Oh-Oh. Is Cabin Fever Setting In? — Sheltering at Home Day 6

Sheltering at Home Day 6, Sunday, March 22, 2020

Wikipedia has it about right: “Cabin fever refers to the distressing claustrophobic irritability or restlessness experienced when a person, or group, is stuck at an isolated location or in confined quarters for an extended period of time. A person may be referred to as stir-crazy, derived from the use of stir to mean ‘prison’.”

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.

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. We settle for ground turkey.

“Order two packages,” I say. “I’ll make patties and freeze them.”

“Ugh,” says Jon. “Frozen ground turkey?”

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

I don’t shoot back. I keep my mouth shut. But I’m annoyed.

And so is Jon.

Is cabin fever setting in?

Cabin Fever — New Stress on an Old Marriage

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. And me way downstairs in what used to be our kids’ basement playroom, writing.

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.

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.

Meanwhile, working at home all this time and spending our days together has been nice. We like each other.

But will being cooped up together in our, albeit biggish, house still be nice in three weeks’ time? Three months?

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.

Jon’s my best friend, but he’s not my only friend. How much companionship can a friendship like ours withstand?

More about contagion and grumpiness at “A (Contagious) Case of the Human Condition.”  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.”