Good Neighbors

Now that I’m telecommuting, I’m seeing my neighbors much more than I ever did. We live on a very nice street with some very interesting people. Well, that is, we used to live on a very nice street with some very nice people until those two women moved into the last house on the left with their two children. Now, we have to worry. I can feel the threats to the rest of the families on our street already.

I can't believe this has happened to me on my very own street, the one place I always thought I'd be so safe. What could be more scary? Certainly not something like America’s current economic crisis. I mean, we all know those elite private boarding schools and all-summer-long-sleep-away camps where all the billionaires get rid of (I mean send) their children, are so much less of a threat to American families. And you know, what better way to instill good-old-family values than for most children in America to be living in homes in which both parents are working long hours and still have to worry the whole family may end up homeless any day now, while the neighborhood school may be closing down, because it doesn’t live up to the No Child Left Behind standards? I say, if only these testing companies would hurry up and figure out a way to get those number-two pencils into those tiny little hands in the womb, maybe we could stop building schools altogether in some neighborhoods and spend those tax dollars on something important, like invading Bermuda (I heard they’re hiding WMDs in the Bermuda Triangle, you know). And let’s test the parents, too, to see whether or not they really deserve to own homes.

Meanwhile, I saw these new neighbors of ours, two seemingly-devoted mothers (don’t let them fool you) on my street talking to the teenager who lives a few houses down. Despite the fact she talks about boys all the time, I just know they’re busy planting seeds in her head and plan to turn her into one of "them" as soon as they can get her alone (you know, the same way that neighbor on your street turned you straight when you were a teenager). And I can tell by the way they wave and smile at me, they’ve got home wrecking on their minds. If they come knocking at our door while Bob’s not here, you’d better believe I’m not opening it.

I’m most worried, though, for the young couple with their baby boy who live at the other end of the street. How on earth are they possibly going to explain this family to their poor son? And what kind of a pervert will he become growing up on a street like this? Or worse yet, he might become some sort of “girlie man.” I’m really going to have to talk to his parents and tell them to get out now, before it’s too late. Take a loss on the house if that’s what’s necessary. This is their son we’re talking about here, and I’m afraid some damage may have already been done, because that little boy is just so loving and affectionate. Can’t have that. Can you imagine anything worse for the American family than affectionate men? I just know our new neighbors, and others like them, have been ruining our tough, strong, patriotic men for years, so that now so many of them are nothing but wimps, who’d rather protest a war than fight like real men.

It’s just overwhelming. I’m terrified. What can I do to save my neighborhood (and my country)? I know; I’ll do what my president would tell me to do in such worrisome times. Where’s my credit card? I’m going to go shopping.

If I Only Had the Courage

We’re in the midst of an incredible heat wave right now. I’m headed up to Maine on business tomorrow, where I hope I’ll encounter a cooler clime, but Bob and I were stuck today with the question, “Where do we go to beat the heat?” We don’t have central air conditioning (another oddity I often ponder. The summers here are relatively short, but during their two month or so duration, it can be brutally hot with a brutal humidity to accompany the high temperatures. Yet so many of the pre-21st-century-non-McMansions that house most of us common folk don’t have air conditioning. In the South, where I grew up, the winters are relatively short but can get bone-chillingly cold with a bone-chilling dampness to accommodate the low temperatures, you’d be hard-pressed to find a house that doesn’t have central heat). We could go to a movie for about a two-hour-long reprieve, or we could go spend hours inside a nice air-conditioned museum.

I opted for my all-time favorite, The American Museum of Natural History. We’d been meaning to “complete” the Darwin exhibit, which we’d started back in January when my brother was visiting (you don’t really want to be a poor soul dragged to a museum by Bob and me. Any exhibit that a guide estimates will take about an hour will take us about five). And I was interested in their Imax movie on cave exploration. They also have a new lizards and snakes exhibit. I’m weird. I love reptiles, particularly frogs, but if I can’t have frogs, lizards are a fine substitute.

Whenever I visit this museum, I always wish I’d become a zoologist. This, because I loved animals, and loved to visit zoos, and was fascinated with every episode of Wild Kingdom was what I wanted to be when I was eleven years old. Unfortunately, so many people made fun of me, I dropped the idea. I just wasn’t brave enough to withstand all that ridicule (besides, one boy completely convinced me that “girls can’t do that.”)

Thinking of this, though, made me realize I might have pursued many career paths if it weren’t for the chicken factor. Public ridicule is the least of my worries when I consider these other cool but “bravery-needed-in-spades” careers. Here’s a sampling:

CAREER: Divemaster and Scuba Instructor
Why: Are you kidding? Scuba diving all day. Need I say more?
Chicken factor: Dealing with out-of-shape, drinking-a-beer-just-before-the-dive, cowboy-wannabe tourists who decide they want to leave the underwater tour and dive down to 150 feet, just like they “used to do when they were Navy Seals.”

CAREER: Arctic Explorer
Why: I love the cold. I love snow and ice. Pictures of the Arctic have always mesmerized me. Plus, I’d never have to worry about how I looked going to work. Who can tell underneath all those layers?
Chicken factor: I’m quite attached to all twenty of my fingers and toes and don’t particularly want to lose any of them to frostbite. And then there’s Into Thin Air…

CAREER: Detective
Why: Well, I’ve read enough mysteries and seen enough on television to get awfully cocky while sitting in my armchair, thinking “That idiot detective should have done this, not that,” and “It’s so obvious. What’s taking her so damn long to figure it out?”
Chicken factor: I can’t even bring myself to hold a gun, let alone shoot one, if needed.

CAREER: Ice Skater
Why: Have you ever seen anything more magical than a pro on ice? And I want to be paired with one of those Russian men in tights, who has one of those adorable accents, who would lift me like that.
Chicken factor: I can’t even walk without tripping, I’m so uncoordinated. Besides, I’d have to constantly worry about every detail of how I looked going to work.

If this is what a visit to The Museum of Natural History will do to me, it’s a good thing I didn’t go see Superman Returns to beat the heat.

Sorry, No Sale

One of the downsides to telecommuting is that you’re home for the vacuum cleaner salesman. Yes, you read that correctly: vacuum cleaner salesman. You may have thought these people were jokes, that they didn’t really exist, that they were just figments of many, many comedians’ imaginations. Or even that I was making it up just now as a joke. I would like to bless you for your refreshing naïveté. About three days ago, I was just as naïve. Then I got the phone call.

The phone call was as deceptive as they come. A cheerful woman asked how I was doing and then told me my neighbor had suggested she call, because they were offering a coupon to clean the carpets (or floors) in two rooms of the house, and she had thought I might like to have this done. (My neighbor’s seen my house. She knew as well as I did how desperately my carpets needed cleaning.) All I had to hear was two rooms cleaned free, and I was ready to sign on the dotted line. The problem is, that was all I heard. Somehow, in my excitement over the fact that I wasn’t going to have to rent a carpet cleaner and clean them myself, I’d missed the fact that this was not a carpet cleaning business, hoping I’d see what a great job they did and want my whole house done. This was a vacuum cleaner business.

I’m not such a dummy that I would ever believe I could have the carpets in two large rooms cleaned completely free. I knew there was a catch. Bob and I take advantage of these sorts of “free deals” all the time. I mean, if you don’t mind spending an hour taking a tour of a time-share you’d never dream of buying (especially when you like to do things like test the reaction on the guy’s face when he asks you what your dream vacation is, and you say “an African safari.” Not too many time shares out there in the African jungle waiting to swap with "your" little condo on Cape Cod), you can get some pretty cool stuff, like a free weekend in Cape Cod or a helicopter ride in Hawai’i. However, I’m enough of a dummy not to realize this little carpet-cleaning steal was going to take up two hours of my time in the middle of the afternoon, the afternoon that I'd planned to devote to working on the first of five manuscripts I’m going to be receiving over the next two weeks that absolutely, positively have to get into our production department on time. I thought I’d let the carpet cleaner person in, work while the carpets were cleaned, sit through a fifteen minute spiel about how easy and inexpensively they could do all the floors in my house, tell them I didn’t need anything else done right now, and then get back to work.

Enter the kid who drove you nuts in grade school with all his stupid jokes and gimmicks, carrying his $2000 vacuum cleaner. (Again, you read that right. I didn’t accidentally type an extra 0.) He’s, of course, going to give it to me for a steal: $1500, if I agree to buy it right now, and he keeps calling his boss (and, I kid you not, he actually refers to him as “boss”) to get the price down, since I’m obviously not leaping at the chance to buy this thing. He’s also involved in some contest in which he’ll get to go to Cleveland if he sells the most vacuum cleaners in the next fifteen days, and he keeps telling me this. Cleveland! I mean, if he’d said an African Safari, or even Greece or something, I might have wanted to help him, but Cleveland? Meanwhile, he’s showing me just how filthy my house is, because I don’t have a vacuum cleaner worth a dime (none of this is anything he needed to tell me, and rather than making me want to buy this outrageously priced machine, I’m just getting more and more depressed over my horrible housekeeping skills, which are non-existent.)

Then, I realized the poor guy really had chosen the wrong house. I hate to clean. There’s no way he'd ever convince me (even if he looked like Adonis, promised to vacuum my whole house in his underwear, and would be able to go on an African safari with one lucky customer of his choice if he sold the most) to spend $1500 on something that would sit in my closet and make me feel guiltier than the Nordic Track I’d bought at a tag sale and never use. I could just imagine it smiling up from that “super strong titanium exterior,” so hopefully, wishing I’d use it not just quickly to vacuum a few rooms every other week or so, but also use it to vacuum up the dust mites in that filthy mattress its friend who sold it to me had shown me it was so good for doing, and to vacuum my ceilings and walls, and to clean the carpets more than once every five years, and to blow up air mattresses.

I absolutely did not need to be told that I should be vacuuming my mattress every week. And you know what? Since he used “the all-purpose cleaner” not the special stain remover, I still need to clean my carpet. He was ushered out the door, and I was stuck working till 8:00.

