“Remoted” – Workday Eleven (Tuesday)

Remote workday eleven has left me tired. There have been a few nights of being up too late, and often not even of my own doing. My neighbors across the street, who are definitely not getting any model citizen/good neighbor awards, are continuing their stretch of nightly open house parties. What used to be a weekend event has recently become more of a nightly event. Multiple cars and motorcycles in and out all night, and then around 1:00 a.m., the long, loud goodbyes in the street that often erupt in yelling and swearing matches.

Today involved progress on work projects, which felt good. There were the usual technology challenges before our team webcam meeting, which was frustrating. No matter how early I start logging in for the meeting there are issues and error messages and I’m the last one to join. After the meeting I called in the tech gurus so I should be all set for our next meeting.

Moose in bed, Winston as close to the sun as he can get.
A moment of quiet with the canine overlords.

During the team meeting, Winston got tangled up a bit in the sheer drapes at the sliders. He finally got settled between the drapes and the glass in a patch of sunshine. Winston follows the spots of sunshine around the floor all day to sunbathe, so it seemed like he’d be content for a while. Surprise! After barely a couple minutes, he bolted up, barking like a maniac at something outside, which startled me so I jumped in my seat. Moose chimed in, because it's all about teamwork, except when they are giving each other the cold shoulder. Then, when the call was over, they napped like little angels, probably tired from their earlier antics, and recharging their batteries for the next escapade. Life is fun when every day is bring your canine overlords to work day.

“Remoted” – Workday Ten (Monday)

While executing project “controlling my environment” this weekend, I got an itch in the back of my brain. Instead of sacrificing my dining room, once my favorite room in the house for its serene feeling, for the hub of work from home, why not repurpose the kitchen nook with the bistro table and convert it to an office?

The “nook” was a porch once upon a time before me as evidenced by the floor, sloped for drainage, like the now enclosed front porch. The previous owner had carpeted the kitchen (yes, I know …) and the slope of the nook was not noticeable until the wall-to-wall was taken up. When my friends and I redid the floors, the nook floor was leveled.

Today it's a "coffee nook."
Maybe it will soon be an office.

For the first year or so, there was not much in the nook beyond a bookcase with some cook books. I finally got around to replacing the rubber stoppers to support the glass table atop the metal pipe legs and set up the bistro set that had been my grandmother’s. I imagined the area to be a cozy coffee nook. In all the time it’s been set up, I have sat there for coffee exactly once. It turns out, I prefer drinking my coffee in the living room. The breakfast nook holds a dog bed when I work away from home, but that is in the dining room now, too.

The kitchen nook turned office idea started as a seed this past weekend while shredding many pounds of paper. I was thinking about a very successful writer I met in Tennessee who has written her books from a closet. If a published book author can write in a closet, why don't I convert my closet sized nook for work?

After work on Remote Workday Ten, my email had an Overstock email promoting a home office sale. Of course, today is the last day. Usually I delete the Overstock emails without opening, but today I opened it.

I had already measured the wall with the window that overlooks the back yard and for two hours after work, it was a cyber rabbit hole of online furniture shopping. So many cute desks and chairs that would fit the space and the feel of the nook.

It’s a bit overwhelming. Between Overstock and Amazon, there wasn’t anything I absolutely “HAD” to have, but a whole lot of stuff I really like that would work great in the kitchen of now and the guest room/office of the future. There are two cyber shopping carts packed with office furniture now, but this deserves a sleep before the money starts flying around. And maybe it's just a passing fancy.

Lessons from Remote Workday Ten

1. A lot can be done in a minute. I've known this, but today I put science to it while waiting for my instant oatmeal to cook in the microwave. During that one minute, I put away all the silverware from the dishwasher. Later, while waiting for my tea water in the microwave (1.5 minutes) I decided to do jumping jacks. It took only 20 seconds to feel it. Tomorrow I’ll try it again. New fitness goal!
2. There is a lot of nice looking home office furniture available. Most people probably know this, but most people also shop a lot more than I do. Some of the desks had helpful descriptions like “the box is heavy, so make sure you have a friend”, and “definitely takes two adults to assemble.” Those were great looking desks, but I don’t have the kind of local friends I can ask that favor of, even in times not requiring social distancing.

“Remoted” – Sunday Two

Moose on the left, snoring.

Day 13, Sunday Two of the Home Alone Escapade. Why can’t the weekday work hours fly by as quickly as weekends do? Up at 7:00 am, drinking coffee on the couch and a rom-com on HBO that might have been the one with George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones, but it’s possible that was last night’s movie. The rom-coms all seem to be a blur of the same plot, watched from the same couch, same TV, with my same dogs that are either barking or snoring. It’s sometimes hard to separate the movies and the chunks of time. The dogs seem to have the right idea with the day-long series of naps.

After a nice, hot shower it was time to dress for the day. Moose regularly makes dressing a comical/stressful endeavor. The skit goes like this – Moose licks my bare feet and when I put on pants he barks. As I put on socks he barks more and mouths the edge of the quilt, and when the shoes go on he barks more and jumps around. Every. Day.

Winston to the right, sleeping.

