Yall, I’m so petty, and I have NO SHAME. So, if you are blessed enough to work telework at all, you are familiar with the Zoom and Teams meetings. The little squares or circles of peoples initials. Most people don’t bother to upload a picture. If you’re REALLY lucky, someone uploads their pet as their icon.
One afternoon I ran into a girl with pink hair at work and recognized her from her icon — because pink hair. And I was like OMG! I’ve been debating what to make my icon. Like do I go professional, tattoo, or pet? Cause I do love the pets. Well, I went pet. Classic Louie with the sunglasses. That’s been my icon for months. People recognize me by it. I’ll introduce myself in person and say “I’m the cat with sunglasses!”
So I usually hop into meetings a few minutes early just so I don’t lose track of time. One meeting a while ago — we were still a few minutes from start and I joking said “oh man, we already have two cats and a dog — this is gonna be a good meeting.”
Well, asshole chimed in that he prefers people to use their faces so he knows who people are. I just joked it off that I prefer animals.
Yall, this motherfucker’s picture is a black and white selfie in sunglasses and a ball cap that had to have been taken 15-20 years ago. — Just for the full picture.
Then he’s mentioned it in two meetings since. The last time, he called me out directly. It was a meeting with nothing remotely related. I was talking about requirements and he said something like “I’ll agree if you stop using your cat for an icon” or something. IN THE MIDDLE OF A MEETING WHERE WE WERE HAVING PROFESSIONAL DISCOURSE. So, I snapped back that I’ll change mine when he shows his face as in his own icon as he’s got a hat and sunglasses on. He says he’s perfectly recognizable in his. I disagree.
So today, he has pissed me off. He does that a lot. So TODAY, since it’s OCTOBER, I changed my icon to Louie with batwings and a pumpkin (from last year). It’s Microsoft, so it will take a while to trickle down through the various apps.
Yall. What can I do for Thanksgiving and Christmas? I gotta get under his skin REAL GOOD. How can Louie reflect Thanksgiving?
It’s got to be funny and cute because normal people will find this adorable and a bright spot in their day to see my cat dressed up in the work meeting. And every time someone compliments it, it will FUCKING KILL HIM INSIDE. So we need max cuteness.
I’ve been tasting the telework life, and yall, it is sweet. I’ve been given permission to work two days a week from home. So I chose Monday and Tuesday. Then last week, we were iced in and had to work from home all week long. It was fucking amazing.
I can sleep super late because I don’t have to get dressed or drive in. I can wake up and be on a meeting in 5 minutes. Does that piss Louie off because he has to wait for his breakfast? Yes, it does piss him off.
Also, I can be comfortable. I have a foot rest under my desk. I fucking love having my feet up. And no ones gonna creep up and catch me talking to myself or fucking around or just looking like shit. Plus, I love my office! It’s the board game room. I added some shelves to move the books off of the game shelves and sprinkle in my own things. And I love my shelves of nick-knacks!
Today, I did some more obsessive tweaking of where everything goes. I wanted to make room for my yarn stash for crochet. I have a ton of yarn for the never-ending Christmas blanket, plus the leftovers from other projects. I moved around the books too. I rearranged the crappy mis-matched books by height and it looks much better. And I moved some shelves around that were stuff before and made them books so the stuff is more spread out. Don’t worry. If I need more space, I will not hesitate to buy another cheap Target shelf.
Yes, the pillow is on the floor so Louie has more room in the chair. He was crowded, OK?
I love my office. I love stuff. Stuff stuff stuff. I’m a stuff person. I mean do you SEE The Professional Leon-Mario crossover down there waiting to assassinate someone? Lord Concord, Star Trek Figures, my Mini Masters Jayne? All my Witcher books, that was an adventure! Notes from mom, photo booth photos of Husband and I. And my precious Penny Arcade Goombas I traded for at PAX! I got that little orange elephant keychain with mom when I took her to the chinese lantern festival at the Botanical Gardens! D & C were there and we ate at the Highway Kabbobery food truck while we watched a live martial arts play in the grass. Baby Yoda is wearing my wedding tiara that I’m wearing in that photo there — the famous texas hair photo of my momma.
