Yesterday Darcy gave her perspective about living together on the blog. Today, it’s my turn!
Business school isn’t the only new thing in my life. My new roommate has certainly been the biggest change around here. No, Darcy isn’t exactly a new part of my life, but living together certainly is!
In a way, the past several years of our relationship has been gearing us up to move in together. Just last summer before I had decided I wanted to go back to school, we were looking at apartments together in New York City. It’s amazing what can happen in the span of a year…
Our new normal is, well, normal. The stresses of change haven’t been all that stressful mostly because our lifestyles are so complementary. I let her have her time to watch rerun after rerun of Grey’s Anatomy while she lets me slip away and play Fortnite for a few hours after a long day at Tuck.
On the CF front, she’s handled the transition like a champ. She’s taken on the role of sterilizing my nebs for me after I make a quick exit for school before 8:00am and she usually has nutrient dense dinner ready around the time I get back.
Speaking of CF, she’s made it her goal to improve my overall nutrition. She packs a tube feed for my lunch each day, and I know she takes great pride in perfecting her everchanging recipe. What has been a bit more of a challenge for her, though, is my eating habits. Like most CF families, I grew up with the “separate dinner.” It’s obviously not in everyone’s best interest in the household to eat a typical CF high-calorie diet, so, like most of my CF peers, I grew up having a little bit of a different dinner plate than the one that sat in front of my mom, dad and sister. Simply put, buttermilk potatoes have always been a staple in my diet, but it was more of an occasional addition to my family’s dinner plates. I can see that’s been a bit of an adjustment for Darcy, but it’s been a small thing that she’s getting used to… just like I’ve had to get used to her “no shoes on the rug” rule.
The biggest transition for her, though, has been far from my daily CF care. For all intents and purposes, we are living off the grid here in Hanover, NH, and she is jumping into a work-from-home lifestyle after several years of practicing psychotherapy on location. What comes with the work from home life is a lack of human face to face interaction throughout the day, so one of the things that I am working on is being able to turn off the student switch and turn on the partner switch when I get home every day from class. It’s important to me that she has just as great of a time in Hanover as I do!
I think Blink is keeping us both more than occupied, though. One of our new favorite pastimes is taking her on long walks through Dartmouth’s beautiful campus or challenging ourselves on the Hanover stretch of the Appalachian Trail. In fact, Blinky has a doggy Fitbit, which, if we’re being honest, is just as much for us as it is for her. It’s called a Whistle and it tracks where we take her for walks, how long we are walking, and then when we’re in our condo, it tracks how much activity she gets while we’re sitting on the couch (not much). Needless to say, the Whistle has been a good incentive to keep us active. As the saying goes, a tired dog at night, is a good dog.
Blink’s presence, our willingness to learn more about each other’s lifestyles and her unconditional support for both my academic and CF success have all undoubtedly strengthened our relationship. Having a new roommate has been awesome.
