{"id":29479,"date":"2020-03-23T00:01:34","date_gmt":"2020-03-23T07:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=29479"},"modified":"2020-03-23T00:01:34","modified_gmt":"2020-03-23T07:01:34","slug":"cabin-fever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/cabin-fever\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh-Oh. Is Cabin Fever Setting In? — Sheltering at Home Day 6"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jon has a comfy office in our son’s old bedroom for working at home. Will having our own office spaces help fend off cabin fever? Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Sheltering at Home Day 6, Sunday, March 22, 2020<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Wikipedia has it about right: “Cabin fever\u00a0refers to the distressing\u00a0claustrophobic\u00a0irritability or restlessness experienced when a person, or group, is stuck at an isolated location or in confined quarters for an extended period of time.<\/sup>\u00a0A person may be referred to as\u00a0stir-crazy,\u00a0derived from the use of\u00a0stir<\/i> to mean ‘prison’.”<\/p>\n

That’s me. I’m getting stir crazy here in our house on the hill. And so is Jon. Tempers are short. And minor frustrations that are not our fault are driving us into cranky arguments. Like trying to get a grocery delivery online.<\/p>\n

We spend minutes arguing about whether to order chicken breast or chicken thighs from our neighborhood supermarket’s website. We enter chicken thighs. None offered. We try chicken breasts. The same.\u00a0We settle for ground turkey.<\/p>\n

“Order two packages,” I say. “I’ll make patties and freeze them.”<\/p>\n

“Ugh,” says Jon. “Frozen ground turkey?”<\/p>\n

I picture an empty freezer in two weeks time. I want to shoot back, “Better a couple of freezer-burned turkey patties than nothing.”<\/p>\n

I don’t shoot back. I keep my mouth shut. But I’m annoyed.<\/p>\n

And so is Jon.<\/p>\n

Is\u00a0cabin fever\u00a0setting in?<\/p>\n

Cabin Fever — New Stress on an Old Marriage<\/strong><\/h5>\n

We’ve been married for 43 years now. And we’ve been spending our days, both of us, working at home for twenty of those years. It’s been a nice, companionable way of life. Jon working in his office way upstairs in Peter’s old bedroom.\u00a0And me way downstairs in what used to be our kids’ basement playroom, writing.<\/p>\n

We meet in the kitchen for breakfast and dinner. Sometimes we chance upon each other at lunch time. Evenings, we take in the TV news together. If we need to talk in between, we call each other on our landline intercom. Or, if needed, I run up two flights of stairs for a face-to-face chat.<\/p>\n

Lucky for us, now that COVID-19 is upon us, we have not done what many in our generation have done: downsize. We still have lots of space to give ourselves space.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, working at home all this time and spending our days together has been nice. We like each other.<\/p>\n

But will being cooped up together in our, albeit biggish, house still be nice in three weeks’ time? Three months?<\/p>\n

No more day-long hikes for me at Pt. Reyes with my college friend Jean. No chance for Jon to head off to a baseball game with his work colleague Keely. No more dinner-and-a-movie nights with our friends up the street.<\/p>\n

Jon’s my best friend, but he’s not my only friend. How much companionship can a friendship like ours withstand?<\/p>\n

More about contagion and grumpiness at “A (Contagious) Case of the Human Condition.”<\/a>\u00a0 This isn’t the first time Jon and I have been housebound. Read about that one at “One Broken Ankle and Two Lives Grind to a Halt. Or, Why You Should Stop and Tie That Shoelace.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"cabin-fever-at-home\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Is cabin fever setting in at our house? Staying home and out of breathing distance of COVID-19 is driving me and mine into cranky arguments. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,41],"tags":[2194,2179,34,1572,1188,29,2184,2195,2196],"class_list":["post-29479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-sheltering-at-home-chronicles","tag-cabin-fever","tag-coronavirus","tag-dont-miss","tag-home-office","tag-house","tag-jon","tag-sheltering-at-home","tag-stir-crazy","tag-working-at-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}