“Remoted” – Workday 55 / Day 73 (Thursday)

Today's weather was cloudy, breezy, and comfortable all day. To shake things up this morning, coffee was taken to the deck, but it was a smidge to cool out there for me, so the newly curtained front porch was  the coffee-time winner. Finally.

Two or three summers ago I sat out there fairly regularly with coffee and a book in the mornings before leaving for work. It stopped being fun when the guy next door’s dad would arrive to pick him up for work. No matter what time dad arrived, the kid was never ready, and dad would call on his cell phone and yell, knock on the door and yell, sometimes go inside the house and really yell, then wait in his big black pickup truck with the engine idling outside my porch window for 15 to 30 minutes. After too many mornings of shattered tranquility, defeat was accepted and I just stayed inside.

New morning coffee spot. 

This morning, instead of sitting on the couch with coffee and a laptop, I was on my porch with coffee and a book (A Thousand Splendid Suns). There is a glider swing on the porch that my sister got from Whalom Park (For a Whale of a Time!) after the park closed. The dogs joined me on the glider swing and it was everything I wanted. The sheer curtains hung last weekend look nicer than I thought they would, the dogs were content, the book is good, the coffee was tasty, and there was nothing but the sound of chirping birds outside. 

It felt like pleasant vacation moments throughout my life, and the best part was that I was home and hadn’t needed to spend time and money traveling somewhere else to enjoy it. I told a colleague today that one of the things I like best about working from home is that I finally feel like I’m getting my mortgage money’s worth being home during my quality awake time instead of just for supper and sleeping.

There are other benefits to working from home. It’s great not planning, packing, and carrying lunch somewhere. At lunchtime, I open the refrigerator, grab some stuff, and have lunch on a plate instead of from a microwave safe storage container. Today’s lunch was broccoli and cauliflower salad leftover from last night and onion rings left from the seafood delivery order on Sunday. The salad was even better today, as the flavors had melded overnight. The onion rings, reheated in one dark toast cycle in the toaster oven, were nice and crisp.

Somebody's watching 

While eating at my desk (despite having a kitchen table and a dining room table - some habits are hard to break), there was the all too familiar feeling of being observed. Sure enough, my constant companions, my canine overlords were now sitting nearby, intently staring at me. Unbeknownst to them, they would get none of this lunch. Onions? Bad for dogs, more for me. Raisins in the salad? Bad for dogs, more for me. 

Sometimes I feel guilty not giving those sweet little faces what they want, but fear not, it is always made up for eventually. They may have been denied my lunch, but while making tonight’s dinner, they were the beneficiaries of things they love – cucumber peels and slices, carrot coins, and broccoli and cauliflower stems. Supper was originally intended to be a simple tomato and mushroom saute for pasta, but the first thing cut was a roma tomato from last week’s produce box. It was the sexiest, lushest, most perfectly ripe tomato since last summer. It was a temptation to just eat the whole tomato on the spot. Control won out and there was a sudden decision to have a massive salad instead. And it was good. Life is good.