There’s other stuff in there too. There’s the giant stuffed blue shell K2 gave me on the game shelf. And my desk has a sweet Bob Ross bobble head circled with the glass worry beads mom brought me back from Greece. Also the Goomba Fate sent and a special edition Funko Pop set of Crowley and Aziraphile. Plus a fake succulent with a tiny goomba tucked in the center. Like a wheres-waldo but with goombas.
I even have a light up cat ball that K gave me for Christmas. I had to plugged into the monitor and yall, I’m so stupid. So I have two huge new government issued monitors. I plugged the cat ball in to one. It happens to be the one that just won’t be turned on by the dock. The right monitor springs to life every time, but you have to turn the left one off and back on again for it to recognize it has a signal. The power button happens to be by the cat ball. So I noticed the cat ball turns itself off after a while — nice feature. Also, it appeared to detect motion to turn itself on as it would come on when I put my hand near it … to … turn on … the monitor … that it was … powered by … Ooooohhhhhhhhhh… I’m dumb.
Anyway. I have a JOB INTERVIEW Friday! It’s still government so it would just be a simple transfer with barely any paperwork. I could get away from my clusterfuck team! I bet I could be more than 2 days a week at home too! I HOPE I GET IT. And that it doesn’t suck if I do get it.
I have an office now! I’m very excited about it. Back when I worked from home at my last job, I bought a desk on Facebook Marketplace. I just shoved it up against the window in the guest room and turned the bed sideways to make it work. It worked but I did not like it. It was nice that Jack slept on the bed behind me though. But I hated the bed looking terrible being sideways and the desk shoved up against the curtains that I had hung and even installed pretty adorable globes in.
Most people at my current job work from home. You have to come in at least one day a week. If you want to keep your desk, you have to come in three days a week. I haven’t had a ton of work to do, so I haven’t wanted to work from home. But now that I have a steady stream of work, I filed the paperwork. I still want to keep my cube space at work, so I’ll be working Mondays and Tuesday from home. I did last week, but only half days as I had in-person meetings both mornings. So tomorrow is like my first day from home!
Check out my office:
This room was always the “game room.” When we moved in, we put those old three shelves in here and all of our games and books. When we got a king sized bed, we put our old bed in here and made mom’s room mom’s room and this room the guest room. Well, we don’t need two guest rooms, so I asked husband if I could make it my office. He said I could! So K&K came over and we moved beds!
I don’t have to have my desk scrunched against the window now. I added some short shelves and bam! I bought that stuff organizer you see on top of the shelf by the window. I gathered all the miscellaneous electronics and bits all over the house and gave them a home. All the wires, battery backups, chargers, ipods, earbuds, adapters, wireless speakers, camera zoomy things, old tablets, USB drives, chromecast, Sphero — organized. You wanna see something extremely satisfying? Check this out:
Isn’t it beautiful? I just want to stare at it. Look at that organization. It pleases me greatly. It’s smaller than a book. But holds all my cables. Why do I have 5 short USB type B cables? No idea. I’ve got USB extenders, Audio extenders, USB C wires, plug adapters, various other adapters. A whole junk drawer of wires in perfect alignment. Yes. Praise Jesus. Look, here’s the Amazon link. For $10 it is SEVERELY underselling its usefulness. They’re selling it for travel. No; sell if for junk drawers. Those are your people.
That shelf also has all my boxes of cards and some miscellaneous bins I got from cleaning out moms rooms. It’s an organization shelf. Giving homes to shit that didn’t have homes before. ORGANIZATION.
As I said, this has always been the “Game Room.” We call it that because it’s where we hoard our board game collection. With my addition of a few more shelves, I was able to get all the books and other junk off of these shelves (except for my craft bag of junk there on the left). So that gave me room to spread the games out and actually showcase some. Like the out-of-print Formula De that I ordered husband from a chick in England. I like how on the top left, I stood up Cat Lady and Leaving Earth (with a rocket ship). I told husband that’s me and him. Those puzzles on the bottom were mommas. The doors one hasn’t even been done. It was her last Christmas present.
So these shelves are where it kinda becomes MY office. First, let’s get the inflation comment out of the way. That shelf in the middle? Same shelf from the same store. Cost more than the others but shrunk in depth and height. Yep.
