Fitting In Fun: When Adult Concerns Wear You Down

Living together can be the most fun thing in the world, but there are times when it can also seem like one long meeting. When your household is overwhelmed by budgets and logistics, how do you squeeze in sweetness and silliness?

The Top 10 Topics of Conversation in our household lately have been:

1. Acquiring internet: does such a thing even exist way out here in the country?
2. Cable?
3. Furniture: building/buying/affording
4. House-selling
5. Storage totes
6. ACQUIRING INTERNET
7. Housewarming party: When? Where will everyone sleep/sit? (see #3 above)
8. Household finances
9. Is the shower leaking?
10. Internet....

Woo! It's like conversational spring break! Add in the new rattle the car decided to start making and my hilarious Slip-n-Slide injury that turned out to be a fracture, and the precious time and energy we have together is spent going over data limits, CB2 catalogs, and leak causes rather than important topics likeOutlander, what to do with all our butternut squash, the fact that pink peppercorns are part of the cashew family, Dune, Dogfish Head's Punkin Ale's superiority, and this apple biscuit recipe that I'm excited about/skeptical of.These are the things I need to discuss, but all I ever talk about is download speed.

Whenever I hear of couples being totally overwhelmed by wedding planning (how would you not be?), I think, "They should totally establish a wedding talk-free day each week: Wedding-Free Wednesday." But when I find myself with similarly long to-do lists and discussion points, I kind of have to just squeeze them in whenever possible. We finally get to see each other at 9:30pm and have a precious hour together? What do you think of this cable package/sofa bed/X-ray? All of these things need to happen in a timely manner, so plowing through becomes the new standard.

So, what to do? I have a few bits of advice, and feel assured that yours will put mine to shame.

• Have movies/TV shows ready-to-watch, for a bit of levity when you're too tired/stupid to think. Have them in your Netflix queue so you can avoid the interminable searching, or check DVDs out from the library- you often get to keep them for 2 weeks or more!
• A 5-minute break works wonders. Go outside just to watch the sunset, dance to one song, show each other favorite gifs/videos, play a great new song you heard on the way home, arm-wrestle, whatever.
• Establish business hours. Even if Taking Care of Business takes until midnight, once you've agreed you're done for the night, cut yourselves off. Have a cocktail together, discuss something silly, play one hand of cards, just be totally done with logistics for the night.
• Remember that this too shall pass. You won't always be this busy/stressed, and there will be times when you look back on this level of busy/stress and laugh— amateurs. It's great to put effort into having romantic, scintillating, challenging, and fun conversations, but if you haven't had one in a fortnight, don't panic. Eventually you'll get around to discussing all the new state fair foods...

Okay! How do you cope when wedding/baby/family/budget logistics are completely dominating your conversations and entire life? How do you stay fun when you feel like everything in your brain is so tedious?

(Image credits: Marcia Prentice)