Well, it’s June, friends.
At some point I stopped doing daily work-from-home blogs because, well, one, everything seemed mundane, so I was running out of things to talk about and two, it seemed – hey these are the same things. *Laughs* Two is supposed to be “working from home stopped seeming weird.” Which is pretty much the same as one.
I am desperately in need of a haircut, I have been learning how to cut my husband’s hair, and I find myself wanting a pedicure, even though I’ve only gotten a fancy someone-else-does-it pedicure twice in my life. (It’s because it’s sandal season, and also because someone like washing and massaging your feet feels amazing, guys, try it. Girls and folks of every gender, too.)
And that’s about it. Some days I desperately want my office back (yesterday), some days I can’t imagine going back. At least once every other day I think about the plusses or the minuses, so I suppose it’s not entirely mundane to me.
(Some nights I stay up cashing in my bad luck
Some nights I call it a draw
Some nights I wish that my lips could build a castle…)
You know: Pros of working from home – short commute, take naps when I need them, take a half day of work when I’m feeling sick without having to fuss with driving or with breathing on other people. Cons of working from home – constant distractions, no privacy, can’t really cope with bad things without an audience, no privacy, constant distractions, did I mention no privacy?
Also, I used to write on my commute to work and sometimes from as well.
(Pro of working from home – I can sit on the porch and work. Now that is nice, I mean, when it’s not raining. Another pro is working-from-couch, which it occurs to me that I could do from work, if the lounge wasn’t taken.)
Con of working from home, on the other hand, well, sometimes I just want to talk to other people. I find myself chatting up folks in the grocery store.
How are you handling all that? I know our neighbor (the one whose husband is named after our cat) said she’s back at work now but she’s one of the few, even at her job – what about you folks? I live in NYS; the university where I work has a branch in NYC – it’s unlikely I’m going to be back in the office before September at this rate. At least, I’ve picked out a porch umbrella and I’m thinking about some things like, what’s the summerweight version of my nice flannel pajama pants? Also like “how do I get T to figure out how to cut my hair short again?” after that only-a-scorcher-in-comparison-but-still-unpleasantly-warm few days we had last week.
Is this a good thing, working from home? Is it maddening? Did you buy a new office chair? One former friend tells me that his work offered a home-office-putting-together stipend, which sounds amazing. Where’s everyone at?
And if you’re back at work-in-person (or never left), what’s that like?
My desired hair length oscillates between long, which needs no haircuts, and very short (used to be bald, but switched to buzz cut/pixie cut in my late 20s out of deference to my husband), every several years. As I’m in the short hair phase, in early May I took my electric clippers out on the deck and did a buzz cut. My father kindly took a few minutes to touch it up, on his work-from-home lunch break. Maybe you could do something like that?
January through mid-April, I’m a paid tax preparer. On March 30th, I was advised to self isolate with a dry cough, so that was the end of my tax season. I’ve applied to work on the 2020 census, and they advised me in April that they wouldn’t be deciding who to hire until they thought it was safe for the census workers to go talk to the people who haven’t done their censuses yet. Haven’t yet heard back from them, which is fair.
The rest of my life, which doesn’t pay, is parenting my two teenagers and being a partner in the family farm. My tenth grader couldn’t handle distance learning, so we switched him to homeschooling. My eighth grader was already homeschooling, and likes having more people around. This has been even looser than my regular unschooling style, partly because I was sick.
As to the farm, I live here and already work from home. The other three farm partners are my parents (in their 70s) and my younger sister (diabetic), so we instituted severe restrictions on who can visit. We’d already been planning to attend a Farmers’ Market in the largest nearby municipality, and the governor of our state listed Farmers’ Markets as an essential business. Demand for our products is, if anything, up. We’ve gotten calls asking if we sell chicks (we don’t), and we sold as many piglets from our spring litter as we wanted to, for the first time since we got pigs in ’10.
I do not have a that-short option, or I could probably get T to cut it, sadly. My current preferred is a bob. Right now I can get it into a twist, oops.
Farming does seem rather less affected than other realms – one of my friends is also a farmer, and her husband works from home, so her toddler misses preschool and that’s the biggest difference.
It sounds like you’re pretty set for the lockdown!
Huh, I always thought mundane had actual negative connotations. Although I suppose ‘normal’ can just as easily be a synonym for ‘boring’, the same way an interesting life can be considered a curse.
Summerweight pyjama pants – fisherman’s pants/skirts/not wearing pants. As an aside, I’ve always considered wearing clothes to bed in summer to be making unnecessary laundry for myself. It’s bad enough that I have to change the bedding more frequently; I’m not going to sweat LESS by wearing more clothes.
Regarding getting T to cut your hair – just ask? I’ve assumed T is also your husband, and since you’re learning to do his, it seems like a fair trade. If it turns out badly… hats are a good idea in summer, headscarves are a thing, and worst case, hair just keeps heat in anyway, rock a cool new fuzzy look! \m/
Hrrrm, I’m not sure, I think mundane often is used with negative connotations, ata least…?
I don’t actually wear clothes to bed unless there’s company (i.e., if camping or we have people over) but for working from home, men’s pj pants are super comfortable.
And I did try asking. ;-P He said no. Three different ways. 😉