Highlights of Sunday Two included more effort to “control my environment” with the continuation of the paper shredding project started Saturday. I miss having the space for a desk with file drawers to keep things logical and organized, but it will take some shopping and clever rearranging to accommodate such a luxury. For now, it’s purple plastic file totes stuffed in a room, but I'm getting some ideas.

Yesterday’s leftover veggies and egg noodles were embellished with even more veggies for a brief lunch and break from the file review and removal operation. After lunch, it was multitasking with shredding, binge-watching the new season of Ozark on Netflix, and baking. The gray and drizzly day felt perfect for fresh cookies, so the mixing bowl came out, the petrified brown sugar was softened in the microwave, and just over four dozen oatmeal-raisin-chocolate-chip-walnut cookies were baked. Usually, when I bake cookies, I like to play beat the recipe yield by making the cookies smaller and getting lots more. Today, it was a conscious decision to keep things moving so I stuck with the “rounded tablespoons” measure for the recipe yield. Paper shredding took place in 11-minute intervals while the cookies baked.

While the oven was already hot from the cookies, it seemed logical to follow up with a supper casserole of stuffing, cranberries, turkey, and apple slices. This was slightly less successful than the cookies. Not bad, but it would benefit from some gravy.

The evening featured continuing to watch Ozark while shredding until the shredding hit the point of being enough. That's not saying it was done, but that I'd had enough. Then it was time for playing Scrabble on Facebook with a dog asleep on either side. 

As always, the day was punctuated by frequent pauses to let a dog outside. It was a mostly normal Sunday,  and just like every other Sunday night, it came too quickly.

“Remoted” – Saturday Two

At home Day 12, aka "Saturday Two" was sunny and productive on several fronts. Coffee and a lazy breakfast of a granola bar accompanied a movie (“The Farewell” – on Prime – it’s “based on an actual lie” and pretty good, check it out).While the movie was on, there was a reorganization of the two living room bookcases under the new “controlling my environment” initiative.

My niece, who is studying cabinetmaking, made me a beautiful bookcase for Christmas, which had not been fulfilling its potential by holding books. Today, the task was completed and the other bookcase in the living room made neater. As a result of the bookcase arranging and rearranging, a box labeled “office” that lived on a shelf in the spare room for the past 3.5 years was also emptied.

The box was part of a separate mission to look for the desktop file holder that used to live on my actual desk in my actual office overlooking my wooded back yard at my house in Tennessee (which I miss more and more lately). The file holder was remembered a few days ago while looking at the mess of papers on my once serene dining table recently stripped of its tablecloth, runner, and silver vase and pressed into service as a desk. The box with the file holder also contained a treasure trove of books which now reside in the beautiful handcrafted, solid wood bookcase. Note: There were six bookcases in my house in Tennessee, so almost every moving box that left the house had books in it.

The newly emptied “office” box is flattened and now in the recycle bin. The place on the chrome shelf in the spare room now holds several framed artworks that had lived across the room leaning against a wall. So much progress!

The recycle bin saw a good bit of action today. In addition to the box marked “office,” several empty shoe boxes are now there, along with the eight Prime and Staples boxes that arrived this week for the eight items ordered via two online orders, and an oversize Kohl’s box that lived in the enclosed front porch since before Christmas. Like all the other empty boxes in the house, it had been saved “in case.”  

Lunch! Powered by veggies
and egg noodles.

After the bookcase arranging, the tiny potatoes and a giant beet from the produce delivery of earlier in the week were roasted. Kale, zucchini, onion, peppers, and diced tomatoes with egg noodles were prepared for lunch. Dishes were cleaned. Fortified by lunch, and fueled by the fires of progress, it was time for the outdoors.

The rake was retrieved from the shed and some of the leaves donated by the back-yard neighbor’s tree were gathered up. Unfortunately, the designated “Yard Waste” barrel was already half-full of trimmed rose branches from having missed the final pickup last fall, so the outdoor clean-up effort was prematurely halted.

Back inside, it was time to deal with paper. So much paper. The clutter in the spare-room-that-should-be-an-office included three boxes of files in serious need of review and disposal. Years worth of job search notes and printed resumes, tax records going back forever, and outdated retirement plan and rollover paperwork from at least four previous employers were taking up space in the file boxes. With all the local document shredding events cancelled under the precautions for COVID-19, that meant busting out the personal paper shredder. It’s labeled “6 sheets maximum” which doesn’t mean it shreds six sheets at a time and instead, more like “after six sheets it needs a 10-minute break,” so it’s going to be a long process. A jig saw puzzle would be more fun right now, but there aren’t any here, so paper shredding for fun and relaxation will have to do.

“Remoted” - Workday Nine (Friday)

Today could not get here fast enough to wrap up this week that left like a month. Thankfully, it finally did get here, and the sun was out all day and it wasn’t freezing, so overall it was quite pleasant. And it was light out until well after seven o'clock.

The sunny weather was enjoyed in 30 to 60-second increments throughout the day while letting the canine overlords out to the yard and back in again. The weather enjoyment is a result of confusing home design. The door from the kitchen opens not to the back yard, but to a side driveway, so letting the dogs into the enclosed back yard requires leaving the house on a short trip up the driveway to the gated yard.

