What would it take to make it usable for you (both of you)? DW tries really hard to make the site as broadly usable as possible, and if you put in a suggestion for a site scheme (at dw_suggestions or through support) that would work for you, there's a fairly good chance they would implement something like it with reasonable speed, especially if the discomfort is widespread.

(Also: Hihi! Welcome to DW! I would offer to help with the layout issues, but choosing layouts makes me twitchy so I'm still on the half-broken one I kludged together during early beta.)