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["Don Bowen" <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>]

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Don Bowen      KI6DIU
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html
>From genegerue AT ruralize.com  Fri Jun  6 10:09:38 2008
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Subject: [Homestead] Save gas money by working at home? Maybe.
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I had forgotten about writing this and somehow stumbled across it on  
the Web. Consider it as some things to consider before deciding that  
you should stop commuting and work at home.

Married & Working Together
Can This Marriage Be Saved?
By Gene GeRue
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with permission from Country Connections Journal, June 1997.

THE NEW RUMBLE IN THE LAND is of men and women working at home, 41  
million of us, according to At Home Professional magazine. Many are  
spouses doing the entrepreneurial two-step in dining room, bedroom or  
basement. Business plans are now implicated with marriage plans and  
"for better or worse" has real meaning when spouses share a home  
office. Having a modicum of experience in this arena (a little goes a  
long way) and seeing the need, I feel compelled to help. First, a list  
of attributes of thriving home co-workers.


You are selective listeners. Phone conversations a yard away are not  
heard. When he is blowing a deal you never scribble a note and wiggle  
it in front of his face or place it on his desk, wave your arms and  
point to it. You also have selective vision, which filters out  
slovenly apparel and hair design or lack thereof.

You never interrupt her, no matter how brilliant your idea.

You instantly recognize who can best make each important decision.

You care not who gets the newest computer, largest desk, window  
position, fetches the mail or answers the phone.

You never read his mail unless instructed to do so with a notarized  
document.

You can mentally erect imaginary but soundproof walls, hear a clicking  
keyboard as a musical instrument, interpret a belching chair as a sign  
of focus, effectiveness, a harbinger of tropical vacations.

Experts say you must balance work and play or face burnout. So you are  
both workaholics for twelve hours each day and then you are ready for  
serious play for the remaining twelve hours before work resumes.

You love to prepare meals, wash dishes, clean house, take out the  
recyclables, but are willing to allow your partner to do so half the  
time.

If you have an infant, you live to change diapers and wipe spit-up. If  
pets, you look forward to dealing with accidents, regurgitations, hair  
balls, especially when the phone is ringing, the doorbell chiming,  
lunch burning on the stove and your spouse has been reading for an  
hour in the bathroom. Times like these allow you to flaunt your  
potential.

You never speak loudly, even when script-reading callers insist for  
the zillionth time you should change long distance carriers.

When both have an off day on the same day you flip a coin to see who  
takes the day off. You do this no later than nine ayem and you both  
applaud the result.
Spouses working together have unlimited opportunities to play to each  
other's strengths. My cousin, Chicago Keith, knows owners of a mail- 
order company who play good cop/bad cop with slow vendors. After the  
wife, Attilia, finishes her version of persuasion and pauses for  
breath, Timmy picks up the phone and interrupts to murmur that a gang  
of men are stealing their car and would Attilia please make them go  
away, then asks the vendor how is your day going, how are the kids,  
would it please be possible to expedite our order, and, by the way,  
ignore those rumors, Attilia almost never makes surprise visits.

  Working at home means other household members are able to share more  
of your day. Children and pets are delighted you are available for  
frequent play.

Speaking of pets reminds me of Cool Lips. No, she's a human friend  
whose real name is Susan. I call her Cool Lips because she blows sweet  
reeds and has male aversion syndrome. Her stories illustrate the  
epitome of spousal co-workers: long-haul trucking. She relates the  
time she refused to get back into their behind-schedule truck at a  
Wyoming rest stop until her then husband apologized. She forgets what  
that was about, but she clearly remembers the time she catapulted him  
out of the sleeper in Colorado. She reached down to retrieve the cat's  
dish from under the seat, drove onto the shoulder and jerked the wheel  
to avoid taking the eighteen-wheeler over a cliff. Cat: one; marriage:  
zero.

The question that this article is helpless to address is: Should your  
marriage survive? Some wits speculate that working together saves big  
counseling fees by speeding up the inevitable. I understand that  
modern pre-nups include property divisions upon termination of the  
business or marriage, whichever comes first.

On days when you need to remember why you are doing this, consider  
that the ultimate result of work-at-homers may well be a balanced  
federal budget and world peace. How? Work-at-homers drastically reduce  
oil consumption, which decreases the number of zillion-dollar rocket  
spitters needed to ensure unlimited oil. Surely that result is worth  
any personal sacrifice. I hope I have not dissuaded you from working  
at home with your spouse. I heard that nearly half of all such  
marriages survive. Since that's not much worse than averages for  
marriages as a whole, I say go for it--you may be one of the lucky  
ones. Especially if you possess the Right Stuff. Allow me to  
demonstrate.

"Honeybunch, just in case you're ready to stretch your legs, when you  
return, oh, any time you decide, could you pretty please bring me a  
cup of coffee? SNo? That's O.K. sugarplum, my legs are actually  
feeling a little stiff anyway. SOh, one for you, too? Of course,  
darling."


###

About The Author

Gene GeRue is the author of How To Find Your Ideal Country Home:  
Ruralize Your Dreams. Gene and his wife, Christina, have worked at  
home together in the same room for two years, seven months, twenty- 
nine days, six hours and three minutes as of the time of this  
submission. Chris does not think this article is funny.