Lee Geiger

My wife told me last night that if it were up to her, she would kill me, chop me up into little pieces, and stuff me in the freezer. Lucky for me the freezer is already full.

Anonymous

Desirous of a much-needed change of scenery from our marital cabin fever, The Pretty Blond and I temporarily violated parole and snuck out of our home confinement for a Napa Valley road trip. Our escape was short-lived; we left at noon and and were back by four. We exited the car just once, and that was to take a stroll through beautiful downtown Yountville. This celebrated slice of Wine Country was a virtual ghost town, save for the line of carb-seekers at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bakery. We did walk past his world-famous eatery, The French Laundry, arguably the finest $2,000, 14-course dining experience in America. And yes, we checked; they weren’t offering delivery or take-out.

Not a single winery was open for tastings, but a few offered curbside service should one feel the need to restock their depleted wine cellar. We didn’t concern ourselves with the fact that the overwhelming majority of Wine Country commerce was shuttered like an old movie set. Just looking at something besides the walls of our house was good enough. I did contemplate absconding with the roll of toilet paper at the bathroom we managed to find, but Mom raised me to be better than that.

The dynamics of both of us working from home has been, in a word, educational. The Pretty Blonde claimed the dining room as hers, her up/down mechanical desk, adding machine with tape (they still exist?) and two desktop monitors looking as out of place on our dining room table as me prancing around the house in leggings and a t-shirt. The kitchen separates her workspace from my office, which is a good thing; it’s like having our own neutral corners to get away from each other. But because she prefers crunching numbers and paying invoices in a soundproof environment, and I have the voice of a carnival barker, we negotiated a peace  treaty that I am to keep my office door shut if I expect to be on the phone more than five seconds. Not that I have a problem closing myself off to the rest of the house. It just means I can work in my underwear in peace.

Despite spending every waking (and sleeping) moment together, we’ve established a routine that seems to work for both of us. Whereas we sit down for dinner every night, communal breakfast and lunch is purely optional. She doesn’t come into my office to say “hi,” and I don’t pester her every ten minutes asking if she wants anything from the fridge. I’ve only managed to embarrass her twice during her Zoom conference calls, but I want it on record that both times I was asked by her Zoommates to return for an encore.

The sharing of house chores has gone remarkable well. We make the bed together every morning, both do our part with maintaining a relatively clean and orderly kitchen, and each of us is responsible for scrubbing down our own bathroom. One of us makes dinner, and the other does the dishes. It’s sort of like being back in college, minus the weird smells and, of course, the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll.

The family room serves as our gymnasium. My preference is to get my exercise by leaving the house and hiking around Moraga while listening to podcasts about the coming breakdown of societal norms and the pending collapse of the entire global capitalist infrastructure. She, meanwhile, scans Amazon Prime for Zumba videos and burns off more calories in thirty minutes than I do in six hours. She’s egging me on take an online yoga glass, but she knows the odds of that happening are identical to the chances I’ll skip the post-dinner dessert cookies. We’re all going to die someday, so why the hell not?

The evenings on the couch can be a bit of a challenge. I like to watch dark and probing mysteries like The Wire and True Detective. You know, the kind of dramas that make your mind and body squirm simultaneously. But the Pretty Blonde, who took a pass on the cynicism gene at birth, and who to this day still sees the world through rose-colored glasses, prefers the never-ending cycle of sugar plum fairy tales served up by the Hallmark Channel. Personally, I don’t get it. Every Hallmark movie follows the same exact sweeter-than-sweet story line; pretty people in pretty places saying pretty things, and in the end there’s a pretty ending that’s prettier and gooier than a bowl of caramel fudge. Yuck! I didn’t mind with watching movies like “My Dream Valentine” and “A Country Wedding” the first time around, but after enduring a holiday season of Hallmark Christmas flicks, it’s all I can do to flee the living room before my gag reflex instinctively kicks in. Seriously.

Then it’s time for bed, which for me means lights out a good hour or two before my bride. This allows her to have some desperately needed quiet time to read a book club novel or to prepare for her weekly Bible Study gatherings. This mismatch in bedtimes means I nearly always wake up in the morning long before she does. It also means I nearly always have to wash the ice cream scoop she left overnight in the sink.

This whole relationship self-discovery-on-steroids thing is nothing more than a rerun for Team Geiger. The Pretty Blonde and I realized long ago that while we happily married for life, we did not marry for lunch. Yet despite the banal existence of having to spend each slog-of-a-day under the same roof for twenty-four hours at a clip, after 34 years of marriage it’s clear that there’s no company we enjoy more than each other’s, and we’re going to get through this mess like we’ve always done; with love from our hearts, respect from our minds, humor in our spirits, and smiles on our faces.

Together.