For reasons unknown to me, my boyfriend's employer decided to switch him to day shift for one month -- just long enough for his sleeping habits to go out the window and for our routine to be ruined.
I'll be honest, I thought this was what I wanted. I've been whining for months about how we don't spend time together and how it's not natural to work nights for two-and-a-half years. But the switch got me thinking -- we had a good system going.
Here are some of the pros and cons of having a night-shift boo.
Pro: We have a non-official, but highly enforced rule that whoever is home from work first cooks dinner. The other person cleans the dishes. We argued over who is technically home first and I decided that arriving home at 5 am means he wins. Lucky fella.
Con: He uses every dish in the kitchen. I spend a lot of time rinsing.
Pro: I walk in from work, we eat dinner, talk and watch a bit of telly together before he leaves for work. Then the house is MINE. I watch 'Keeping Up With The Kardashian' re-runs while wearing sheet masks (which he finds terrifying) and bring the hair dryer downstairs to blast my hair during ad breaks. If that's not ~living~ I don't know what is.
Con: I have to wait until the weekend to watch 'our' TV shows. Unrelated: if anyone knows how to make Netflix lie about what's been viewed, I'm all ears.
Pro: I can put a load of washing on in the morning and he hangs it up when he wakes.
Con: Sometimes he goes fishing after work and wakes me up when he catches one. On one occasion at some absurd hour (for me at least) he came in super-proud with a fish in his hand and said "Are you awake?" to show me his catch of the day. Well, of the night. It gets confusing which is which.
Pro: I sleep well during the week. Don't get me wrong, I love sharing a bed with my partner and Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights we get to do that. But there's also something wonderful about tucking yourself in at 9 pm in complete silence and knowing nobody is going to steal the doona.
Con: I make the bed twice a day. I have a weird thing about leaving the house with an unmade bed, and an even weirder thing about getting into an unmade bed. So I make it when I wake up, and again when I walk in the door from work. I guess that says more about me being strange than it does about night shift, but here we are.
Pro: If I get packages delivered, there's always someone there to sign.
Con: He ignores the doorbell before 11 am.
Pro: He really enjoys working nights and has saved enough money to kick a bunch of his personal goals.
Con: Some nights I have work or personal commitments which keep me back, so if I'm not home by 7 pm I don't see him at all. He's allergic to using his phone so I often have to keep notes to remember all the things I wanted to say.
Pro: He has more time awake at home to do things.
Con: There are a bunch of studies about how bad working nights for a long time can be for his health.
Pro: If it's working for him right now, I'll do my best to make it work for us.
I'd check if he's OK with me writing all this, but he's probably asleep.
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