My dream house, which differs a bit from the one I mortgaged my life to, has a light and airy guest room/office, basement suitable for storage, and a door that opens directly to the back yard, eliminating the walk up the driveway to access the yard. Yes, I know, it’s a lot to ask for. There are reasons my house differs a bit from my ideal, but that is a story for another time.

Each of the many times the fur princes were let out into the sunshine, I thought about doing yard work at five o’clock when I was done working. There are tasks that went undone last fall – the dead, dried leaves of the irises were never removed. The light snow this year left the leaves a visible reminder of my “gardening.” The neglect bestowed upon the yard last year included buying bark mulch but never placing it in the yard. Luckily, that means there are now already three bags of mulch ready for this year. The irises are already coming up and the dogs are tearing them up with their pottying, so it’s time to put up the low fencing that keeps them out of the flower beds.

First salad, then pizza.

Instead of heading to the yard at five o’clock, the journey stopped short in the kitchen and dinner was prepared. Although multiple tasty options were available including leftovers of stuffed peppers, rice with vegetables, and homemade soup, and plenty of fresh produce to make new dishes, the winner of Friday night supper roulette was a salad with roasted turnip and butternut squash and a red wine vinegar dressing. This was followed by a slice of leftover pizza, which is what I really wanted, but made myself start with the salad in an effort to be more mindful and healthy. After supper, yard work was so far from consideration it was like it had never even been a thought. Funny how that works. It’s been a long week. Maybe Saturday. 

Lessons from Remote Workday Nine

1. Receiving packages is fun, but eight separate shipments for two orders feels like a bit too much fun. Each item is shipping individually and individual amounts have been charged to my account.
2. It’s nice that the Prime, UPS, and FedEx trucks captured on my door camera turning around  in my driveway each day are finally here for me.

“Remoted” – Workday Eight (Thursday)

Being remoted and being home all day, day after day is allowing me time to slow down and  notice things – like the position of the sun in various rooms throughout the day and all the weird noises from the refrigerator and the annoying vibration in the walls. Long, late day sun rays coming in through the sliders and cutting across the TV screen highlighted a horrifying amount of dust and dog hair on the screen that had me wondering how long it was like that, and how I even managed to see the images on the screen behind it.

Until now, I’ve known more about the light and tiny details of the office downtown than of my own home. It’s nice to finally get to really know the place where most of my money goes. Vacuuming the rugs and floors feels less like a chore and more like a satisfying way of controlling my environment. A few swipes with the Swiffer duster across the dusty TV screen yields a gratifying improvement.

Trying to see how long I can remain confined to 1,086 square feet plus a yard can be challenging. The lack of separation between home and office and the absence of the buffer provided by a commute has resulted in the days blurring together in one long stretch. Clearly, there are any number of simple things that could be done to break up the monotony and help mark the days, like going for a walk, taking a bike ride, or working in the yard that is beginning to exhibit signs of spring, but those require more energy to execute than is currently available.

Sit on the other side of the
table for a different view.

Right now, smaller actions feel more realistic. So today, I sat on the opposite side of the table to work. Instead of facing the buffet and wall of art, the view was a cabinet topped with a mirror from Korea, the vase that lived on the dining table until last week, and art and objects from artists I knew in Tennessee. Initially, there was a fear that being able to see out the glass panel in the front door might be too distracting with the steady stream of traffic and visitors to the house across the street, but it was nice.

The days running together has resulted in a series of notations in an attempt to differentiate the days. The calendar now resembles the diary of a 1950s housewife with entries like “cereal and OJ for breakfast,” “ordered hot cocoa from Amazon,” “cocoa delivery due,” “produce box delivered,” and “made roasted turnips and onions.” 

Sometimes the little stuff of everyday life makes all the difference.

“Remoted” – Workday Seven (Wednesday)

The coffee looked innocent enough, but
the half and half is on the way to ewwww.

The day was comprised of frustration, entertainment, and mystery in varying measure.

Frustration came early in the day. Before beginning work and while drinking coffee with half and half that is prematurely close to gross, time was invested in searching online for disinfecting wipes. Thanks to a new obsession with wiping door knobs, cabinet  handles, drawer pulls, and faucets, I’m low.

There were no disinfecting wipes in stock at Staples or Amazon, but a delivery of tissues, paper towels, and Mini Moo’s individual coffee creamers will soon be arriving. The slightly icky half and half from the fridge remains a mystery as it’s still a week until the date imprinted on the container. The last container I bought stayed fresh for a solid week beyond the date on the container.

During the search through the Amazon and Staples websites, Moose was on the couch at my side. Winston came over and stood before the couch, looking at me and barking. This is usually Moose’s move when he wants to go out. Winston’s barking is generally a response to a noise outside or a provocation from Moose. This time, it seemed quiet outside and Moose was innocently cuddled next to me. Winston looked at me and barked with the urgency as if he were Lassie and Timmy had fallen into the well, so I finally stood to investigate. When I got up, Moose jumped off the couch. No sooner had Moose hit the floor than Winston immediately stopped barking and jumped up to replace him on the couch. It was brilliantly executed and quite entertaining.

During the working part of the day, a bit more frustration kicked in. While working at the dining room table/desk, the daily annoyance in the wall kicked in. It’s some sort of  vibration. It reminds me of living in Clarksville, Tennessee when the military helicopters would fly over the house to and from Fort Campbell, and when soldiers were training in the field. In both situations, the crystal glasses would vibrate in the china cabinet and the frames would vibrate on the walls. 

