Cups of tea and being with you in spirit

Nikki whacks the kettle on as soon as I get home. And we make a pot of tea and sit down somewhere and just be. It sounds so simple. It's taken us about two years to really master it. For a while we had to buy fancy chocolate just to provide additional motivation to get in the habit. We still buy leaf tea for these occasions.

We're not actually tea snobs. We drink it with lots of milk and with sugar. But we still like pot tea. Tea snobbery feels a little bit second-rate, like beer snobbery. It's for people who don't understand coffee and wine.

Also, Nikki is great at being with me in spirit. We're not doing separate things that are completely unrelated to each other. We are not competing with each other for time and importance. We are in it all together. When you are with the other person in spirit, it's much nicer. And it's much easier to negotiate.