Enthusiastically Telecommuting

One evening last week, Bob came home all excited for me to take with him the Enneagram Type Indicator Test. This is a psychological assessment he’d been introduced to at work. Full disclosure here: I’m a complete sucker for any type of psychological testing. I haven’t done it yet, but I’ve toyed with the idea of paying a fortune to find out if I’m an ENTP (or whatever the letters might be on the Myers Briggs). Thus, no arm twisting was needed that night.

We didn’t take the full test. What we took was the online sampler http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/dis_sample_36.asp (for anyone who’s interested), which “cannot guarantee that your basic personality type will be indicated, although your type will most likely be in the top three scores in this personality test.” Well, I was so excessively a “Type 7, The Enthusiast” I see no need to take the full test. Especially since the description fit me to a tee. Bob is a “Type 1, The Reformer.” His fit him perfectly, too. What an amazing little test to peg us both so accurately.

Except, then I started to think about it. I was focusing on the “high-spirited,” “playful,” and “constantly seek new and exciting experiences” bits. Begrudgingly I admitted, as well, that I can “…misapply my many talents, becoming overextended…” I completely agreed (while yawning) that I can “…become distracted and exhausted by staying on the go,” and that (annoyed with the length of time we spent looking at Bob’s results, while I wanted to see what mine were) I “typically have problems with impatience and impulsiveness.” When I took a closer look, though, some of the major traits didn’t seem to describe me at all.

The first traits listed were “extroverted” and “optimistic.” Well, there may be some who think I’m extroverted, because I’ve paid close attention to what it takes not to be a complete social outcast in this society (and I have a desperate desire not to be hated by everybody), so have learned to act accordingly, but my instincts are to stay holed up away from others and to read and write all day. Skip the tiny little detail of the husband going crazy and chasing me with an ax, and I would have loved to have been Shelley Duvall’s Wendy in The Shining. And my whole life revolves around believing the worst is about to happen, so I can always be pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t. Only a fool would go around expecting and thinking the best, winding up constantly disappointed.

My introversion and pessimism are what have made me such a great candidate for telecommuting. I stay holed up and read and write all day (granted, not novels, biographies, and blog posts, but rather proposals, sample manuscript pages, and emails. Still...) I’m convinced this job and my telecommuting status can’t possibly last, because I like them so much (and nothing I like this much ever lasts), so I work extra hard and accomplish much more than I ever expected I would.

Can you imagine an “enthusiastic telecommuter?” Does she give her motivational speeches to the dog? Does she go around inspiring the living room furniture to exceed its goals? The enthusiast is the one who arranges the birthday parties and the surprise baby showers, isn’t she? I’m not about to have all those people come burrowing down into my hole.

Okay, so I was enthusiastic about it all initially. Now, I’d just say, psychological tests are a lot like horoscope descriptions, aren’t they? List a billion traits, and you’re bound to hit upon some that ring true. Just don’t think about it too much, and you can happily believe you absolutely are such a Pisces.

I think I’ll save that Myers-Briggs money for a full-body massage instead.

Editors and Authors

(My apologies to those of you whose life-long ambitions may have been to become editors. You may just want to skip today’s post, as it will seem highly insensitive.)

Despite the fact that as a child I might refuse to finish reading a book in which details I considered significant had been botched (e.g. a child’s age was given as ten, but then we were told she was in seventh grade without being told she was a genius who had skipped a couple of grades). And despite the fact that as I grew older, I’d do the same when authors got easily-researched dialect wrong (e.g. “y’all” happens to be a Southern conjunction for “you-all.” “You-all” is plural. Southerners do not all suffer from multiple personality disorders. No one in the South would go up to a friend sitting alone on a park bench and ask, “How y’all doing?” anymore than Northerners would walk up to a single friend and ask “How are you guys doing?” ). And despite the fact I’ve also been known to abandon books that have far too many typos in them (I have to note I’m actually extremely lenient when it comes to typos, having been humbled by how many I make. By “too many,” I mean at least one per every three pages or so. After all, published books are supposed to have been copyedited and proofread by at least two people). Despite all this, I never dreamed I’d become a professional editor.

But here I am. I fell into it really quite by accident. First, I took an entry-level position at a small legal newspaper that gave me a tiny bit of publishing experience. Then I went off to the library world, and once I had my Master’s degree in that, discovered a reference publisher that was looking for someone with a library degree. I explored the position, decided it sounded interesting, and didn’t get the job. A few weeks later, I was called back and offered the job, because the number-one candidate had never shown up to work. I was so desperate to do something new and different, I swallowed any pride I might have had over not being number one (besides one of my former bosses in the library world with whom I’d come to have a great relationship had told me I don’t interview well, so I felt lucky to be offered anything), and took the job. I had no idea what I was doing. Many would say I still don’t. What I do know is that “my” authors have a power over my moods stronger than any hormonal fluctuations caused by such things as PMS.

My friend Kevin and I, among others, share this mood-related-to-authors trait. We can both be quite ebullient when we’re having “good author days.” These are the days in which authors deliver terrific manuscripts ahead of schedule, tell us they couldn’t have written their books without us, applaud our brilliance, and tell us they have another book, already half-written on one of the hottest topics in the news today. On a day like this, I’m ready to die, feeling there’s nothing more I need accomplish in life.

Then there are the bad days. Half my authors call to tell me they can’t possibly deliver their manuscripts on time. Two much-awaited proposals come in only half done. I get a bad peer review back for a proposal I was sure was going to be the company’s next bestseller. I think things are looking up, because a package arrives in the mail that can only be a manuscript. It is, but it’s 300 pages long and was supposed to be 600 pages long. Meanwhile, Senior Management is telling me none of my books is allowed to fall off of this season’s list.

On days like this, Kevin and I have talked of moving to Scotland, a place where it’s dark, cold, and sunless a good deal of the time to match our dark, cold, and sunless moods. It’s a place where we can read and play golf (Kevin) all day long or read and cook (me) all day long. It’s a place where people don’t seem to have the need to express themselves in flamboyant prose. They’ll give you the facts straight, and you need edit nothing. Sometimes, they won’t even speak to you at all, which is fine.

But, as with almost everything else in life, if I truly were to give up editing, I know I’d miss it. I’ve come to realize very few relationships are as symbiotic as a good editor-author one. The publishing industry is changing so rapidly these days and is so overwhelmed, it seems old-fashioned meaningful author-editor relationships are on the decline, a fact I regret ( for example, when I read Patrick Dennis’s biography last summer, I was amazed at the things his editors did for him -- personally delivering manuscripts to his house, writing endings for his books. I don’t know any editors these days who have the time to do such things – it so often seems I’ve lived a life in which I’ve missed the “Golden Age” of everything, including publishing). When I’m editing, I value the relationship I have with my authors. When I ask fellow editors to edit something I write, I equally value that relationship (I haven't known many who can successfully edit their own work).

So, I’ll stick with it a while longer. Who knows? Maybe one day, Kevin and I will run into each other as retirees in warm, sunny, bright Bermuda. It will have to be at the library, though, as you’d never catch me out on a golf coarse.

Soft Pages

The other day, I went to get my hair trimmed, and while I was waiting, noticed the newest issue of "O" magazine sitting on the table. This was the summer book issue, so it caught my eye in a way this magazine normally wouldn’t. Over the years, Oprah Winfrey has been known to rave about some really awful books, but occasionally, something truly terrific catches her eye, and though I used to hate her for all the undeserved attention she gets (not to mention the money, personal cook, personal trainer, etc.), I have to admire someone who has galvanized large numbers of the American public into doing something that takes a little more thought than just sitting around watching Fox News all day. Also, I recently saw an interview with her, and she’s an extremely smart woman who’s used the system to do an awful lot of good. I can be bitterly jealous, but I really can’t hate a person like that.

Anyway, I was most intrigued by the letter from Harper Lee I knew was in the issue and quickly flipped through to find it. I loved what Lee had to say about ebooks v. print books:


Can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer? Weeping for Anna Karenin and
being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz,
having Holden Caulfield ring you up -- some things should only happen on soft pages not
cold metal.

Actually, I didn’t love that. My right brain (you know the synthetic, concrete, nontemporal, nonrational side of the brain) loved it, because it could gather it up in its arsenal of things (being nonverbal, it doesn’t really know they’re words) to throw at my left brain (you know, the analytic, rational, digital, linear side). Meanwhile, my left brain was seething with impatience, wondering when I was going to stop feeding all this sentimental crap to my right brain, which certainly doesn’t need encouragement.

These days, especially since I work in the publishing industry, I’m beginning to feel like one of those poor souls whose corpus callosum has been severed to prevent seizures. I grew up with books (was basically afraid of computers until forced to use them for work when I was in my twenties), and I love them with a passion that borders on insanity. I love the look of them; I love the feel of them; I love the smell of them (both that brand new smell, fresh off the press, as well as that wonderful musty smell I associate with my grandmother’s collection and used book stores); if books were to become a food group, I’d love the taste of them. I find bookless homes to be cold and impersonal. I’ve chosen careers, sacrificing some of the magic books have always held, in order to be surrounded by them all day. I want and need Harper Lee’s "soft pages." After all, computers don’t absorb tears the way book pages do.

But that’s my right brain speaking. My left brain will tell you a book is merely a medium. My left brain will salivate over digital possibilities. It wants to sleep with Steven Jobs and the entire staff of Wired magazine. It believes humans have progressed from telling stories to drawing pictures on cave walls to papyrus to the printing press for a reason, and that the designer ebook reader is the next step (it wants a green one, although it’s not quite sure why, since aesthetics aren’t one of its main interests). It envisions something the size and shape of a paperback book onto which it can load twenty different books to take on vacation and easily slip into a handbag. It loves blogging and the ability to interact with what other writers write as well as to hear what others have to say about what it’s writing. And it will constantly remind my right brain how awfully, awfully fond it (rightie) is of the look, feel, smell, and sound (something a book can’t give it) of the IMac.