There are three framed artworks hung on a wall near the corner in the dining room, and during the day when I’m working and the house is quiet, I hear them vibrating. The same thing happens with the framed photos in the bedroom upstairs in the same corner of the house. Whatever it is, it’s driving me nuts, and the destination is dangerously close already. I may have to start playing music during the day if I can’t get the vibration noise to stop.

Later in the day, a chapter of an ongoing mystery played out. Several times over the past week spent at home, a silver Chrysler SUV-Van type vehicle has been parked at the end of the street in front of the house next door. The vehicle backs into the spot, facing up the street, and two guys sit in it with the engine running for as much as an hour at a time. It’s been there at different times – nine at night, three in the afternoon, six in the evening. Sometimes, music blares from partially opened windows.

The first time I saw the vehicle parked there, at around the one hour mark I considered calling the police to report a suspicious vehicle. During one of the 1,000 times letting Moose out while the vehicle was parked there, one of the males got out. It's a guy who lives at the house next door. So now the mystery is compounded beyond the mysterious vehicle to why would two men sit in a running vehicle for hours at a time when they could just go inside the house where one of them lives? Maybe they are our neighborhood watch program on a patrol (is there such a thing)? Perhaps they are investigators working on the case of the mailman who parks the mail truck at the house across the street and goes inside and hangs out.  For the dead end of a dead-end street, it can be quite intriguing.

“Remoted” – Workday Six (Tuesday)

The day arrived with several inches of a wet, slushy snow mix on the ground. Unlike a soft, fluffy snow coating, this is the sort of stuff the dogs won’t walk in, so a path needed to be shoveled to the back yard for the princely canines. I slipped on boots with my pajamas and bathrobe and grabbed the shovel. 

U-turns are popular at the end of a dead-end street.

It was the heavy, heart attack, throw out your back stuff, and while I was clearing the path to our own yard, the dogs decided to go on walkabout. Their paw prints in the snow gave them away, so I was able to collect them from neighboring yards quickly.

In other news, my hands are red and chapped from all the washing. No amount of lotion seems to help. I may be overdoing it. Or not. Who knows. The shoveling with no gloves probably did not help.

While out in the yard briefly with Winston, I had a chance to chat with my next door neighbor (the nice one) who was out with her own dog, Harley. In popular pet parent fashion, I remember the dog’s name but not the human’s. It was a nice chat across the rabbit wire fence that separates our yards and dogs. She works in healthcare staffing and is now working from home. She told me her husband had been to our local Family Dollar today, and the store has toilet paper.

Right now, I have enough toilet paper for a couple weeks (barring any digestive ailments/disasters), but I was tempted to go anyway. For one thing, Family Dollar has the movie size boxed candy for $1 and some Milk Duds sure would be great right now. The Eatz store brand sugar wafers and chocolate chip cookies are low-priced and yummy. They usually also have flour and sugar, which I happily discovered at Christmas and which I’m getting low on now.

Such a trip would, however, have a cost. Psychologically, it would break my slightly self-righteous, self-quarantine, “haven’t left the property” eight day streak. It would also mean my Amazon order placed Monday night to avoid a trip to the store and maintain the streak was for naught. Family Dollar has dog food, dog biscuits, hot cocoa, honey, and cinnamon, all ordered on Monday, and in better sizes and prices than on Amazon. In a few days I’ll have enough cinnamon to stock a commercial kitchen, and enough fruit tea to last a year, because those were the only sizes available.

In the end, scientific curiosity (also known as “laziness”) won out. Milk Duds, sugar wafers, chocolate chip cookies, and the main ingredients for baking at home were passively put on hold for the “how long can I stay at home before I totally lose it” study.

Lessons from Remote Workday Six (Tuesday)

1. While the hot water in the shower seems practically instant, it takes a lot longer than 20 seconds for hot water at the sinks. A lot of time is spent waiting for warm water for the hand washing.
2. My canine overlords are making sure I am sufficiently exercised with their hourly demands to be let out.
3. Letting the dogs out as the snow melted from the roof highlighted that the gutters drip over both the front and back doors. Looks like another home project for the ever-growing list.

“Remoted” – Workday Five

The day planner page has turned to a new week. The work of Remote Workday Five was thankfully less hectic and stressful than the previous week.

With no separation between work and home and the home-office set up in a prominent room in the tiny house, there is no escaping it. With no other humans in the physical realm and little variation between the days, the remoted stretch already feels like it’s been significantly longer than the calendar indicates. 

It’s now clear that the time is long past when the second bedroom upstairs should have been set up as a guest room/office as intended when I bought the house. There are reasons it is not yet done.

The reason I work out of the dining room.

Because the house is a bungalow, there is no attic storage to speak of. The house is in the flood plain on the wrong side of the flood wall, and the basement sometimes takes in water, rendering it an unsuitable option for storage.

It also seems that I may own too much stuff, and what would normally be stored in a basement or attic is shoved in the spare bedroom. Boxes and storage tubs that were once lined up in orderly rows along the walls have been rummaged through and not replaced neatly. The overall theme of the room is closer to shit-show than guest room/office and it’s just one tiny step away from being featured in an episode of Hoarders.

