At home, shutdown means crisis

I knew it was 5:30 a.m. because she with the whiskered face had put her two paws on the bed like she does every morning and was trying to lick my nose.

Why she never goes to the other side of the bed and gets up the Frau, I haven't figured out.

My first job on the way to letting out the dogs is to crank up the coffee machine. The Frau recently bought one of those one-cup coffee makers that produce a single cup at a time. It has those individual cups with weird names like "Caribou" and "Newman's Own." I've figured a cup of coffee at our house costs roughly twice what it does at Starbucks.

This time the little cup holder was empty. We had no coffee. I let the dogs out and went back to the bedroom.

"Honey, I thought you were going to buy more coffee yesterday," I said to the lump under the covers.

There was a slight stirring. "I'm shut down," said the voice in the dark. "I've closed down the family until we can come up with a budget."

"Budget?" I said. "Honey, you handle all the money. You have the checkbook. The credit cards are all in your name. If you need to buy something just go ahead and do it."

She rolled over and sat up.

"I'm not talking about money," she said. "I think we need to discuss entitlement programs and making a few basic changes. I didn't want to shut down our family. I thought we would be able to work something out before today but time just ran out.''

"Listen," I said. "It's the weekend. I'll go down to the store and pick up a pound of coffee while you whip up some breakfast and we can talk some more about it."

"I'm not making breakfast," she said. "I told you, we're shut down until we reach some new agreements."

"Tell you what," I tried again. "I'll treat you to breakfast down at the IHop and then ..."

"You don't understand," she cut in. "We need to make some fundamental changes and I'm confident we can negotiate a solution. Just a second," she said, getting out of bed. "I've made a list," she added, handing me a sheet of paper.

I looked at the list under my name.

"Laundry?" I began.

"I don't believe washing clothes and ironing was in our wedding vows," she said. "I put in my 30 years; now it's your turn."

I continued reading ... cooking, doing the dishes, vacuuming the house, buying groceries, putting away the Christmas lights before April, nagging our youngest to study and not play video games ...

"Wait a minute," I said loudly, looking at the last item. "Now you've gone too far. Some things are my responsibility and some are yours, but this is too much."

"Sorry," she said. "It's that or I'm shutting this place down."

It was all over, and I knew I had lost. I understood how Barack Obama must be feeling as I gave in to her final demand and handed over possession of the TV remote control.

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