Right now we’re at a stand off. My right brain is threatening to keep my left leg from functioning, so I can’t walk across the room. My left brain is threatening to make my right hand pick up a hammer, not a fork, when I sit down for my next meal. Maybe I should go back to hating Oprah, along with her warmongering magazine, after all.

Isolation II

(This must be series week.)

On Thursday, I left the house around 4:30 for my favorite destination the post office. As I turned on the radio to discover nothing much had happened all day (yet again, I find myself needing to rephrase that. Nothing much was going on in the USA, nor with any of its citizens, that would grab the attention of the ADHD-infected American public – no runaway brides, no runaway vans carrying O.J. Simpsons, no new births for Angelina Jolie. By the way, as my sister pointed out to me, have you noticed how no one ever had a baby before she did?), I realized I’ve become almost completely cut off from what’s going on in the outside world. If another 9/11 were to occur, unless the target this time happened to be very small Northeastern towns over-run with dry cleaners and banks, thus marking my town as the perfect spot, when would I find out about it?

We subscribe to The New York Times, but I’m an evening paper-reader. I take a quick look at the headlines in the morning, as Bob rifles through to get the sports section to enjoy with his breakfast (no rule against reading at the table in our household, no matter how rude I was brought up to believe it is), and set it aside until I can settle down with it either just before or just after dinner. I’m surprised this ritual has survived since I began working from home, but it has.

When I commuted to work, I depended on the radio to keep me informed. For a while, I enjoyed “Imus in the Morning,” but his shtick eventually became tiresome, and I found myself disagreeing with him more often than not, which often meant arriving at work in a bad temper. I switched to CBS’s “all news, all the time,” but then standard commercial news broadcasting also began to get on my nerves. Too much “much ado about nothing.”
Ultimately, cringing over the fact I’d become my parents (I should be listening to Bruce Springsteen, The Jayhawks, and David Bowie CDs on my way to work, not boring, half-whispered, monotone voices raising politically correct issues), I started tuning in to NPR, which I soon discovered helped decrease my NYT’s reading time by half, thus allowing me to get to the crossword puzzle (dessert) more quickly. (I don’t know what my attraction is to the crossword puzzle. I can never complete it, except on “idiot Monday.”)

When I was actually in the office, my colleagues kept me informed. I’m not one who visits many news websites, except NYT’s, which I often dismiss, rationalizing I’ll read it in the evening (aside from Doonsbury, of course, which is only available via the online version). My co-workers were the ones who informed me, just prior to my attending some meeting, that an airplane had flown into the World Trade Center. My reaction was, “Oh, some lunatic losing his way.” By the time I exited that meeting, half the company was trying to crowd into our office manager’s little office, because he had a small T.V. in there. Everyone was telling us both towers had been hit, as well as the Pentagon. Bob – another conduit of information for me -- happened to work at the same company with me, and we had, in a rare moment, both been in that meeting together, so we were together when we received this news. I was busy thinking, “Gotta be some new Neo-Nazi moron behind this.” Bob’s first comment was, “Osama Bin Laden” (he reads more than just the sports section of the NYT). Soon after that, the office closed, and we all went home to spend an afternoon glued to the television.

Nowadays, the television is right across the hall from my office, in the same room we spent that memorable afternoon, yet I’m at my computer paying absolutely no attention to the news. Bob’s in a hospital where no one’s watching the news except those patients willing to pay for television access (only someone with a truly Machiavellian nature could have come up with that one. There you are, lying in bed, most likely in extreme agony, possibly unable to hold up a book, while a TV hangs in a tantalizing manner above your head. Want to turn it on to relieve some of the boredom and possibly to distract from the pain? Well, it’s gonna cost ya!). The patients might tell others a boat with a bomb just sailed into Indian Point, but as I’ve always suspected, and Bob’s experience has confirmed, no one pays attention to patients.

So, here’s my plea. I’m isolated. If something significant happens between 7:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. on a weekday, will someone please email me to let me know (especially if I need to evacuate my home and head to safety)?

Food II

Back in the days when Bob and I were first married, we established a tradition of celebrating “hump day.” (I’ve just realized that when discussing newlyweds, this term might conjure up something other than what is meant here. Those of you who are headed in that direction with it, have fun.) I wasn’t particularly unhappy in my job at that time, but I also wasn’t particularly challenged or thrilled by it, either. Bob, on the other hand, was pretty miserable. Weekends were a godsend, and we looked forward to them with relish. Thus, making it halfway through the week to “hump day” was a true accomplishment, something worth celebrating. Wednesday night became Mai Tai night. Bob had found a great recipe for Mai Tais that reminded us of our honeymoon in Hawai’i, and even during the winter months, we came to appreciate this mid-week treat.

I’d truly forgotten what it was like to have a need to celebrate being halfway through the week (with Bob in school the past three years, and our be separated most Wednesday nights, “Mai Tai Night” has sort of disappeared), until recently. In an earlier blog about my various psychological diseases, I mentioned my obsessive-compulsive exercise schedule. What I didn’t mention is that I absolutely despise almost all forms of exercise, and I only do it for two reasons: 1. I have a very mild heart condition that requires it, if I don’t want this condition to go from being very mild to ruining my life and 2. I love food, don’t particularly want to live off carrot sticks and Slimfast, and would be a good candidate for the fat lady in the circus by now if I didn’t have an exercise routine. What I don’t do is exercise every day. During the work week, I exercise four times a week, and weekends are for taking long walks, nothing else. My new hump day has arrived.

Wednesday is the day I don’t exercise. On a Mai-Tai-hump-day-comparison scale, there’s absolutely no contest. A no-exercise-hump-day wins hands down. But I’ve discovered something even more wonderful about this new hump day. It gives me a full hour for lunch. This means, now that I’m home with a kitchen, I can actually cook lunch! (Those of you who hate to cook can stop reading this here.) My approach to cooking, based on my hero Mark Bittman’s philosophy, is to get the most flavor out of the fewest number of ingredients and not to waste too much time on the process (something that was very important back in the days when I often didn’t get home from work until 7:45 or so). Thus, I tend to cook things I can make in half an hour or less.

One of my favorite lunchtime treats is mushroom stew. I created this alternative to oyster stew (one of my all-time favorite soups) when I married a man who didn’t like oysters and who loved mushrooms as much as I do. It’s the same recipe, taken from The Joy of Cooking, only I sauté some mushrooms and use them instead of oysters, and it can be prepared in about twenty minutes (I now know why oyster stew was a Christmas Eve tradition in our house when I was growing up). During these summer months, I’ve taken to throwing things on the grill for lunch. I’ve created a killer barbecue sauce whose secret ingredient is Diet Cherry Pepsi (a repulsive drink that Bob sometimes buys out of the soda machine. An unfinished bottle had been hanging out in our fridge far too long one day when I remembered reading about someone making a barbecue sauce with Coke). I especially like this one, because cooking with soft drinks (we’d never call them “sodas” down there) sounds so Southern, and I like to remind myself it’s important to stay grounded in my roots.

Another thing I like about Wednesday lunch is just being able to make things like a grilled cheese sandwich, corn on the cob, or mashed potatoes. Office lunchrooms, especially those whose only source of heat is a microwave, don’t lend themselves to this sort of food. Granted, mashed potatoes can be reheated in a microwave, but they’re never quite as good. I can also make myself a hotdog (one of those foods I know I shouldn’t eat, for all kinds of ethical and health reasons, but which I just love to have every now and then. I don’t feel quite so guilty now that I can buy organic).

None of this really sounds too much like “cooking,” per se, but when you’ve been tied to microwave lunches for over fifteen years, you can afford to be a little less than rigid when defining the term. And if I do decide I want my favorite baked ziti recipe for lunch, fresh out of the oven, well, it’s now an option.

Fireworks

I’ve never been one who much understood the appeal of fireworks. When I was a child, the noise bothered me, and the actual displays were always rather disappointing. I’m not sure exactly what my demanding little mind wished to see, but its desires went unmet. I just remember anticipating boring evenings, sitting in itchy grass that clung to my sweaty legs and swatting mosquitoes, every time I was invited to a fireworks display. More often than not, the “grand finale” was nothing but a huge boom that forced me to cover my ears and shut my eyes, so that I never saw if the lights were worth the noise. My one big hope was that an ice cream man might show up, and I’d be treated to a Fudgsicle.

This year, Bob got it into his head that he had to go see the Macy's Fourth of July fireworks display in Manhattan, and he, of course, wasn’t going to do this without dragging me along. He often drags me along to things I don’t think I want to do. Sometimes I’m convinced it’s just so he can say, “I told you so,” when I end up enjoying myself immensely, but I know it's really just because he wants to share everything with me. (Luckily, he’s not allowed to drag me into the hospital rooms with him these days to view mangled bodies.)

So off we went (despite the fact it meant getting anything more than about five hours of sleep before having to get up and work today was going to be impossible) to a prime spot on the closed ramp of the FDR Dr. We had a perfect view of the East River. We were even armed with some 3-D glasses a couple of cops had given us on 23rd St. The problem was, we had over two hours to kill before the fireworks were expected to begin, and for some inexplicable reason, I hadn’t brought a book with me.

I wondered if I could overcome my shyness long enough to go join a group of people who had at least been smart enough to bring a deck of cards, while Bob said to me, “No, no, no. We don’t need books or cards. We’re here for the full experience.” Well, if this “full experience” meant sitting on an itchy cement barrier, bottom getting sorer by the minute; regretting my choice of a short sundress to beat the heat, which made maneuvering said barrier an activity likely to attract perverts interested in beating more than the heat; and hoping an ice cream man might come along, knowing full well he wouldn’t; it was an experience I would willingly have foregone.

