Six Months In

 It has been six months (tomorrow) since DH began working at home, about 10 days ahead of the Governor's orders that closed down the state.  Six months later, a lot of industry is back up and running, but not all of it. Large businesses, they're doing okay. 

Truthfully, there hasn't been much easing of restrictions over the summer.  Michiganders still can't go wherever and whenever with whomever they want.  Restaurants are still at 50% capacity, or less--if they are even open.    Small businesses, no.  They're not okay. Many, many small businesses have not reopened, because they just can't make a profit at such restricted capacity, and some have closed down for good.

DH has, occasionally, gone into work for a morning, or an afternoon, rarely a full day, when certain program issues arise that just cannot be done without actually laying hands on. But there has been no job-related travel.  He was told, earlier this month, that his company does not plan to go back to normal in-person operations until next year.  Next year in the summer.  More than 12 months after initially sending their engineers home to work remotely.  Our temporary at home office set up for him is going to need some revamping to make it that long; a better chair and a second, larger monitor for his computer are two things we're going to have to get ahold of somehow.

We made it--whew! just barely, our savings and tax refund and stimulus checks depleted--through the months of him working full time on only 80% of his pay.  Just recently, full pay was reinstated, although that held back 20% is still yet to be reimbursed.  With careful attention to expenditures, and using a lot of our reserves, we have been able to make 100% of our normal payments to the mortgage, truck loan, etc, so have not had any harm to our credit rating.  What a blessing; there are many not so fortunate. (And some, despite making more in unemployment than they ever did on the job, who still have managed to not meet their obligations, but that's a whole different rant that I won't get into. It's a passionate topic with this lady who adjusted to live on 20% less while watching others live on sometimes 100% more!)

It hasn't been all bad.  In fact, overall, DH has done more at home this summer than I think he'd accomplished in the last 3 years combined.  His job is now more often the 40-50 hours a week a salaried person expects than the 60-70+ hours a week it had been for several years running.  He's more relaxed, and taking an interest again in home improvement projects we'd talked about years ago.  It's so nice to get caught up on maintenance things and we even have been working on a big project the last several weeks.  That project will get it's own blog post once it's finished, hopefully yet this month.

I'll be brutally honest and say that at the beginning of March, when he and I took our 4 day getaway, things were not well between us.  He was exhausted with work.  I was exhausted with trying to do both my household and his household stuff, for years, plus my own work.  We wanted to be on the same team, we knew we were on the same team, but it really felt like we weren't on the same team, or the same planet, at all.  Six months later, we're a good team.  We're a functional team, and a team with good rapport.  

So, I guess, a pandemic is sort of what our marriage needed.