Someday, when time, money, energy and the return to a normal life free of social distancing allow, a carpenter can be found to execute an idea to help organize the room. A hole will be cut in the guest room wall on one side of the room for the installation of insulation. Instead of just closing the hole with drywall, a built-in dresser and shelving will be installed into the wall in the space between the wall and the slope of the roof. The room will have a bed and a desk with a computer with a current operating system. The morning light is beautiful in the spare room, and it will be a pleasant space in which to work. This is the fantasy.

Today, while working at the reality of the dining table/desk that is slightly too tall while seated in a dining chair that is padded but still uncomfortable for an all day stretch, it was hard to fend off the regret of not having set up the spare room.

As a short-term solution, it might be possible to at least tidy up the space near the desk, but there is still the matter of the 10-year old mac with the tragically outdated operating system that occupies the desktop. When I got the new laptop a year ago, I stepped away from the desk and the mac and never went back. Looks like it’s time to return.

Lessons from Remote Workday Five

1. Working remotely removes the opportunity for the morning greetings and minor chit chat that happen in the office. Remote work seems to just dive headfirst into the tasks without any pleasantries. It’s important to stay in contact on a human level as well as on the projects and statuses.
2. When it sounds like a dog standing near you is about to barf, and the thought dances through your head that you hope he doesn’t actually barf, but if he does barf, hopefully it’s not on the power strip into which the computer and phone are plugged – follow your instincts and respond. Yes, he was, indeed, barfing over the power strip. Ewwwwww.

“Remoted” – Sunday One

The first Sunday since being remoted was another miraculous day of sleeping until 7am and another relaxing day where time zipped by too quickly. Coffee with apple-blueberry crisp, emails, Facebook Scrabble and my FB newsfeed managed to consume the morning. “Normal” Sundays would include coffee, a dry granola bar eaten in the car on the way to dance class, and a stop at the Townsend Family Dollar on the way home to restock frozen pizza, dog food, and paper supplies.

Remote Sunday One included a brief encounter with the great outdoors for turd herding in the yard. Luckily, the inventory was light and the task done quickly. This is the time of year when the outdoors is not my friend because nature is trying to kill me. Just like the previous Sunday during the same chore, the allergies kicked in almost immediately with a nasal situation that was simultaneously stuffy and runny. A retreat was sounded after about 15 minutes and sanctuary from the great outdoors sought in the confines and safety of the indoors.

While the outdoors has dog poop and allergens, the indoors has challenges of a different nature. A recent increase (obsession?) in the frequency of transforming ingredients into meals means there is presently too much food. Before being remoted, I cooked a couple different meals on Sundays and ate them for lunch and supper (with embellishments and additions during the week) until it was gone, usually around Thursday. The new remoted reality has me in the kitchen at 5:30 cooking new meals primarily for entertainment. The novelty could eventually wear off, but right now, it’s enjoyable with a dash of stress.

The freezer is full -- no starving here!

Remote Saturday One, the already excessive food situation had been exacerbated. The mailbox contained a single piece of mail – a brochure from a nearby pizza and sub shop. To avoid thinking about foraging in the fridge and freezer for supper, a visit was made to their website. A 15% online order discount was granted for signing up for alerts, and a “No Contact” delivery of toasted ravioli with marinara and a large pizza with my favorite toppings (pineapple and black olives) was soon on the way. Now most of that pizza is in the form of individually foil wrapped triangles wedged into the already full freezer, and several remaining ravioli and sauce reside in the fridge.

In spite of the excess food already on hand, the four-years long Sunday food prep habit kicked in anyway. There was still zucchini and butternut squash in the produce bin from the last produce delivery and another Misfits Market box scheduled to deliver on Wednesday, so something needed to happen.

A frustrating search through the recipe files for Mummu’s zucchini bread recipe did not produce the piece of paper I would have sworn a blood oath was housed therein. An index check of two vegetarian and six general cookbooks was also unfruitful.

An internet search yielded hundreds of recipes for zucchini bread and muffins. Each result forced the unfortunate viewer to wade through lengthy narratives about every person in the family who ever made the recipe in the past six generations before finally arriving at the Holy Grail of the ingredients list, which nearly all used something I am out of. In addition to the family genealogies, there is the pilgrimage through the now obligatory step-by-step videos, invitations to subscribe for updates, and multiple advertising popups to navigate before arriving at the instructions.

Zucchini noodles and other stuff.

There was 30 minutes of online aggravation using both phone and laptop. Half of the time involved trying to return to the one recipe where every ingredient was on hand in my pantry. I had gotten sidetracked by a column of other recipes on the side and accidentally clicked off the page I wanted, and couldn’t find again. Defeat was accepted. Instead of baking a bread or muffins, one zucchini was transformed into “zoodles” using the spiralizer I forgot I had until finding the little recipe guide for it. They were sautéed with onion, carrot, mushrooms, spinach, and roasted beets in a butter and olive oil mix. Of course there is some left over, as that is how the cooking thing seems to work here. I definitely won’t starve any time soon.

“Remoted” – Saturday One

I don’t even know what to call today. How do we count weekends in the stretch of Remote Days? Sheltered Days? Self-Quarantine Days? Remoted – Saturday One? Not sure how to label it. So confusing.

