on parenting.

Read, Watched, Listened

I love reading just about everything (okay, you won't see any mystery or sci-fi picks on here), watching things that make me think and especially if they make me laugh, and wholeheartedly embrace the podcast. I also enjoy hearing about what other people are reading, watching, and listening. Here's my two cents worth.

READ
She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story that Helped Ignite a Movement
This book - by the reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein scandal and ignited the #metoo movement - is so important. It is not a fun read. Some of it is kind of really awful to read. But telling women’s stories is so important. And reading about their reporting process was fascinating.

Where the Crawdads Sing
*Unpopular opinion alert* I don’t understand why everyone has gone apeshit over this book. It was…fine. three out of five stars, maybe. I finished it and had the feeling I’d just read a Jodi Picoult novel: unlikely female protagonist culminating in a dramatic courtroom trial with a twist ending. Which is fine! I actually really like Jodi Picoult! But I don’t understand why everyone keeps talking about this like it’s the Great American Novel. Also, the romance part of the plot read very YA to me (Which, again, I love a lot of YA! It’s fine!) but felt weird for this book that was supposed to be all literary genius. I’ll give credit to the beautiful prose describing the natural world and the hint of the independent woman we saw more towards the end. I guess I’m more confused about all the hype than anything. Tl;dr: this book was fine, I don’t understand all the praise.

Learning to Walk in the Dark
This was a quick read for me. It’s not my favorite Barbara Brown Taylor book, but I did appreciate her laser-focus on the topic of darkness. I feel like I was a bit jaded because our pastor has preached a couple times on the beauty of darkness recently, so this topic wasn’t exactly revelatory for me. Still, she’s a beautiful writer.

The Best American Food Writing 2019
I love these essay round-ups. I have to say I enjoyed the 2018 version more, I actually skipped a couple of pieces in this volume, but it was still well worth the read. It was also fun to re-visit some pieces I’d already read this past year when they were first published!

Ask Again, Yes
I had to go to Amazon to refresh my mind on what this book was about. I literally sat here and drew a complete blank for several minutes. I’m not sure what that says about this book. (Also, I read this in February and February was just an intense month for me. So maybe don’t hold it against this book) Now that my memory has been refreshed, I do remember enjoying this one! I’m always in for a family saga - or a couple-of-families saga, as this book chronicled two neighbors and their friendship (or lack of) through the decades. That said, the characters fell kind of flat for me. Though this book spanned decades, there wasn’t much growth. Though maybe that’s more true-to-life, anyway.

Such a Fun Age
This book was interesting in that I didn’t love any of the characters. Honestly, I found them all pretty annoying. That’s to be expected with one of the main characters, Alix, who is the epitome of white feminism in heels. But even Emira, her black babysitter, was hard for me to get behind. Her life choices and lack of introspection often had me rolling my eyes (though not as hard as I did at Alix!). My favorite character was actually Briar, Alix’s daughter. I appreciated her dialogue - it felt super believable, which isn’t easy to do with a toddler character, so full props to the author there! While this book explored topics that are important to me - namely racism and the ways we are so often blind to the prejudice within ourselves - it was just hard for me to care because I didn’t like the characters.

Daisy Jones and the Six
This was a fun read. At first I wasn’t sure about the format. It was like the longest magazine interview you’ve ever read. I got into it pretty quickly, though. I missed the description you would typically get with a narrator, but it was definitely interesting to have all of these different points-of-view woven together.

The Most Fun We Ever Had
Another family saga. This was a long one - there were some parts I slogged through and others I adored. Overall I really enjoyed it. Maybe just because (in fact, probably definitely just because) it was a story of a family with four daughters, but it read in some ways like a modern version of Little Women. I can see why some people have called it boring but this is one of my favorite types of writing.

The Dearly Beloved
LOVE this book. I love the characters, I love the narrative, I love the story in a Christian setting that isn’t Christian fiction (gag) or trying to sell me on theology. They’re just people who also happen to be pastors, or married to pastors. One of my favorite reads in awhile.

WATCHED
Cheer
Yup, I drank the Kool-Aid. Go Navarro! Go Dawgs! This mini-series is fantastic and I want Jerry to be my BFF in real life.

Marriage Story
UGH what a gut-wrenching film. Don’t get me wrong, it was absolutely fantastic, but it was so emotional I don’t think I can ever watch it again. I would also take Laura Dern as a BFF IRL.

Miss Americana
Even before this documentary my love for Taylor Swift ran DEEP. Story about a woman who played the “good girl” role her whole life until she listened to and learned how to use her own voice? Um, hi. * raises hand * So. Good. (I’ll also take her as a BFF, duh.)

LISTENED
Finding Fred
I am 100% all-in on the Fred Rogers-mania we’ve found ourselves in lately. This podcast was FANTASTIC. Just listening to clips of Fred’s voice helps bring my blood pressure down.

Armchair Expert
I ADORE Josh Gad and this episode had me laughing out loud throughout. Such a good, refreshing listen, especially during a heavy, busy, chaotic month.

Note: any links to Amazon in this post are affiliate links.