I’m not sure exactly when things changed for the better. All I know is that they did. First, we became involved in worrying about the disappearance of two teenaged girls from California who’d gone off in search of a bathroom, and who had infuriated the mother in charge of them by turning off their cell phone, so she couldn’t reach them. Meanwhile, their friend who had stayed behind, was busy telling the mother that the Fourth of July is the day more people are killed than any other of the year (great statistic, if it’s true). I have to admit a secret (and crass) wish that we might be witnesses to something truly interesting (but that would, of course, turn out all right in the end).

Suddenly, teenagers having returned safely and sulking over the mother’s anger, we were sitting next to six-year-old Destiny and her eight-year-old sister Dominique, whose impatience and excitement became contagious. Destiny could spot fireworks in the distance being set off in Brooklyn and wanted to know why they were so far away. Bob explained they weren’t “our” fireworks, which caused her to become even more impatient. She had a point. Why did Brooklyn get to have fireworks before we did?

But, at long last, the show began. What was it like? Did the noise bother me? Was I disappointed? All I can do is quote Destiny, whose first comment was, “This is like spring flowers,” and whose final comment after many, many “This is so cools!” and “Those look like jellyfish,” and “Look at all the cubes,” was, “This is better than a rainbow!” Next time Bob wants to drag me to something I don’t think I want to do, I’m going, and I’m bringing along little Destiny to help me do it right.

Holiday

The office has been closed for four glorious days (almost unheard of in corporate America. I wish the Fourth of July fell on a Tuesday every year). A four-day weekend is the perfect time to pursue my never-ending quest for relaxation and simplicity, which is constantly encountering dead ends set up by a “busy-ness bug” that’s taken up residence in my brain. This bug loves to keep me on my feet, as well as to make my life as complicated as possible.

I had toyed with the idea of keeping my computer turned off all weekend, as a means to achieving a relaxed and peaceful state of mind. Enter said bug, the one I’d hoped had gone off on a little vacation to someone else’s brain. I won’t even bother to call my computer-off idea “unlikely,” as the bug began to stare longingly at my laptop. “Impossible” would be the operative word here. To appease it, I decided just to check my email. I rationalized that it wouldn’t take me long, because my coworkers wouldn’t be around, and if they were, they wouldn’t be expecting an immediate response from me. I could mull things over in a sort of relaxed way I normally don't do, before emailing them back. My subconscious did a superb job of hiding all thoughts of authors behind a black curtain. I completely forgot that they just might be using this holiday as a nice block of time for writing and might have questions for me.

The bug jumped up and down with glee as I logged on. Oh look, I finally had that annotated outline someone had been promising me. How could I resist taking a look at that? And how could I not respond to the person asking if I still needed an endorsement for an upcoming book? I’ve got five manuscripts due in on July 15th. Certainly, those authors deserve answers to all their questions.

Then, something wonderful happened. It was the equivalent of the bug hitting a windshield. I lost service to our web client. I couldn’t even connect to our alternate email site (granted, I didn’t try awfully long and hard). Time to turn off the computer, pick up a Toblerone bar, and start reading that mystery I grabbed at the library the other day.

Napping

During the majority of my working career, when I was either stationed in offices or at a library, I used to engage in that oh-so-original activity of thinking about what I would do if I ran my own company. I was, naturally, going to be extraordinarily good to all the employees, making decisions with their best interests in mind and empowering them by letting them help make those decisions. I’d read about all the companies at which employees are really happy, and they all seemed to encourage self care. Therefore, at my company, we’d have a free gym membership, a cafeteria with healthy food, and occasional spa visits. We'd have a daycare center, so parents could be near their children. People would be allowed to bring their pets to work. We’d also have a “nap room,” where employees could take short power naps.

I couldn’t quite figure out how this nap room would work, though. Would we have beds? That sounded like a terrible idea for many, many reasons, not the least of which was giving whole new meaning to the term “office shenanigans.” Would it just be a quiet, dark place with comfy recliners? And how could it possibly work without being a shared space, and, yet, who’d be able to sleep with that annoying co-worker snoring loudly from across the room? It just didn’t work. Yet, every afternoon, when I became completely exhausted and unproductive, taking those “brisk walks” around the building, so often recommended for this slump period, and splashing my face with cold water in the women’s room, I’d wish I could find some place just to take a quick nap.

Eventually, my nap idea evolved into that oh-so-sensible mid-day siesta period enjoyed by our neighbors to the south. The company would just close for two hours during the day, for lunch and naps, and people could go home. (After all, both my doctor’s and dentist’s offices do this, making it impossible to get lunch-time appointments. If those responsible for saving people’s lives and mouths can do so, why shouldn’t everyone?) Those who lived too far away could keep sleeping bags and air mattresses (like those good old days when we all had mats at nursery school for the naps that no child actually needed) and set them up in their offices. Those lucky dogs who never felt the need to sleep, could spend the time running errands or going to the gym or watching a movie on the company T.V. set up in the company lounge. It was the perfect solution.

Well, now I don’t need to own a company. I can take a power nap every afternoon if I want. And yet, somehow, I don’t seem to be able to bring myself to do so. It’s as if I feel I shouldn’t be allowed, since those in the office can’t. I don’t know why that is. After all, I don’t feel I shouldn’t wear cut-offs and walk around barefoot just because my colleagues can’t. I don’t decide I can’t throw a load of laundry in the washer and dryer just because my colleagues can’t. I don’t feel I shouldn’t pet Lady just because my colleagues can’t. But somehow, I draw the line at taking a nap, which on some days would probably be a better idea than doing laundry.

I’m worried about this Puritan-like work ethic I’ve been developing. I'm not sure it was so strong when I was working in the office, and it doesn’t bode well when it comes to answering that question about being able to separate my work life from my home life. Next thing you know, I’ll be burning all the books in our house except the Bible and hunting down witches.

Then again, did Puritan women (or men, for that matter) ever worry about separating work life from home life? I think it’s time to change out of the cut-offs and into a long, simple dress (preferably black) with an apron. And where are those sensible black boots of mine? Oh yes, and I'm sure those two women who recently moved down the street have put a spell on me...

Going to the Office (or The Long and Winding Road, Part II)

I just arrived home from a whirlwind trip up to my company and back. I say “whirlwind,” because our offices are located a 3 ½-hour drive from my house (often known to take five hours when the gods decide this is a perfect opportunity to see how I’m doing on the patience front, devising all kinds of assessment tools, from endless miles of road construction, to freaky snowstorms in early April, to summertime motorcycle rallies). I left last night, and came home this evening. Some of my more intrepid colleagues have been known to make basically this same trip back and forth in one day, in order to meet with those at our sister company. (Did I ever mention I’m in awe of some of my colleagues?) I don’t typically make the trip unless I can spend at least two nights there, but this was for a special event.

I have to admit that by the time I get home from a trip like this, I’m not looking too favorably upon this whole telecommuting business. On the way up, I’m wishing I lived a little closer. By the time I walk back through the door of my house, I’m eyeing it with the intent to sell. I’m ready to call my boss and say, “Okay, time to make some room for me in the office.” But then I start worrying that Bob will never be able to get a job if I do that, and we didn’t just spend three years schooling him in order for him to hang out doing nothing.

Thus my thoughts turn to wondering how quickly a good psychologist could get me over my fear of piloting a small aircraft. Meanwhile, I’m wondering who we can get to donate money to the cause, so we can afford the lessons and the plane. Years ago, I dated a guy whose children lived a three-hours’ drive from his house. He’d gotten so sick of the drive, he’d taken up flying lessons, so he could fly himself down and back. I used to think he was being a big baby. If we had parted more amicably, I’d have called him up the minute I got home tonight and apologized by saying “goo-goo” and crying into the telephone.

However, it’s now been close to two hours since I got home, and I can already tell I’m beginning to lose my baby fat. That drive wasn’t so bad. (I don’t have to get up and shower and get out of the house tomorrow morning. All I have to do is throw on some shorts and a tank top and get to work.) That drive gave me lots of time to think. (I don’t have to fight holiday traffic coming home from work tomorrow, as I’ll already be home when the office closes.) That drive allowed me to spend really good, intense, quality-time with my colleagues. (I can sit out on the deck with my work tomorrow, since it’s supposed to be a nice day.)

At this rate, maybe I’ll have reached the pre-teen years by my next trip and will just be thinking about personal chauffeurs rather than personal airplanes.

The Baby Question

Somebody recently asked me if, now that I’m working from home, Bob and I are finally going to have a child. Well, this was a new and interesting take on "the baby question." Not to mince words here, but no. First of all, I know myself well enough to know I wouldn’t be able to work at home and have a child. I greatly admire those who can. Secondly, if I were going to have a child, I wouldn’t have waited until I was over the age of forty. Again, I greatly admire those women who do. Somehow, the whole notion of pregnancy never sounded like a rip-roaring time to begin with for me, and now that I have things like a bad back, even when I’m not carrying around an extra 25 pounds all day long, it seems even less so. Besides, I can barely keep up with my ten-year-old dog. I’d hate to see the kinds of circles a five-year-old human would run around me.

What annoyed me most about this question, though, is that it’s still being asked (although in a different guise now that I have a home office). I thought once I’d been married for ten years and had reached the age of forty, people would quit asking. Instead, the question just seems to change from "children" to "child." I’ve never understood why asking women this question is so acceptable in our society. I mean, when a woman announces she’s pregnant with her third or fourth child, does anyone ask her, “Are you ever going to stop having children?” No. They celebrate just as much as they did with her first. But try being a straight, married woman in this society who remains childless. You’re free game for all kinds of questioning, not the least of which is, “Are you ever going to have a child?”

I wonder what this person would have said if I’d responded, “No, I’m working from home not so that we can have a child, but because I’m finally going through menopause and was afraid the hormonal imbalance would cause me to kill a few colleagues.” Sometimes, I just want to say, “You know, I always meant to have children, but somehow, I just never got around to it.” The truth of the matter is that my biological clock seems to have wound itself down rather than winding itself up. It sounded more like a time bomb back when I was 23 and falling madly in love with every man I met who was way out of my league. By the time I’d reached 29, right around the time most of my friends were getting pregnant and having children, it was down to a faint tick (no tock). By 34, it was completely broken, and I had no desire to waste time looking up a clock repairman.