In an amazing development, the dogs slept until just before 7 am. Waking up without Moose’s shrill and nagging bark AND it was light outside, was confusing. Was I dreaming? Was I dead? Did a miracle occur?

This was the day that the dance troupe I’m in (Troupe Salaamati – Farsi word for “cheers”) and many other dance groups, were supposed to be performing at Bellies for Hope, a belly dance fundraiser for the American Cancer Society Relay for Life. Like every other event scheduled during this crazy time now overshadowed by COVID-19, it was cancelled.

When the event cancellation was posted a couple weeks ago, I stopped practicing our two numbers each day before and after work. All it took was the removal of the deadline for me to break the routine. I went through them today and they were ROUGH. Oy.

In a combination of thinking about Bellies for Hope and creating a video for our dance group Facebook group that might also work for a video project at work where team members are staying connected through video greetings, I decided to create a tiny choreography to the Mission Impossible theme music. The music choice was partly because I liked the idea of it (sometimes the world right now feels impossible), and largely because it’s only one minute long.

There were  many decisions and tasks involved. Sourcing music took a while. Creating choreography and choosing costuming, checking lighting, testing the cameras on the laptop and the phone (the phone won based on sound quality), and rigging props to hold the phone at the right height and angle all took forever. Rugs needed to be rolled back. The phone needed to be near the TV for the music, but positioned to avoid backlighting. Space was tight. There were many bad videos taken that maxed out the cell phone storage and forced the deletion of apps and files. Fussy costuming that had taken forever to assemble was ultimately rejected in favor of jeans.

When hunger finally won out and quitting time was finally declared, the result was a very rough little dance on video to share with my dance group. With all the production chores involved, it seemed the smallest amount of the time was spent on the actual dance. It took six hours. SIX HOURS for a still rough one minute product. It's a stunning example of a saying I learned in business school -- "Work expands to fill the time allotted." But it kept me occupied, right? And it's not like I had plans to be anywhere else.

What a learning experience.

"Remoted" - Day Four

Day Four in the Remote office was a mixed bag in every way. I laughed. I cried. I was horrified.

It seems that the usual morning routines are falling by the wayside. Before this week, when I was ready for work, I would settle on the couch with the dogs and the laptop for email and online Scrabble for 15-30 minutes. This morning at 7:45 I went to the dining table workspace instead of the couch, probably because the laptop was on the dining table instead of in the living room. I had barely settled into the chair when I had two dogs trying to climb into my lap and whining which turned to barking. A brief trip to the couch for all of us restored peace in the BungaLowell.  The breakfast game has upgraded from a dry granola bar eaten at the office to cereal in a crystal bowl. Does that make me bougie?

Whatever was so funny it made me laugh out loud has already been forgotten (or erased by other events of the day). But something struck me really funny and when I busted out with a loud laugh, the dogs went wild with barking. They probably aren’t used to me laughing here by myself. Or at all.

The horrifying segments started early in the day with a little server mishap. As part of a file naming protocol project, I was renaming a project folder using the new naming convention and thought I deleted it. At the onset of panic, but after my blood had already turned cold, I took a deep breath, did a search on the drive and found it in another folder. There may have been a few seconds of hyperventilation.

Another horrible moment happened in the afternoon when I heard loud talking outside. The neighbor from across the street, owner of a two-family house serving as the Grand Central Station Pawtuckville Outpost and site of recent porch parties with late night loud guests, was standing at the end of my driveway talking with the lady next door. He said, “Yeah, we went, and they were wearing fucking hazmat suits and masks and everything. It’s just the fucking flu, it’s not gonna kill ya.” I hope you are right, dude. And if not, I kind of hope you are one of the first to go. Apparently the various states of emergency and closed businesses are just a fun little scene from a video game and a reason to hold daily open house events in his world.

The crying part of the day was after team members were invited to post videos to stay in touch and a group of bankers posted a video compilation to the song “Imagine” by John Lennon featuring bankers from their various departments and remote locations. It was beautifully done, it was nice to see so many work-family faces, and yes, I got a little bit teary. Maybe a couple times. I’m not the weepy type, so perhaps it’s a result of the new stress level associated with an absence of human contact, not having left my house except to let the dogs into the back yard since Monday night, and being barked/yelled at by Moose all day and kept awake by the party house at night.

The day ended with the final episode of the trifecta of horrors, when, working on the same file naming project that started the day (there are lots of folders and files to rename and reorganize) I created a new folder when I didn’t see it on the server. When the list alphabetized, there were two folders with the same name. I checked – one was full of files, one was empty. Guess which one I accidentally deleted?  When a status bar popped up with file names scrolling really fast I knew exactly what had happened.

Normally, at the office, a quick call to H-E-L-P from a desk phone would get things fixed, but it’s different from a cell phone in remote world. Plus, it was Friday afternoon at 4:45, so my panic level was on maximum overdrive. First an email was sent (flagged High Importance!), followed by a phone call/voice mail, then a service ticket opened with the IS group. Truth be told the real first thing I did was swear. A lot. Loudly. Then I did the rest of that stuff. One of our amazing Help Desk team members and I connected and my panic was eased greatly.

