So This Is What Retirement Will Be Like
Lately Chris and I have each been working from home a few days a week. When our days at home coincide, we both get up at our usual work times but the day progresses much more easily.
The dogs get taken outside twice as often because neither of the humans knows when the last outing was. The dogs are quite happy about this, and they have now learned that they can just wait meaningfully by a door and someone will let them out. Whereas if only one human were home, this human would know quite well that all the dogs had just gone outside an hour ago and they don’t need to go out right now, and I’m talking to you, Mr. Stanley.
Also, one of us can usually distract the dogs while the other’s on a conference call. On days when Chris isn’t working from home, the dogs often participate in my conference calls, whether they are on the agenda or not. On mornings when I haven’t woken up yet and Chris has an early conference call, he takes the call in the garage. In his car. I found that puzzling at first but then Chris explained he couldn’t hear the dogs from the garage.
“And sometimes I get tired of standing up,” he said.
On good days we can even work in one load of laundry between the two of us, thus saving us some weekend chores. In fact, the only negative thing about working at home together is the temperature.
After the first few days of working at home together, I began to notice something strange. Our thermostat is set low overnight because that’s the only way to get the air conditioning to stay on long enough to send some cool air to our 3rd floor bedroom. So most mornings, I have to turn up the thermostat to be comfortable on the lower levels of the house. I usually only need to make that one adjustment to the thermostat during the work day.
But now I was making multiple trips a day and I was always turning the thermostat in the same direction — higher so that the A/C would kick in less often. I assumed that the thermostat was just adjusting itself automatically according to its programmed temperatures. Or that maybe it was just magic. (Magic, I’ve found, is a good, all-purpose explanation of anything that happens which you can’t immediately explain and don’t want to put any time into investigating.)
Then one day I heard Chris on the stairs. I heard a click. I heard the A/C turn on, and I heard Chris going back down the stairs to his computer.
Apparently for every time I ran down a flight of stairs to turn up the thermostat, Chris was running up the stairs to turn down the thermostat. Neither of us said anything to the other — me, because it took me so long to realize what was going on, and Chris because, well, I’m not sure if he’s noticed yet how many times he’s had to adjust the temperature.
I didn’t really mind the running up and down, because at least I was giving my typing hands a short break from the computer. But then I pictured us in the not-so-distant future: Me staggering downstairs with my electric wheelchair built into the staircases to raise the thermostat. Chris making his way up the stairs with his cane to lower the thermostat. The two of us doing this in reverse during the winters. The two of us taking up the entire day, what with all that slow moving back and forth between the thermostat.
No wonder retirees go to bed so early. After all that walking, I’d be tired, too.
Posted by: ssjane | July 20, 2007 | 11:36 am
Posted in: This Life