Everyone says, “but you love kids.” It’s true. I do. I love panda bears, too. But I bet no one would ask me if, now that I’m working from home, Bob and I are finally going to start raising pandas.

Rain

It's raining again. We're not in ark mode quite yet, as those poor souls down in Maryland are (at least according to the news reports), but I'm beginning to wish humidity-cutting knives were standard wedding presents for brides and grooms on the U.S. East coast, because I could use one right about now. It would be far more useful than all the candlesticks that seemed to be in vogue the year we were married. Of course, I'll be eating those words when the big thunder storm hits later, and we lose all our electricity. I'll also be cursing myself for hiding most of them away in closets where we can't find them.

I'm not one who typically likes to complain about the weather. I usually like to be the smug one, proving my superiority by never whining about it and telling those who do to shut up because there's absolutely nothing they can do about it. And why on earth people who choose to live in the Northeast would complain about the cold is beyond me. Either they grew up here and know perfectly well winter comes in September and lasts till May, or they moved here, having heard about it all their lives (like I did). Either dress in layers (which even this dumb Southerner knows how to do) or move, but don't tell me how cold it is.

But then, that's not really very fair of me. I moved here because I happen to be one of those rare human beings who likes weather extremes. Please don't plop me down somewhere like San Diego and make me spend more than a season there. I'd go mad with the boredom of all those sunny days, blue skies, and warm temperatures, with nothing but a very occasional rainstorm to cause people to run for cover. Give me record-breaking temperatures (either high or low, I'm not picky), exciting thunder storms, a little hail now and then, and I'm in seventh heaven. I'd probably draw the line at Hurricane Katrina, but that's about it. As a matter of fact, I'm a little annoyed with my home of choice. When I moved here, I was under the impression that blizzards strike much more frequently than they actually do.

As I sat here today, contemplating whether or not I really needed to go run a few errands at lunch, and deciding not to because I didn't want to go out in the rain, I realized I'm probably becoming even more annoying to my weather-whining friends. Telecommuting has made me almost completely immune to what's going on outside. I was never one much for checking the weather, but now I really couldn't care less. If it was hot yesterday, I'll throw on shorts this morning. If I later get chilly, I can always change into jeans or throw on a sweatshirt.

Quite obnoxious, I know. However, this complete obliviousness to Mother Nature and her whims also means I'm not going to be prepared should a rare tornado hit. And knowing my luck, it will be that tornado I always hoped would just rip off the roof of the office (or the school back in those days) in the middle of the night, harming no one, but closing everything down for a few days. You see, those of us who telecommute for my company are not allowed to take time off if the office has to close for some sort of weather emergency. And if the roof blows off my house? Well, I'd have to take vacation time to deal with that.

So, I think it's time to wipe that smug smile off my face before Maryland opens up its flood gates up this way.

Business Travel

The other day, I was trying to decide whether I resent business travel less or more now that I’m working from home. Then I began to wonder when I became someone who would use the word “resent” in the same sentence as “travel.” I can remember when I was interviewing for the job at the last company I worked. My then boss-to-be told me the job would involve some travel and asked if that were okay. Okay? I wondered what kind of idiot would answer “no” to that question. I’d always dreamed of being one of those people with a corporate credit card, zipping around from one city to the next, racking up frequent flyer miles, and hanging out in airlines’ executive lounges.

Somehow, these business travel dreams had always been so bright. They’d never taken into account such things as missed flights due to blizzards, hotel rooms that are always stationed next to noisy elevators and ice machines (I’m convinced reservationists turn to each other as soon as they hang up the phone with me and say, “Emily’s coming to town. Quick, book up all rooms except the one next to the manic ice machine where the teenagers in town for the cheerleading contest plan to hang out all night giggling, screaming, and ‘practicing’”), dealing with exhibit booths that are nearly impossible to assemble or that arrive sans essential parts, or getting hopelessly sick and spending two days in a hotel room in San Diego wistfully looking out at the beautiful blue skies, bright sunshine, and palm trees. Deal with those sorts of things, and it doesn’t take too long before “resent” becomes an appropriate verb.

I've come to the conclusion, though, that I actually resent it less now that I’m working from home. It always seems like such an effort to get away and to leave the piles of manuscript pages all by themselves with no one to care for them. But then how nice it is not having to worry about the broken dishwasher that needs fixing; the laundry that’s engaging in it’s favorite pastime of piling up to the ceiling; the bills that act like boomerangs, reappearing the minute the check is mailed; the car whose engine warning light has decided to make a regular appearance; and the peach-colored carpets that are in such need of cleaning, your neighbors have been commenting on how they love that shade of brown you’ve chosen for the living room. When you work from home, and don’t have an office to escape to everyday, these things sit around, each about the size of Jaba the Hut, glaring at you with their milky eyes. How nice just to be able to shut the door in their faces and take off for a few days, as you have far-more important things to do halfway across the country.

I think I’m going to have to come up with another appropriate verb. Possibly “relish?”

"Beam Me Anywhere but Here, Scottie"

My sisters and I were recently discussing the benefits of teleportation (well, mostly the benefits. We did consider the possibility of suddenly finding our father's arm hovering before us, his voice calling from a distance, wondering if we can help him with this *&$! teleport thing). Are we the only ones, or has anyone else noticed an unprecedented lack of speed on the part of all twenty-first century geniuses to develop this form of travel? That's the problem with geniuses. They're just so inconsiderate. I mean, who cares about cloning and fingertip-sized telephones? I just want to be able to get from point A to point B without having to set foot in an airport.

Unfortunately, I have to set foot in one tomorrow. And I still haven't recovered from setting foot in one two days ago when my entire traveling experience was a nightmare. First, by the time I got from my place to the airport, which should have been a 45-minute trip, I could practically have driven halfway to Chicago (my final destination). I still have no idea why we sat in traffic just long enough to convince me I'd missed my flight. Luckily, my flight was delayed.

Normally, I hate delayed flights. Delayed flights are why I travel light and never check my luggage. (I've discovered the hard way that luggage, when left on its own while you sit for hours on a runway wondering if your flight is ever going to leave, will take matters into its own hands and hop aboard a flight to Key West while you're heading for NYC. ) This time, though, I felt nothing but relief when I was told my flight had been delayed. The feeling of relief began to wane a bit once we hit the 40-minute mark with no evidence of a plane in sight. By the time we reached the hour mark, I'd forgotten what relief was. After boarding and then sitting on the runway for 45 more minutes, I was reminded of John Cleese's wonderful line from the movie Clockwise in which he says it isn't the despair, that he can take the despair. It's the hope he can't stand (I so often relate to that line).

Who says flying is the quickest way to get there? I just want to know where I can sign up to be a volunteer in human teleportation experiments, preferably by tomorrow.

Another Post that Has Nothing to Do with Telecommuting

I figure if all I discuss is telecommuting, everyone (most especially me) is going to get bored. Therefore, I’ll do what comes naturally to me and stray (often) from the topic at hand. Just in case you were wondering, I was the undergrad who would go to the library to research Roman gods, get completely sidetracked by a book on the difference between the way Ancient Greeks and Ancient Romans treated women, then another book on the role of elephants in ancient history (I was a victim of what my colleagues in the library profession called “browsing the shelves,” which is a wonderful thing when one doesn’t have a paper due in three days), and emerge from the library hours later without a single source for my paper.

So the topic today is amusement parks. More specifically, what happens when two people over the age of forty, neither of whom has been to one in at least twelve years, decide it’s been too long since they rode a roller coaster. They were right: it had been too long since they’d ridden a roller coaster.

When I was fifteen and eager to ride any roller coaster I could find within a 200-mile radius of where I lived (which means not too many, since I grew up in North Carolina, and the fair only came to town once a year), I had no idea that I was setting the stage for what would, in later years, become my tendency towards lower back and neck problems. Let’s just say one of the most renowned roller coasters in this country is not the best thing for such a person to ride. However, it was fun (why do some of us think being terrorized at speeds of sixty miles per hour on rickety rails in little carts that could fly off the tracks without the least warning is "fun?") as hell (maybe that’s it. Those of us who would describe hell as fun deserve this sort of torture, I suppose), so I still rode it three times, managing to grab that most-popular front-row seat on the third ride.

Other rides were not quite so pleasant. What’s happened to us that we can no longer ride something like the “Tilt-a-Whirl” without making sure we haven’t eaten anything in the past 24-hours? Why does it make us moan instead of giggle, the way it used to do? I was the one who would brag at age ten about how many times she’d ridden the “Oaken Bucket,” what our amusement park called that big bucket-like ride in which everyone lines up against the wall, and it spins so fast the pressure sucks everyone against the wall, and then the floor drops. Now, I can imagine, I’d be looking for a different sort of bucket, if I were to ride such a thing.

Then there are the bumper cars. They should be renamed “legalized whiplash cars.” Ambulance chasers should be lining themselves up at the entrances to these rides instead of wasting their time out on real streets. But no, somehow doing permanent damage to one’s neck, all in the name of fun, seems to be one of the last of the lawsuit-free arenas in this country.

Massaging our necks after a spin in the bumper cars, Bob and I sat watching those who were either brave or stupid enough to ride something that would have made Spanish Inquisitors green with envy. Not only did it swing people up and around and upside down numerous times, but it also paused in the face-down position and sprayed all the riders with cold water. Bob turned to me and asked, “What is it about human beings that makes them want to subject themselves to that?” Just as amazed as he was, I answered, “I haven’t a clue,” then suggested we go try again for that front-row position on the roller coaster.

Ellen Degeneres -- My Love

Why is it that when one telecommutes, everyone else in the world thinks she isn’t really working? Why do they suddenly assume she has all the time in the world? I’ve noticed that the first remark people seem to make when I announce I telecommute is, “Oh, that must be nice. You have really flexible hours, don’t you?” The thought bubbles above their heads read “’Flexible hours’ = ‘only work when the spirit moves you.’”