Lessons from Remote Day 4

1. Working from the home-office means the phone ringer is on to avoid missing calls. Usually it’s on “Do Not Disturb Alarms Only” at the office-office and I rarely remember to change the volume. It’s ok until the door camera starts sending event notifications every six to ten minutes. For the end of a dead-end street, there sure is a lot of traffic since the Grand Central Station Pawtucketville Outpost opened across the street. 
2. Two computer monitors at the office is a great benefit over a single 15-inch laptop monitor. That extra monitor is handy when doing some cut/paste action between documents or opening a gajillion files at once. When I bought my computer wanted a 17-inch screen but there were none in stock that day and I was too impatient to wait a week. What’s that saying … Good things come to those who wait…?
3. There is a reason why skiers are cautioned against taking “just one last run” before ending a day of skiing. I need to remember that the next time I’m trying to squeeze in “just one last thing” at the end of a long day/week. Unless I really want to have a heart attack, of course...

After today/this week, I need a drink. Or a bunch of them.

Does my crystal cereal bowl make me bougie?

I earned this today.

"Remoted" - Day Three

Holy cannoli. Day Three in the Remote home-office was very busy. Again. On the bright side, while my team’s busy days are frequent, it’s never the same day twice, and it’s never boring. I’ve been waiting four years for the “slow period” often referred to by others in the Bank, and I have questions. Where is our slow period? Will we ever get one of these magical times? It's possible it already happened, one of those days I left the building for 30 minutes for lunch.

In addition to being busy, today became a day of technological wonder as my department had its regular team meeting via a webcam meeting program, bringing us all together on one screen from six different locations. Thankfully, our tech Help Desk team is amazing, because my meeting prep was not going smoothly.

After a frustrating hour of juggling a steady stream of texts and emails, while also trying to finish whatever it was I was working on that felt very important at the time but I can’t even remember now, I was also attempting to download the program for the team meeting. Things were dangerously close to erupting in a conniption fit.

The program download problem was, the instructions on the download site didn’t match the words on the screen during the actual download. It was creeping close to meeting time and I still didn’t have the program loaded. Please tell me, my tech writer friends, why do instructions say “follow the prompts on the screen to install the program,” while the screen asks if you want to “Run” or “Save”? Ummm… I don’t know. The objective is to “install” so which of your words is the secret synonym for that? But our tech genius talked me off the ledge and onto the meeting screen in the nick of time. He even told me about a shortcut that will come in handy daily.

It was great to see everyone, even if it was on a screen. Sure, I saw almost all of them on Monday, but that already feels like it was an entire lifetime ago. The days are blending into each other in a long and gooey mess. Without the date displays on my computer and phone, I would have no clue what day I am in. And it’s only Day Three.

Lessons from Remote Day Three:

1. Working at home alone and living alone can be kind of lonely even for a hermit, so I really appreciated today’s face time with other humans. The dogs are cute and all, but not great at conversation or collaboration. They don’t even try to hide that they just want me around for my door-opening and food dispensing services.
2. Having a dog that needs to be by your side constantly is great. Sometimes. But be prepared for surprises! Like when he steps on the power strip and turns it off with his little paw while your computer and phone are charging and you don't know it until your stuff is nearly dead. Or when he starts barking during your web meeting and then decides to join the meeting by jumping in your lap.
3. Not buying the wireless mouse accessory while in the store buying the new computer was a dumb move. Receiving the Best Buy rewards coupon after buying the computer, intending to use it to buy a wireless mouse, but not reading the expiration date was also dumb. Failing to even enter the store and leaving the parking lot in a huff upon realizing the expiration was a week earlier was perhaps the dumbest move. Because guess what dumbass? Still no mouse. This may be an example of what my Grandmother meant when she would say someone had “cut off the nose to spite the face.”
4. Working at home makes the idea of "going home for lunch" a lot less fun. I have eaten lunch each day this week, but just like at the office, it's happened while working at the same time. It's time to figure out how to step back and eat away from the computer. New life goals.

Today's lunch ... chicken soup with a bunch of leftover stuff tossed in.

Up next … Day Four. Or is it Forty-four? Hard to tell.

"Remoted" - Day Two

Day Two of time and life in the combined live-work space started a bit rough. The neighbors across the street seem to have been on holiday for the past few days, with cars and people coming and going more than usual. They do not seem to have heard about the recommended distancing and isolation, and instead, have opened their own version of a blended Grand Central Station, Mardi Gras frat party. They were up late yelling and making noise at their house last night, which, unfortunately, prevented sleep at my house (and likely several others). At least the neighborhood is quiet during the day, probably because the noisy, obnoxious people are catching up on their sleep.

Luckily, working from home meant the ability to sleep a bit later and still do all the usual morning stuff like coffee prep and dog feeding, watering and medicating. Dressing for the day is more like a Saturday than an outside the house office day (meaning easier and faster). Even after the usual daily check of personal email and online Scrabble, logging in for work was still a few minutes ahead of at the normal, at the office work start time. 

