It’s my turn!

She got more than me!

That’s not FAIR!

These phrases are pretty commonplace in any household with children. But they can also sometimes rattle around in my own brain. It’s no secret to me (and my husband) that when I am not at my best I sometimes tend to keep score. As I clean up from dinner, I stalk around passive aggressively while my husband works on the computer. I imagine him pretending to work while actually surfing Facebook. It’s not that I don’t trust him, it’s just that I might do that myself if given the chance.

I think there can be ups and downs in any relationship. When it comes down to it, our marriage is solid. But sometimes you lose that connection, if even just for a week or so. It’s very hard to explain, but I think we can both just feel it. You’re each going your own way, consumed by work or even a good book. A week goes by where we’re not going to bed at the same time. We take turns being out for late meetings. I have book club. He goes to the gym. Like ships passing in the night. When we are together, we’re busy with the business of living, working and running a household. I’m making lunches and he’s bathing the kids. I’m cleaning up from dinner and he’s supervising violin practice.

We’re a team. Just because I feel like I’m working harder than I can possibly be expected to work doesn’t mean that he’s not working hard too. It just means that there is too much work to go around. So rather than wallow in the craziness of life with two parents working full time jobs, and trying to maintain a home, we watch TV! Before the kids (and DVR) we usually had one or two shows we’d watch religiously. Once the kids were born, that kind of fell to the wayside. We watched little to no TV together. But 2016 has been the year of binge watching.

It all started with Game of Thrones. I was coming off of a particularly long stretch of feeling “in a funk.” He’d tried to get me to watch lots of times, but the previews didn’t interest me. Finally I gave in. And that was it – I was hooked. The show is great, but I was also smitten with being snuggled up on the couch next to one of my favorite people in the whole word for an hour (almost) every night. We had several seasons to watch to get me caught up so we had our work cut out for us. We’d push ourselves to get the kids to bed nice and early. We’d split the chores and do them fast. He’d make us a nice snack and we’d relax together for an hour and then actually go to bed at the same time. It’s been bliss.

It’s amazing how much better those nightly tasks are when you’re working together toward a common goal. And while we’ve gotten caught up on GOT, we’ve moved on to other shows – True Blood, Daredevil, Stranger Things and more. It’s not about the show. It’s about having something just for us and about working together as a team. Thank goodness there are so many great TV shows out there because we’re planning to watch together for the rest of our lives.