House Husband

This fine Sunday morning, Kim has told me to sit down to discuss the upcoming week. I am long since past thinking that I have the dominant schedule in our household like I did during my working days. Kim and I have been together for twenty years now as of this month. When we first got together I was Chairman and CEO of Bear Stearns Asset Management, living in the South Street Seaport and commuting to Vanderbilt and 46th Street. I had your basic pressure cooker Wall Street job, tasked with building out and playing catch-up with Bear’s smallest of four major businesses. I had agreed early on with my boss, the co-President of the firm, that I would get the profitability of the business to the point where it represented 10% of the income of the firm by 2010. It seemed catchy to be able to say that our goal was 10 by 10. We were only at about 1% of revenue at that time and since the business lost money when I took it over, the distance to cover was considerable. I had already made it profitable in the first year there, but would have to grow the business consistently by 40%+ per year for five years to get to the target. Wall Street loves a stretch objective, and that all meant that my attention and my schedule was dedicated to that goal. Kim meanwhile was coming off the need to hold down several simultaneous “survival” jobs. I had paid off her credit card debt and her biggest scheduling issue was figuring out what to do with her days. But now the tables have turned.

My calendar these days usually consists of two stretch sessions on either end of the week, perhaps one medical or dental appointment and then a business call or two, usually in the morning hours. Having given up teaching a few years ago, my other work obligations are usually very flexible and since I do almost all of my work on my iPad, I can pretty much do it anywhere in or outside of the house as I choose. It’s easier to have WiFi access, but I don’t really even need that for the most part. My work is about reading evidence, analyzing the circumstances and data of the case, formulating my opinions and writing a report. That’s mostly IPad-contained workflow. Only when I am being deposed or have to give testimony in a hearing or trial do I need to adhere to a specific schedule or venue, and that only represents perhaps 5-10% of my hourly workload. It is a wonderful sense of freedom only made more free by the COVID-induced acceptance of increased remote and flexible-time working arrangements.

Kim, on the other hand has ratcheted up her theatrical and performance work and that all has a very different profile as to the rigors of time and place. She has her Encore singing group, which puts on two big shows per year and several smaller performances as well. That generally means that for perhaps nine or ten months of the year there are at least weekly rehearsals, usually for a full evening at some rehearsal hall a half hour or more from home. Now that Kim is gradually shifting from performing to directing, her workload has even further increased. She still has to learn the music (call it a dozen songs for a two-hour performance), but her stage direction requires her to prepare and adjust the narrative and pitter-patter that weaves the songs into a thematic show as well as choreograph all the movements for 50-60 performers on stage. That’s a pretty big undertaking that requires a lot of coordination with the musical director and his team, which means that in addition to the main weekly musical rehearsal, there are solo and dance rehearsals and lots of phone conferences to iron out various wrinkles. And of course, during show week there are daily rehearsals that precede the two or three evening performances…followed by the set break-down and the follow-on cast party. She also sings with a jazz ensemble monthly and that has a weekly rehearsal, also in the evening. This fall, Kim is also cast in a play (its actually just the reading of a play) and those rehearsals (three nights a week) are starting this week and will run for the next month or so. She auditioned for yet another play (Steel Magnolias) and would have probably been cast as either Clairee or Ouiser had she been in town for the final selection audition. In addition to all that, Kim still sits on the board of NYC-based Singnasium and those board calls take up a few hours each week. The bottom line is that she has much more of a schedule to uphold in addition to her self-imposed personal grooming appointments (too many to recite here), the usual array of medical appointments, local social obligations (Women’s Group and Garden Club mostly), and family gathering work (we are still the venue of choice for both our local family’s and Kim in the Major General of that operation).

So, as for this week, Kim informed me that she will be free and home on Thursday, but is otherwise spoken for each other night of the week for one obligation or another. We haven’t sorted out the daytime schedule yet, but I suspect that if it holds to form, there will be 2-3 hours of each day when she will be away from home. While Buddy coverage is available at doggy day care, we prefer that he be able to stay at home with one of us if possible as often as possible since he gets less agitated by avoiding the moving about. That means that Buddy and I spend a lot of time together in the house since he is too tasty a morsel for the local coyotes and hawks to be left on his own for long outside.

I am in an interesting and busy moment right now in terms of my expert witness work. My main event is an upcoming trial in NYC in mid-September. I have now been told that I have to be there for the whole trial, which is now scheduled for up to three weeks. I will become more familiar with the Cornell Club and 44th Street than I ever thought possible for those weeks. Between now and then (about three weeks at this point) I have 19 deposition transcripts (approximately 2,000 pages), 179 evidentiary exhibits and documents (approximately 1,200 pages) and a half dozen reports and motions (300 pages) to commit to memory as best I can so as to be fluid, informed and compelling on the stand. My deep-dive preparation will likely take me an average of five hours per day over the next 20 days and that means that being forced to stay at home to play with and generally care for Buddy is fairly consistent with that program. In addition, I have one other active, but slow-playing case which may require more time than the few hours per week I have been spending for the last few months. And just to keep things interesting, I was just awarded another large case which will be likely blossoming into a significant workload during the last quarter of this year and first quarter of next. That will likely mean that just as this trial winds down in late September, I will start ramping up my work on the next case. Therefore, my house husband status seems pretty assured for the foreseeable future.