Now with the holidays safely behind us, Kristi and I are gradually dredging ourselves back into day-to-day routine. Without a question, the early morning wakeups are the worst – by New Year’s, we were both sleeping until ten in the morning. And I’ve never been an early morning person; left to my own devices, I’ll gradually settle on a noon-to-3am workday. So the last couple of mornings, I’ve slept right through the alarm and didn’t wake up until Kristi turned on the bedroom light and insisted on my consciousness with a hot cup of cinnamon hazelnut.

We can see the patterns forming, how married life is going to be on a day-to-day basis. Lots of quiet at-home evenings on the couch, watching TV or quiet reading; plenty of Sam-walking, dinner-making and laundry-doing, punctuated by the occasional and ever popular Mowing Of The Lawn. Ten years ago I would have been bored out of my mind, but I’m loving every minute.. it’s funny how yesterday’s tedium becomes today’s good life.

The adjustment hasn’t been completely smooth, though. For me, the toughest part has been getting past my own need to be independent. It goes way deep; I’ve been on my own for a very long time. Running my own freelance business over the last six years has further cemented my “I Am An Island” routine.. my first instinct in any challenging situation is to circle the wagons and plot out how to handle the problem myself, without bothering anyone else with it. So both of us have had to work hard to remind me that this isn’t about she and I, but us. Independence is a hard drug to kick – it just tastes so darned good, even when you know it’s killing you.

Kristi’s gradually pounding it through my thick skull that we’re in this all together, breaking me of some old habits. Lately she’s been diving headfirst into the business mailing lists, researching businesses in California for our upcoming first cold mailing run of the year. So in addition to the usual sounds of Dr. Phil, Samson whining to be walked and the fireplace crackling, evenings recently have featured the occasional holler from the office as Kristi wants my opinion on a newly-found business for the list.

This is going to take some getting used to. But I’m getting there, and I’m enjoying it. I do lapse into the occasional setback, however.

When I moved in, I brought a lot of technology with me. I also (with her permission) made a number of significant upgrades to Kristi’s Dell, fully set up the home network with a shared print server, and tweaked a whole lot of other gadgetry in the office. My natural instinct with tech is to assimilate; every so often I add something cool and obscure and then Kristi unwittingly trips over it, and then hilarity ensues.

The other night she got home, sat in the office at her computer and started playing MP3’s. She loaded the mailing list spreadsheet off the server to spend an hour or two digging up business prospects, and at first couldn’t connect with the file – there was some sort of hangup with the file sharing connection, something that was tough to just talk her through. Instead, I sat at my computer and said “Hold on a sec.”

Then suddenly her desktop pointer flew across her computer screen, opened the Network Places window and started selecting network options. Kristi turned around FAST to see me sitting behind her, a replica of her desktop on my screen. I’d taken over her desktop remotely, operating her computer from mine.

“Don’t DO THAT!”, she said. “LEAVE MY DESKTOP ALONE!”

Umm..

“Look,” she said. “I know you just want to see how much you can do with this network, and to get everything on one monitor. BUT NOT WHEN I’M HOME!”

Kinda creepy, I guess, huh?

“No kidding!”, she said.

Eep. I thought it was kinda cool.

“So are you planning to give me my desktop back, or what??”

Double eep. Click – window closed. There you go, hon. Sorry for freaking you out.

I think the chicken’s just about done. Yeah.

I think I’m going to go check on it. Yeah.

Love you, honey.

[ quietly slinks back off to the kitchen ]