My husband typically does not work from home. He would not choose that for himself. However, on occasion, the Governor calls for a state of emergency and then my husband has little choice. We recently had such an occasion, in March because we get blizzards whenever we want now, and my husband was all like, “I guess I can just work from home.”

I am a stay at home mom, except all of my children live elsewhere because of college and vet school and because they essentially are grownups. I am a student too, so I have school work and I am swamped with term papers and midterms and learning the difference between myelinated axons and de-myelinated axons, and also haploid cells and other cool things. So when my husband said he was going to work from home, for the first time in like twenty five years, I was all like “Cool!”

Secretly I was like ‘does he know the level of crazy i am, ummm does he know that i pretend to be mary poppins to the animals when he is not home? also, would he mind playing the role of burt?’

So that morning I got up with the puppy and put him out. When I did this a very strange thing happened, a shit ton of birds came and landed in the tree behind the fence in my yard. I was like, “They have come to meet the future king.” I lift up the puppy and presented him like Simba off of pride rock, complete with music (hum singing)!

I totally forgot that my husband was home. I am outside in my pajamas, winter coat, muck boots and holding the puppy up to a tree and singing. Husband opens the door, it’s a sliding door so it makes a swoosh sound. I feel my heart up in my throat.

“What the hell are you doing, Becki?” he asks, which is fair.

“I’m presenting the puppy to the birds, because they wanted to see him.” I answer, and smile because I know it is weird.

“Why?” he asks

“Because they wanted me to.” I say

He shakes his head and says “Do you want a coffee?”

So this means, that yes he knows how crazy I am.

That day I spent a lot of time taking the puppy out because apparently the puppy game is stand out in a blizzard singing “potty potty potty potty” and then bring them inside so that they can shit on the floor. My husband was on the phone talking loudly because he doesn’t know that phones have come a long way from the ole’ soup can on a string model  and I am trying to also get school work done.

My husband every once in a while will ask “Do you want me to do something?”

I think ‘i would like you to risk it and just drive to work, the blizzard looks like its letting up it’s only two inches of snow an hour now.’

I answer “Nah! I’m good.”

I decide to try to yoga and you see when I am home alone I am a fucking yoga rockstar, when I have an audience I am NOT a yoga rockstar. I look more like a ball trying to balance on a stick. I wobble, I sweat and I breathe and then I take breaks, many breaks, which is normal, right? Like oh that pose, I’m working up to that one, skip it. Oh that’s the one I did yesterday and it made my neck hurt, skip it. Oh I don’t even know what the hell this lady is doing….Is that her leg or her arm, skip it! But this particular time, I am all like, “Ah yes the tree horn and the swattling frog, and my favorite the farting goose pose!” okay maybe those aren’t the names but I know that I can’t do them and I’m sure that they way I am doing them, these names are appropriate. So if I am being honest my favorite pose is savasana and that’s basically a nap. So there I am teetering and trying not to land on my poor unsuspecting puppy,  who thinks I am just trying to play with him. My husband is watching me and he says “Is he disturbing you? I can take him.”

“no, don’t take him because he is my excuse for not being able to do the wrangling a pig pose.” I look up and say “He’s fine. He isn’t in my way.” I secretly hope that I don’t fall on him because the puppy is only like seven pounds and I am way more than seven pounds and it would be fatal I am certain. I sit and cuddle with the puppy in my lap and my husband looks at me and says “Is that really a pose?”

“It’s the puppy pose.” I announce. Well it’s my puppy pose, actually puppy pose in yoga squishes my boobs.

The wind starts really whipping outside and the puppy runs over and starts whining at the door. I now consider letting him use the cats’ litter box. Do I really need to go out into the extremes to potty train this seven pound puppy when I just let the cats shit in a sandbox?

My husband puts his boots and hat on and says “I can put him out. You can finish your yoga.”

Oh right! My yoga. Okay, I look at the girl in folding pretzel pose and I sigh. Okay! When my husband comes in and sees me laying down in nap pose he says, “That’s one I can do!” He comes and lies on the mat that I set out for the puppy and he looks at the woman and she is doing fucking lunges. The jig is up, he’s on to me. Yoga is my time to lie on a mat and take a nap. “Why aren’t you doing what she’s doing?”

“Oh, a new program must have started by accident.” I turn off the yoga app and lie back down in nap pose. We both lie on the floor side by side each on their own mats, because we aren’t animals, and we stay that way for a solid twenty minutes. The puppy was asleep on my mat with me and my husband snoring.

His phone starts ringing and it’s back to reality. He is at work and I am suppose to be doing my school work. That night we sat discussing if we should chance it and see if the sushi place was open. They weren’t, we called. So that meant we had to cook. We cooked together and we ate together and then we sat and watched the snow fall together. It was so nice having him home. Not weird after all.

“Honey, why didn’t you ever do this when the kids were home?”

“Do what?”

“Work from home?”

“Oh, I don’t know! I honestly wished that I had. Today was a good day.”

That’s because I didn’t ask him to do a rap battle with me. The kids know what I’m talking about.

Moral of my story: take time to just be together and yoga is hard!!!!