It was as it had been planned, which was how she liked it: everything as it should be, everything in its place. She was adept at organizing, subcategorizing, the punching of figures to make fit into spreadsheets. Life, as she felt it, lacked organization. It lacked discipline, hard edges that could form boundaries between how things were and how things should be. Instead Life was soft instead of hard-edged, furry and warm instead of cold and sleek. She was never an animal lover.
They had their condo, brand new construction, entirely modern, bought with their dual income; they had their expensive furniture, their foreign cars, one for each to shuttle off to their respective professions, each feeling useful yet not useful enough. They did the things together that were expected: the mutual hobbies, online-ordering because who liked to deal with people, the organic food shopping on Saturdays, one pushing the cart around the aisles as the other reached for the boxes, the cans, the bunches of produce, and held it up to the other for inspection. They had their daily routines, which pleased her, consoled her, because routines were something that she understood, something that held her up, kept her going. She feared that without them she may in fact never get out of bed, or else lay in the bathtub until the water grew cold around her. If it weren't for routines to prove her daily existence, she may no longer keep existing daily.
DUAL INCOME NO KIDS.