At least, I assume that’s what they’re thinking. Otherwise, I can’t imagine why they (in this case, oh, I don’t know, “they” could possibly be husbands) seem to think that you can now be the sole errand-runner in the house, since, they, of course, have to be at work all day long. Nor why they (a family member, possibly) might say something like, “Well, you can do your work anywhere, right? Dad has five doctors’ appointments coming up…” Or (no need to consider who might utter this free-for-all) “Oh, you can take this afternoon off to come do this with me. You can always work tonight.” Right. Like I want to be working from 6:00 – 10:00 at night (all right, I know I often do anyway, but that’s a “feel-good-about-what-I-do” sort of working, not a “guilty-because-I-took-a-three-hour-long-lunch” sort of working).

These sorts of people are annoying enough, but the most annoying are those who insinuate you really must not be working. How cushy it must be to sit at home all day, eating the proverbial bonbons and watching the soaps on T.V. I want these people to know, first of all, that it’s Toblerone bars and Cadbury Cream Eggs (that is, when it isn’t Girl Scout cookies and cheese), not bonbons. Secondly, it’s Ellen Degeneres, not the soaps.

Okay, here’s my dirty little secret. I love Ellen Degeneres. If I hadn't been so positively distracted by the extraordinary sex appeal of males all my life, Ellen would be my kind of woman (well, Ellen and Hilary Swank). And, yes, one of the nice things about working from home is that, when I want, I can quit work at 4:00 p.m. (since I can also start work at 7:00 a.m.) to watch her, because that’s what time she comes on in my T.V. Land. The really cool thing is that I can quit work at 4:00, watch her, and then go back to work, if I so desire.

Television is not a favorite leisure-time activity of mine. In the days when I was never home, because I was commuting, turning on the T.V. was the last thing I ever thought of doing. Home time was for reading and cooking. I can’t tell you a thing about the latest shows. I’m probably the only woman in America who’s never watched a single episode of American Idol, Desperate Housewives, or Survivor.

Personally, I lost interest in television around season six of Frasier. This had nothing to do with losing interest in the show, one of – if not the – best sitcoms ever produced. (I have no idea why such a clever, hilarious, intellectually-inclined show, sometimes worthy of Shakespeare in its ability to pull off comedy of error, ever managed to make it so successfully in this country. It gives me hope, though, that it did.) My problem was that I couldn’t be bothered to figure out which night it was on, since it kept switching. I found it much easier to pick up a book than to try to keep up with it.

Television has become more appealing as of late. I find myself actually checking the TV listings, especially now it’s so easy to do so online and to pick the version geared toward the mega-expensive-television-viewing medium of one’s choice, which means (just like in the old days) the channel numbers listed actually match the ones on my T.V. That was when I discovered Ellen comes on at a good time for me. I’m usually beginning to run out of steam around 4:00 p.m. If she has someone hot and energizing on the show (use your own imagination here. I’m not sharing mine), I can be galvanized into action, so that I sit back down at my computer and deal with that difficult issue I’ve been ignoring all day. If she has someone on who’s so sleazy and annoying (I’d much rather name names here, but I will restrain myself) that even her dancing doesn’t perk me up a little, I can decide it’s time to call it a day and resort to the enticements of the kitchen, while inserting an old Talking Heads c.d. into my c.d. player and imagining David Byrne would like to dance with me.

I wonder if Ellen realizes how much power she has over productivity in the workplace.

Genie or Genius?

I love computers. Without computers I wouldn’t be able to telecommute. I also wouldn’t be able to blog or (worse) read others’ blogs. But, after today, I need to refine that thought a little. I love computers until Something Horrible Goes Wrong. Today was my first day back from vacation. In other words, this was not a day that could be wasted on Something Horrible Goes Wrong. I had lots of work to do, work that involved, among other things, accessing and printing PDF files. But instead of accessing and printing PDF files, I spent a good deal of the day wishing I were back in an office.

Parts of life were just grand when I worked in an office, for instance, that part in which your printer suddenly decides that every PDF file must have its own special language only the computer and printer understand. This language includes lots and lots of recognizable letters, but none that when strung together form any recognizable words. Oh yes, and the printer's discovered the drama of making frequent use of question marks and exclamation points as well. Quite obviously, it's decided it’s had enough of that silly old WYSIWYG nonsense. What it sees and wants is far more important than what you do.

What’s grand about this when working in an office instead of working from home is that a wonderful genie from the M.I.S. department can be called, and this genie will come to you and fix the problem. Everyone in every M.I.S. department for every place I’ve ever worked is well aware of how I feel about them, but in case you, dear reader, are not, I will explain to you that if we celebrate Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Administrative Assistant’s Day, I have no idea why we don’t celebrate M.I.S. Genie Day. And, like the mail room assistants I mentioned in my Post Office Bother post, I should have spent more time bowing down to them when I had the chance.

Now, instead of having these wonderful people who just walk in and fix my computer woes, I have to email or call our helpdesk and pray I understand whatever he (if you were paying attention, you may have seen his cameo in Aladdin) says I need to do to fix the problem, so I can do it on my own. I’ve long since given up on worrying about looking really stupid, mainly because I can’t look much stupider than I already do, being someone who, yes, has made the mistake of thinking something horrible has happened, only to discover she’s accidentally unplugged a cord. Therefore, I’m sure every time I call, I sound just like a frightened first-time parent calling the pediatrician, especially since, when looking stupid is no longer an issue, weeping uncontrollably over the phone is still an option.

Unfortunately, throwing the printer down the stairs or out the window still isn’t an option (I, not being Pete Townsend, able to destroy my work instruments with nary a thought to the cost). It’s too bad, because after downloading two upgrades, doing some scary removal and reinstalling of our web client, which I was sure would cut me off from the office for life, and rebooting my computer about a thousand times, I’m still going to have to see if Berlitz has any Printerese interpreters. It would be so nice to just throw the whole thing down the stairs and forget about it. Even nicer would be to find an ancient-looking bottle at the bottom of the stairs with rubbing instructions.

The Long and Winding Road

My niece, whose arrival in this world, I swear, my sister just called me last month to announce, is graduating from high school this weekend. Thus, on Friday, I made the 8-hour drive (solo, since Bob had to work all weekend) to my parents' house in Virginia, so we could all drive down to North Carolina together for the big event. Back when I was in my early twenties, I used to love to take long road trips. I could have put together a box of tapes, climbed into the car, and happily driven from Seattle to the Florida Keys, barely giving it a second thought. Nowadays, I seem to revert to my six-year-old conviction, which was that on my list of horrible things to have to do, a long car ride ranked right up there with going to the doctor for vaccinations.

I carefully put together a collection of about 20 cds, representing a wide variety of music, everything from Ella Fitzgerald to The Magnetic Fields to Elizabethan lute music and George Jones and Tammy Wynette. I'd been on the road for a whole two hours when I began to wonder if I'd unknowingly been slipped some acid or something when I was making this selection of what was obviously some of the most boring music ever written and performed. I passed a Walmart, a place I never shop, and was tempted to stop to go buy something new and different. I'm glad I didn't. I might have had a difficult time explaining to Bob upon my return why we now own The Lollipop Tree, Tubby the Tuba, and Bobby Sherman (all favorites of mine circa age six) cds.

This was also around the same time I began to get hungry and to be in need of a bathroom, so, naturally, I hit the point at which one lane was closed for paving, and we all sat in traffic for about half an hour. This gave me time to think about what I wanted to eat, which was, of course, a Whopper, Jr. I didn't have to read Fast Food Nation to be someone who never eats at fast food restaurants, ever. I know Burger King is one of the absolute worst, that the planet has been devastated by the company's need to farm and slaughter billions of cows, but then, I remember how my mother used to occasionally pick me up from kindergarten and take me to Burger King for a Whopper, Jr. (actually, it was for half a Whopper, Jr. back then) as a huge treat and that the only thing that ever broke up the monotony of a long car ride in those days was a stop at Burger King. To hell with the cows and the planet, I wanted a Whopper, Jr. I also wanted a bathroom. In fact, even more than a Whopper, Jr., I wanted a bathroom.

Did you know there are practically no Burger Kings in the entire state of Pennsylvania? I didn't, either, until I was trying to find one. Every exit had everything else under the sun, just no Burger Kings. My stomach was doing battle with my craving. By now, it just wanted to eat, and it didn't much care whether we were eating Whopper, Jr.'s or cows' eyes and nostrils (which, of course, by the time I was ten, I was wise enough to know had been ground up and put into Whoppers and Big Macs along with a couple of rats for added flavor). My bladder wasn't being too picky, either. She was trying to convince me back when we were sitting in traffic to just pull over and run off into the woods, but my imagination, which had pictured some huge greasy-haired, tattooed, and toothless truck driver following along behind, had reined her in. I gave in and pulled off at a McDonalds.

Have you ever known anyone who had trouble finding parking at a McDonalds? I mean, even when every (quite obviously, extremely imaginative) teenager in my hometown used to hang out in the McDonalds parking lot, no one ever had trouble finding a parking space. This time I thought I was going to have to get back on the road and drive to the next McDonalds, but just as I had almost circled the place twice, I spotted a car pulling out and grabbed the space. Enter McDonalds, where the reason for the lack of parking became abundantly clear: a birthday party with about 30 five-year-olds and their mothers in attendance. Normally, I feel extraordinarily guilty when I walk into a restaurant, just use the bathroom, and leave, but waiting half an hour for a hamburger is not what I'd call "fast food." I told my stomach to shut up as I climbed back into the car. This was destiny. We were meant to eat at Burger King, not McDonalds.

