“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.