Lessons from Remote Day Two:

1. I must really love the water dispenser at work-work because I visit it maybe a dozen times a day. At home-work, it's not even a thought, even though it’s the same distance from the dining room table/desk to the kitchen as my office desk to the water dispenser. There is a better than remote chance I may expire from dehydration during this remote work period.
2. It’s easier producing work from home than I thought, and not as isolating as I feared. People on my team and I have all been in touch, and keep projects moving. It will still be nice to be back in the office, though.
3. My home office colleagues can be annoying. Moose barks at me most of the day. I moved his bed near the table/desk so when he isn’t barking at me, he is either staring at me or sleeping and snoring. At least the snoring is quieter than the barking. Winston has spent the past two days on the couch, earning him the title “Lord of the Living Room.” He makes random cameo appearances in the dining room/office.
4. Remote work lunch is the same food I would bring to the office, but home lunch can easily be plated much prettier than office lunch eaten from a microwave container.
5. It has helped to continue getting "dressed for work" to prepare for the day, and then to literally unplug the computer and move it to another room to mark the end of the work day.

I wonder what Day Three will bring …

One home-office colleague exhausted himself with incessant barking; the other one made a cameo appearance.

Home-office lunch of leftovers is prettier than office-office lunch.

"Remoted"

It’s a strange new world.

Monday afternoon, during an extraordinarily hectic and stressful day at the office, people in my work group were informed that some of us were being moved as part of a relocation program I wasn’t fully aware of (if at all). Surprise! Departments were being split up and team members moved to other areas or working from home as a precaution to spare entire departments from being wiped out with illness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the designated People Rearranger arrived in my team’s area, after hearing him say I was being moved to another department, I rushed to the toilet (always pee before you go!!) then put on my coat. My oatmeal, cocoa mix, and granola bars had been collected from my drawer and put into a little brown bag earlier when someone else on our floor mentioned they were being jettisoned out. The CVS bag of just purchased tissues and dish soap for the house sat next to my tote bag now containing a printers proof needing review, two notepads, my favorite blue Bic stick pen and two highlighters. I waited to be escorted to another area of our campus by the People Rearranger, who had disappeared after saying he was collecting folks from another department to come sit in ours under the workplace version of a student exchange program.

The best part about working with a team is when someone hears something wrong (me) there are others (my colleagues) who hear it correctly and can set the person (ahem, me) straight. The People Rearranger was not taking me to another department. Apparently, he had said I was being “remoted” not relocated. For an undetermined length of time. 

When the work day ended, I left the office and went home to what would now be my new workplace.  A quick look around revealed that the BungaLowell was in no shape to be a home office. Sitting on a futon for a few hours after work, laptop literally in the lap, is a different scenario than sitting there and working on that laptop for an eight hour stretch.

This needed a bit more preparation than just getting up in the morning and logging on.

The night suddenly became a fitness program involving moving a bookcase in the living room to unplug the power strip for the computer (and moving it back), then trying to plug the strip into the wall behind another full and heavy cabinet in the dining room. The dining table had recently become a construction site for Steampunk top hat festooning and jewelry assembly before that event was postponed due to COVID-19. The table/workshop needed to be cleared.

There was no time to finish the project underway and no time to be methodical and neat about clearing it, so it was all picked up and transported upstairs to the guest/storage room. On the sorry day when it’s time to finish up the hat and jewelry projects for the new event date in September, it will probably be easier to buy more stuff and start all over again. That is the exact logic that led to buying and decorating a new hat instead of looking for the top hat already somewhere upstairs with the costume stuff. By 8:00 I was beat. 

Tuesday, known to many as St. Patrick’s Day, was also Day One as a remote worker in the COVID-19 pandemic and time of “social distancing” to “flatten the curve” of infection, attempting to maintain a level the healthcare system can manage. The day unfolded to reveal several lessons.

When home and work become one.

1. Not worrying about attire, makeup, preparing lunch, diapering dogs, or dealing with traffic and parking garages allowed for 30 extra minutes of sleep, and I was still ready to sit down and work a full hour earlier than the usual start time at the office a mere two miles away.
2. Important decisions included which of four chairs to sit on. Facing the door? Facing the buffet and wall of art? The position closest to the outlet and power strip was chosen for practical reasons.
3. My house makes weird noises. There was a tapping sound that sounded like it was inside a wall of the new home office/dining room. I pounded the wall and it stopped.
4. I didn’t bring home the correct office supplies. Just one of my favorite blue pens? No mechanical pencil? I found six brand new pencils in my kitchen drawer, but no sharpener.
5. The 60 degrees my thermostat is programmed to from 8-5 is freeking cold! I’m always cold at the “real” office, but it did not prepare me for this! A decision may be needed whether to reprogram the thermostat (and boost the gas bill), or pile on more clothes. The herbal tea reserves are already low, so hot beverages won’t be an option for long.
6. My phone battery is not so good. By noon (sometimes earlier) on any given day, it is already diminished to 30%. But most days I don’t need to use it for more than a timepiece and comfort token. Remote Day One involved several phone calls and even more rapid depletion. The battery situation has been building for a while, but a long-standing aversion to malls (where the Verizon store is located) and inclination to be a hermit (natural social distancing) are proving to be a detriment.

At 5:30, the laptop was unplugged to officially end the workday, and carried into the living room for the usual evening of Facebook and online Scrabble. Easiest commute ever!

Remote Day One done. No specific deadline to this project. This will be an interesting endeavor.