We finally hit a Burger King in Linglestown, PA. This was highly appropriate, as Linglestown sounds like something out of the jolly parts of a Bass and Rankin Christmas special. I'd been mocked and shunned by my peers for my musical tastes, and realizing I'd never fit in, had left on my quest for the Whopper, Jr., traveling across the treacherous closed-lane highway, inhabited by the Evil Mr. Road Rage, and had finally arrived at Linglestown, the home of the only Burger King for miles around. I had one last hurdle, though. The Burger King was planted in one of those mega strip malls in which you can see it shining brightly off in the distance, but the maze to get to it keeps leading you to parking lot barriers that keep you from getting there. But I made it. I got there; I got my Whopper, Jr., the cold Whopper, Jr. that left me feeling queasy during the rest of the drive down to Virginia, my stomach reminding me this hadn't been his idea.

Isolation

When I first started talking about telecommuting, it seemed so many people in my life tried to discourage me by saying, “you’d be too lonely,” or “I can’t see you doing that; you’re going to be so isolated,” or “how are you going to meet people?” People advised if I were going to do it, I’d better try to find others in town who telecommute and have regular lunches together with them. I wish I weren’t so impressionable. They actually had me worried. I pictured myself completely cut off from the outside world. No one would ever call me. I’d never meet anyone new. I’d be like that weirdo on an episode of Law and Order: SVU I saw, who never left his apartment. He did all his shopping online and only communicated with people via email. And then there were injuries to think about. What if I fell down the stairs and broke my back? I could be lying there for hours before Bob, the only human being with whom I’d ever have contact, came home to find me.

Then I snapped out of it and realized this was me. Despite a life-long fear of not being liked and having no friends, I’ve never lacked for company. In fact, sometimes when people extol one of the virtues of doing something as “It’s a great way to meet people,” I feel like coming back with, “That’s nice, but can you please tell me a great way to get rid of people instead?” It’s not that I don’t dearly love all my friends. I do. It’s just that I get invited to do way too many things, things that sound like great fun with people I adore, people I don’t want to let down by saying “no,” a word that doesn’t much like to exit my mouth. But before I know it, I'll discover it’s Tuesday night, I’m booked solid every evening for the next week and a half, and I want to kill myself, because did I mention I’m also someone who desperately needs lots and lots of time alone?

And then, it seems, I’m always meeting more really fun and interesting people, and I’m inviting them to do things with me before I can help it. Sometimes I think life would be so much easier if I were just a complete misanthrope. Imagine what it would be like to be able to say, “No, I don’t want to be introduced to Joe. I hate people,” or “Thank you, but it wasn’t very nice to meet you, so please don’t ever call me.” Then, on those cold, rainy nights just meant for curling up with some classic DVD I know I love accompanied by a pot of tea, I wouldn’t find myself dashing from the car to arrive soaking wet in a freezing movie theater to watch some movie I’m not really sure I even want to see. Nor would I find myself rattled by a phone call just when I was in the midst of learning how to make my own cinnamon rolls. I wouldn’t have to pretend I’m sick to avoid attending a party full of strangers (I’d rather find myself sharing a jail cell with Hannibal Lechter than to have to attend a party full of total strangers).

So, no need to worry about my becoming isolated. Isolation sounds great to me. As a matter of fact, leave me alone. Act as though I don’t exist. Have parties and invite everyone I know, but don’t invite me. Then, I can curl up all by myself and spend my evenings wallowing in self-pity, wondering “What’s wrong with me? Why doesn’t anybody like me? Why can’t I meet people?”

The "Haves" and the "Have Nots"

Last night I was arguing with my friend Elmo. This is not an unusual event. If someone were to past life regress me, we’d probably discover that 400 years ago Elmo was my older brother or my father or something. I adore him, but he inspires my argumentative nature to climb to the tops of the sorts of mountain peaks typically ascended only with family members.

Anyway, I was arguing with him that those of us in the publishing business should just accept the fact it’s going to be harder and harder to hire truly good, experienced people unless we’re willing to let them telecommute. This is especially true for publishers thinking about publishing their materials in electronic formats. Try telling that rare person you find who actually has programming and editing experience that, sorry, she has to move to Nowhere Ville, USA, because she can’t, otherwise, possibly learn your peculiar computer systems. Mr. Competitor will snap her up in a heartbeat and offer to buy the house for her from which she will telecommute, while encouraging her to revamp his own outdated computer system. (I know a tiny bit about this, having a sister who both edits and programs. Don’t ask me why those programming genes wouldn’t have anything to do with me. They must have gone off clubbing with the artistic and musical genes that also wanted to avoid me once they discovered they weren’t part of the lucky crowds invited to my other sister’s and brother’s places.)

Driving home from this relaxing evening I’d created, I had this other thought. Telecommuting is going to be the wave of the future as far as defining the “haves” and the “have-nots” in our world. (This is probably just a variation on Thomas Friedman’s World is Flat, which I have yet to read, but which people are constantly telling me all about.) I was beginning to envision a world in which all the high-paying, professional jobs were for those who worked from home. Only the lowly “skilled” workers would still have to be away 9-12 hours a day, commuting to do things like building homes for all the telecommuters.

Right about now, you should start imagining all of my multiple personalities freaking out. My bleeding-heart self was chiding me for setting myself up to become one of the “haves.” I should get out while I can, sell everything, and go do something truly meaningful, like caring for sick children in Guatemala. My wannabe hipster self was thinking, “Cool. You’re actually on the cutting-edge for a change. Now don’t blow it. We have an image to keep up here.” My materialistic, imperialistic self was in complete agreement about not blowing it, telling me I had to work ever harder to ensure I maintain this status while wondering what I’ll be worth ten years from now. What will I be paying the “have-nots” to go to the post office and do my laundry for me? Will I have my own submersible parked in the garage of my little ocean-view vacation getaway on the island of Saba?

I calmed them all down with a new thought. Maybe Phillip K. Dick could have figured out a way to create doctors and lawyers who never had to leave their homes for work, but, somehow, I don’t think they’re coming in my lifetime. And Ursula K. Leguin could write the how-to manual on turning them into “have-nots,” but that won’t be happening on this planet anytime soon, either. We all watched as my little “tele-ocracy” spun off into space.

"May I Suggest a Book You Just Have to Read?"

Every so often, I get nostalgic for my former profession. I really have no idea why, since I was a librarian in the public library world, which means working some nights, some Sundays, and lots of Saturdays (always the Saturdays you’re invited to big events, like relatives’ weddings, and have to swap days with someone else). Most of the time, instead of researching interesting reference questions, you’re fixing the jammed printer for the 100th time in two hours. Meanwhile you're mustering all your strength to ignore the patron whose comments in the business world would allow you to buy that ocean-view mansion in the Caribbean, since you’d be able to file a big fat sexual harassment law suit against him, but against whom you can do nothing here. Nonetheless, one of the libraries in a town near mine is looking for a teen services coordinator, and I found myself fantasizing about the position. This job would pay much less than I’m making now, would involve a forty-five minute commute, would definitely mean working nights (the only time teens are awake), and I certainly wouldn’t be able to do it from the comfort of my own home. So what could my fantasy possibly have entailed? Why becoming the only adult in these teens’ lives who understands them! We’d discuss books, movies, music, computers, T.V. shows… I’d rescue them from their teenage misery; I’d inspire them to become caring citizens of the world; I’d change their lives.

Yeah, right. That’s what I thought I was going to do when I made the decision to become a librarian for adults. It was such a noble profession. People were going to walk through the doors of that library, and we were going to do nothing but talk about books. I would stretch their imaginations, encourage them to read things they might never have read otherwise, provide them with just the right materials to help them make major decisions in their lives. I’d change the way they felt about The Librarian. (I’ve just realized I forgot to mention delusions of grandeur when I was discussing my psychological disorders in my June 2nd post.) I’m not quite sure how long it took me to realize that the most frequently asked question wasn’t, “Could you recommend a good book?” but rather “Where’s the bathroom?”

I've recently become wise enough to realize my fantasies are just that: fantasies. I don’t really want to go back to working in the library world, well, not unless it means being able to set myself up in a big, comfy chair, feet propped on an ottoman and read (when no one is engaged in an animated discussion about books with me) for eight hours under a sign that says, “Reader’s Advisory: let’s talk about what you should be reading,” while being paid my current salary. Better yet, let’s make that a sign over my front door, so I don’t have to leave my house. Wouldn’t that be a fun job? Basically, a never-ending book discussion group. Sounds terrific, but the realist in me who is constantly trying secretly to poison the dreamer, is already shouting about the downside, which she can’t believe I seem to have forgotten: reader’s advisory is a damn difficult proposition.

When I did work in the library world, I once attended a reader’s advisory workshop. We were encouraged to read books we normally wouldn’t, which was one of those many, many “uh-duh” moments I've encountered in my life. Why I’d never figured out, without being told, that I’d have an easier time helping the person who loved a particular fantasy writer find similar authors and titles if I’d actually read that writer and others of her ilk, is one of those unsolved mysteries best left unexplored. I love to read, and I don’t tend to think of myself as an extraordinarily picky reader (I mean, does a raving alcoholic really distinguish between Bombay Sapphire gin and cough syrup?), so I didn’t think it would be such a hardship to read even the books that got the worst reviews in all my favorite journals. After all, some of my favorite movies have received rotten reviews. I’d broaden my horizons and check out some of the most-often-requested authors at our library, so I could be The Best Reader’s Advisor Ever. I went back to the library and happily pulled off the shelves books by the #1-bestselling authors of the day.

I tried. I really did. However, not only did I find I was reevaluating my previous thoughts about hardship as they pertained to reading the books, but I also discovered a new unbearable hardship: keeping my arm from tossing them into the nearest trashcan. And this is when I began to discover that being a librarian maybe wasn’t the best job for me. I mean, how can you smile and treat kindly the person who comes in and requests such books, when, you discover (much to your “open-minded-and-tolerant” persona’s horror) all you can think is, “The townspeople’s tax dollars really shouldn’t be wasted on you and your pathetic reading habits?”

