Once a week, I get to work from home. I’m thankful for that opportunity because it makes it so much easier to have someone out to fix the latest broken thing in the house, or to sneak in a doctor appointment right before or after work. I get a lot of work done because I’m in my own quiet home instead of a cube farm. And I can do things like tackle some housework in the morning, and drop a spaniel off at the groomer before my workday starts.
Which is what I did today. WM went to work. I made some overnight oats for the rest of the week, descaled the Keurig, loaded and ran the dishwasher, and took out the trash. I started to fold some clothes and realized I had to leave to take Murphy to the groomer.
Murphy, who is now 3, is a big, bold, barking bully when someone is walking by the house or if someone comes to the house. But if you take him out of the house, he is terrified and can’t deal. The groomers is only a 6 minute drive from our house but Murphy was still losing it. When I opened the car door to get out, he jumped over me, out of the car, and charged toward the busy road. He only stopped because I screamed. Heart pounding, I grabbed his leash and walked him to the groomers, where I planned to abandon him for the rest of his life.
Once in the door I had to forcibly scoot his 40-pound butt across the floor to the holding area. And then I went home.
I took my laptop out of my bag and hooked it up. A benefit of being a former gamer is that I have a large monitor, a great mouse, a huge backlit keyboard, and an amazing headset to plug into my laptop. The headset which used to hear conversations like, “KILL KILL KILL KILL THE X KILL THE X ALL ON ONE TARGET BRING IT DOWN GET OUT OF THE FIRE” now is used for, “hi, who just joined the call?”
Ollie, who is usually completely chill when Murphy isn’t here, was remarkably not chill.
And he stared at me all morning long. I received the phone call that Murphy would be ready at noon. I took my lunch at 11:30 so I could stop at the post office first for stamps. I asked for 3 books of postcard stamps. “You really need 60 postcard stamps?” the employee asked. “Yes, please,” I replied politely, refraining from explaining how I write postcards to voters so we can avoid shitstorms like the one we are living in. The post office only had 20 stamps. Womp womp.
I went to pick up Murphy, who was the saddest dog who ever sadded. Even though he looked amazing, our groomer explained he was having none of the grooming process that day. I tipped her generously as always, and walked my sullen dog to the car. We went home. I boiled some noodles for lunch and sat down to eat as I logged back into the laptop.
A few minutes later I smelled pee.
“Why does this room smell like pee?”
Because there was a giant puddle of pee behind my chair.
I leapt up, bansheed the two dogs out the back door, and managed to keep an IM conversation going about data sources while I dragged the Bissell out of the garage to suck up the pee.
The Bissell sucked up the pee but left a smear of dirt or something across the carpet, which required multiple passes to rectify. The office was now damp, and smelled like carpet cleaner. I start rewriting a Crystal Report and eat my cold noodles.
Murphy, brave again, gets into a barking match with the dog behind us. I dash out the door to call him in and step in a pile of poop. I banshee the dogs back into the house, take my shoe off, hurl it into the yard and go back inside. I immediately go back outside to retrieve the shoe and leave it by the door.
I text my husband:
When WM returns a half hour after my impassioned text, he gives me a small bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and a (right) Twix bar. He knows my love language. He takes the dogs into the other room and they all doze off on the chair as I finish the workday.
The best part of working from home is that despite all of the above, I still got more work done than I do during a typical day at the office.
