The honeymoon is not over — quarantine edition

A little over a year ago, my husband and I had returned from our three-week honeymoon in New Zealand.

I have done a lot of traveling and been to many places and New Zealand will always hold a special place in my heart.

We couldn’t stop talking about how much we missed it.

The people, the beaches, the trails, the cutest sheep in the world, the real fruit ice cream! We missed it all.

As we returned to our regular lives of being stuck in traffic or being back at work, we would always joke in between doing mundane tasks at home, such as putting dishes away together: The honeymoon is not over!

We had spent three straight weeks together on vacation and didn’t get tired of one another’s company. We drove around the north and south islands of New Zealand. Every day was new and fun. We fully enjoyed being together for those 21 days.

When the stay-at-home order started last month, and has since been extended, I remembered looking at Bryce and saying, “You think you’re going to grow tired of having to see me every single day with no end in sight?”

“No,” he said.

We are well into our fourth week of both working from home full time. (We’re lucky that both of our jobs allowed us to fully work from home before the stay-at-home order was officially implemented).

We take turns cooking dinner. Bryce may be doing more yard work than I have been … but, to plead my case, I have been working long hours related to COVID-19 communications since I work at a health care organization.

The first day we were both working from home, we tried to share the dining room table. The next day Bryce moved to our spare bedroom that now has been cleaned and organized to be his office. It’s working much better, especially when we both need to be on a conference call at the same time.

At the end of the work day, we eat dinner at my office table — the dining table — and share what happened in our respective work days. Often times, with me rushing back to work after we have eaten.

We have made time to go on walks after dinner most nights. There’s a special spot about a short walk away where a few bunnies hang out so we go check on them. One night I even brought carrot scrapes in an attempt to be friends. It didn’t work.

A few times a week, we also do yoga together, following the meditative voice in a free App Bryce discovered. And, every weekend, we have been going on a long run together (for now, that being about six miles).

Does this mean we have been living day in and out completely blissfully? No. We are humans after all. The back-and-forth disputes may or may not involve getting a dog or not.

None the less, I am grateful to be stuck at home with my favorite person in the whole wide world.

The honeymoon continues.