But, let’s be fair and put aside this horrible, judgmental, snobbish side of me. Reading books is just such a personal endeavor, how successful is anyone, really, at advising others on what they should read? I have a few reliable sources in my life. Bob is a fantastic advisor, but every once in a while, he hits something (like one extremely brutal spy adventure whose gratuitous torture scenes were just a little too graphic for my imagination) that just doesn’t cut it. My oldest sister is great when it comes to recommending fun “chick lit” written by authors who actually know a little something about stringing words together to form sentences, but she’s not a big fan of the supernatural, and I am. My other sister inspires me to read classics I’ve never read, but she can’t tell me much about anything written after 1940. My brother and I, since we were teenagers, have shared a love of such contemporary writers as Tom Robbins and John Irving, but he also loves to read the sort of huge history tomes that convince me I have the world's worst case of ADD by the time I hit page 2. And I have plenty of friends who’ve been pretty consistent in inspiring me over the years to pick up great books I've loved. Oddly enough, two of the best recommenders of books I’ve known have been former bosses. I’m still waiting for the day one of them shares a book with me I can honestly say I don’t like, but it has yet to happen.

I think I've been pretty good at recommending books in return to all these people, from time to time at least. Still, getting it right, all the time, for everyone who walks into the library looking for a good read, is a tall order and one best left to those who don’t begin to doubt their very existence when someone walks in and says, “That was the worst book I’ve ever read. How could you possibly have recommended it?” So, I’ll stick with editing books and leave the tough/life-altering decisions up to others. I mean, could you imagine my having to deal with a teenager who walks up and tells me she idolizes Jessica Simpson while informing me she found it impossible not to throw my latest book recommendation into the nearest trashcan?

Pinching Pennies

I did two things this week that have made me appreciate my telecommuting status, yet again, and to decide, despite what Friday's post may have insinuated, I don’t care if I wind up a patient in a psychiatric hospital (as long as they let me move around and don’t keep me bedridden). The first thing I did was to get an oil change in my car for $40. The second thing I did was to fill up my gas tank for $42.15. (Incidentally, you can tell this means I don’t drive one of those hideously ugly, monstrous SUVs that so many advertising-influenced Americans, who have to drive under such extremely challenging conditions -- all those wide, smoothly-paved, clearly-marked, suburban streets -- have been suckered-in to believing they need in order to be safe, while demonstrating that, although they may look like suburban parents, they’re really “ruggedly cool” adventurers who just might take off on a safari at a moment’s notice). I can’t believe getting an oil change is now cheaper than filling up my gas tank. Back in my living paycheck-to-paycheck days, oil changes were those things I was always wondering if I could make do without, because they were expensive. I never thought of them as a bargain. But now my tendency to pinch pennies is asking, “Hmmm. Can I make do without the gas and just spend my money on those cheap oil changes?” Possibly, if I can keep those bothersome post office trips down to only one a week.

These sorts of thoughts are constant reminders that I’m my father’s daughter. He loves to credit his ethnic heritage for his inability to part with his pennies (Scottish and Jewish. Really. Can you think of a worse combination, especially when paired with growing up during the Depression, an era that could have inspired even Richie Rich to stash away some of those wheelbarrows of allowance he received each week?). My father was well-known for replying to monetary requests from his kids with, “I’m sorry, honey, but I haven’t got a dime in my pocket,” once prompting my brother to ask, “I know, but what about some dollars?” He would drive five miles out of his way in order to save 5 cents on gas. We wore hats and gloves in the house during the winter, because if 55 degrees was “room temperature” in Great Britain and “good enough for Queen Elizabeth,” it was “good enough for us.”

With this sort of an example, you can see why I spent a good deal of my childhood trying to figure out ways to earn my own money. But, I soon discovered, I was just as enamored with figuring out ways to keep from having to spend it, an unrequited love over which I still pine. Thus, when I started thinking about ways this telecommuting business is saving me money, the sparks began to glow in my heart again. Not only am I saving gas money, but I don’t have to buy clothes to prove I’m as hip and trendy as my colleagues. I don’t have to worry about forgetting my lunch and having to either starve all day or fork over money for an overpriced deli sandwich. I don’t get invited to happy hours anymore, so I don’t have to pay the price of a six pack for one beer, nor do I have to pay our teenaged neighbor $5 to come walk and feed Lady, because I’m not home to do so. The pennies are just piling up. I’m going to have to borrow one of Richie Rich’s wheelbarrows.

Okay, let me enjoy this a little while longer before telling me my electric bills are on the rise.

Psychological Disorders

My friend Kathy, who was a fellow psych major with me in college, unlike me, has actually done things like worked in psychiatric hospitals. Through the years, she’s informed me that I come right up to the lines of so many psychological disorders, but I never seem to step over any of them. In other words, I’m almost a bipolar-paranoid-obsessive-compulsive-overachievement-needy-anxious-hypochondriacal-masochistic-antisocial-eating-disordered-alcoholic-borderline personality. Almost, but not quite.

Today (my toes maybe stretching just a wee bit over that paranoid line), I began to wonder if telecommuting is going to induce me to take a couple of “giant steps” (I can picture those long-awaited, happily-exaggerated steps I determinedly took as a child playing “Mother May I?” Since I was inevitably the smallest player, my giant steps were completely unthreatening, equaling two baby steps from most of my rivals) over that obsessive-compulsive line. I really shouldn’t care about this, though, right? I mean, with the popularity of such things as the TV show Monk, I would just be as trendy as the next guy or gal.

Here’s why I was questioning my psychological stability. For reasons that are unimportant, I drove Bob to work this morning (he’s working as a chaplain this summer at a hospital a half hour’s drive from our house). Now that I’m working from home, I’m used to being “at work” between 7:00 and 7:30 every morning. Today, I didn’t sit down at my computer until 8:15 (please don’t remind me that was early back in the days when I commuted to work). I spent a good deal of the morning focused on my panic over how I was going to get through my to-do list before I had to leave at 4:00 to get him.

As every true obsessive-compulsive person should, I make a to-do list every day. I once read in one of the many self-help books that used to be an addiction before I discovered worry, alcohol, and Ambien, to-do lists should consist of no more than six items. I dance right up to that overachievement-needy line, though, and mock from this safe distance, those who can only accomplish six meager tasks a day. My lists typically include a dozen tasks. Guess who only ever completes about half the things on her list each day. Could it be that person whose sneakers are firmly planted at the suicidal line?

The telephone rang while I was happily checking off one of the items on my oh-so-efficiently organized and beautifully-aligned to-do list. How could anyone possibly let the phone ring without checking caller i.d. to see who it is? But wait a minute. It was my home line, not my work line. Can’t check that one. That would mean I wasn’t working. I’ve carefully allotted every second to work-related tasks only. You mean I used to take personal calls when I was at the office? Well, but in those days, it wasn’t so trendy to be OCD, so tracking those seconds wasn’t as important.

11:00 rolled around. I have a set routine now. From 11:00 – 12:00, I work out and take a shower. Couldn’t do it today. No time. But then I started to get antsy. If I don’t work out, my heart might suffer. I might have a heart attack, and then I’d have to miss weeks of work. Okay, I’d cut my 45-minute workout to 30 minutes, sponge bathe, and shower tonight. If I had to, I’d pick up Bob and finish work when we got home.

Bottom line? I finished working at 8:30 tonight. If Bob ever leaves me, I’m giving Monk a call.

Post Office Bother

I wasn’t going to write about this, because I knew it would probably be extremely obnoxious to those who might read it who have an hour-long, one-way commute to work. Well, actually, I was going to write about it anyway, but I was going to apologize profusely to anyone who has such a commute. However, last night, I was perusing one of my favorite blogs Bookworld (if you like to read, check it out http://bookworld.typepad.com/book_world/. You can thank Becky, my friend who introduced it to me) and came across a psychological phrase I’d forgotten: hedonistic adaptation. How could I possibly have forgotten something so useful? In a layperson’s nutshell, it means people adapt very easily and quickly to good news or situations, with barely a thought, let alone a marvel. So now I don’t need to apologize, because I’m just going to blame today’s post on hedonistic adaptation.

Yesterday morning, I had to go to the post office to mail things for work. Thanks to the glories of email and being able to send most documents as attachments, this is something I don’t have to do as often as I would have fifteen years ago (yes, I do know people who telecommuted, even back in those days. I don’t know how on earth they managed). I’ve discovered I just hate the bother of having to go to the post office. I never knew that one thing I was really going to miss from my office days was that handy little box, where I just deposited everything that needed mailing, and those magicians, the mailroom assistants, would take care of it for me. No figuring out postage, no saving receipts that will have to be mailed themselves, so I can get reimbursed. Just poof! and everything went where it needed to go. I wish I’d spent more time bowing down to the mailroom assistants.

The post office is only about six miles from my house. I used to have a 24-mile/45-minute commute to work. I found myself on the drive back wondering: why am I so bothered by having to take the time to drive over to the post office? Well, the explanation became perfectly clear once I logged onto Bookworld: hedonistic adaptation. I’ve already completely adapted to the good news that I don’t have to leave the house for work. Thus, when I find I do have to leave the house for work, I resent it. I should have been in some psych experiment for adaptation timing, as I’m pretty sure I adapted to this fortunate situation, not giving it a single thought, around day two of working from home.

It’s a dangerous thing. I saw an ad on TV for a label maker, extolling its virtues, one of which is that it will print out postage labels. I’m not one who is typically swayed by advertising, but this was quite a convincing ad. It first grabbed my attention by demonstrating how annoying trying to print labels with a standard printer can be. Since I’ve had a little bit of experience with that, I was impressed with how well those advertisers knew their market. I immediately found myself wondering if I ought to go down to Staples or Office Depot to see if they had one. Then all I’d have to do is walk down to my mailbox to deposit my mail (almost as good as that little box in the old office). Walking would be a good thing. It would help me burn off those chocolates I had to eat yesterday. But then I realized I’d probably start resenting having to go to the mailbox twice in one day, and besides, I couldn’t be bothered to drive over to Staples.

Now, I'm just wondering if there’s anyway to induce something called hedonistic amnesia that would make me forget all the good things about working in an office, like not having to bother about mail.