I had to move all the miscellaneous books over here and I thought it would look like shit. Especially because I also gathered up the sprinkling of books we had all over the house (Husband is a reader). I think I did really good though! And now I have a place for my favorite tchotchkes! I’ve always been a fan of making my work desk homey and comfortable. But now that I have MY OWN OFFICE, I could bring some home. Obviously, most of them stayed at work (Like my voodoo Dammit Doll). But I brought home my favorites that are more valuable that I’d be heart broken if someone stole them. Like the Good Omens Pops you can spy by my monitors in an earlier picture. Here we also have a Star Trek homage with a RARE tribble. That’s right, that red headed bastard was only available as a loot crate exclusive. And my Mini Masters Jayne Cobb figurine! He was a gift. Oh and my goomba on top of the Witcher books. Also this is the only place Grogu (Baby Yoda) has ever made sense. He’s a damn good quality toy. The sculpting is top notch. I just never had a place for him. He looks great here!
There’s a magnetic dry erase board on the wall with a few notes from momma. Oh and those are battery operated candles. There’s one lit in that blue Moroccan lantern. I have a plan for the wall too. I have my Amazon wish list stocked with some hexagon shelves and some gemstone jars.
I love me some pretty rocks. This is a cool way to have all the gemstones but affordably and orderly and labeled!
Don’t those look gorgeous? 49 different gemstone types in adorable little 2 inch apothecary jars with cork tops! Don’t you think they’d look so great lined up in some little white beehive hexagon shelves? I do hope someone will get them for me for my birthday or Christmas. I’m a little worried no one will gift me the GORGEOUS gemstones because they’re advertised and sold as witchcraft supplies. I’m not a witch, I just really like rocks, OK? Also if White Howlite really does tell negative energy to “fuck off” like the lady at the tattoo expo told me, how is that bad?
I started my new job this week! First week down! Woot! I’ll be working mostly from home for now. Almost completely. Then eventually I’ll merge into a sort of hybrid of the two.
Now, I know working from home is an old hat to most people by now. However, as an essential worker, my ass has still been in a cubicle all year. So this is new for me. I wanted to give my thoughts on this whole thing. Well, initial thoughts. It’s only been one week.
MONDAY: Monday I went into the office for new hire orientation and to get badges and equipment and all that jazz. I found out I’d be working from home. This caused much anxiety. WHERE from home? Mr C works in the office! Where the fuck am I supposed to work? The dining room? My mind was racing. I also had a shit ton of training to do and no headphones so I left around three to nail this shit down. I decided to take one of the guest rooms and make it my office. I rotated the bed against the wall to make room. Mr C took my desk because his sucks, so I took an old card table and set it up in front of the window. Two computer monitors and a keyboard from my old computer set up and mostly there. I stole a reject office chair (Mr C has a sweet gaming chair for his setup). Then I headed to Office Depot for some monitor cable adapters and a mouse and boom! We have a work station. A few Harry Potter books for monitor raises and I have a comfortable two regular monitors plus my laptop set up.
TUESDAY: I rolled out of bed at 7:30 and logged in before giving the cat his meds and grabbing a drink. Fuck me, did I just get to work at 7:30 am? You’re damn right I did. This no commute thing has promise! Dude, I’m not even dressed! This is awesome. The cats curled up on the bed behind me. I like it. I like it too much. But I did end up grabbing a shirt because zoom meetings. Yay.
WEDNESDAY: I get called in for my upgrade badge. That was fast. I park it in my cube for a bit of training (so much training) and wait. When they bring me my badge, the girl next to me who started over a week ago asks about hers. Nope! Ha, I’m a high roller VIP, baby. Then once that was all done I ran three errands and picked up lunch for Mr C and I before getting back to work in my new office set up. So much training. I grabbed a foot stool from my bedroom nook and holy shit — this is what office work is missing. Foot stools. Why don’t we have foot stools? Between foot stool and the cat — I could get used to this WFH life.
THURSDAY: Fake Friday! Also after, literally, over twenty hours of training videos, I gotta get more comfy headphones. Shit. But I didn’t even get dressed today. Still got “in” before 8 AM. Got all my training finished up. Requested lots of role-specific stuff. Took an hour long nap for a lunch break. Talked to HR about December medical leave. Now I’m freaking out. I have to get paperwork and doctors notes and shit. But this is plastic surgery — can I do that? Guess we’ll find out tomorrow. I’m so freaking out now. Apparently you can’t just take unpaid leave like I could at my last job. SHOULD I HAVE STAYED AT THE LAST JOB? Fuck, I’m freaking out now. Gotta get this sorted tomorrow. Also need a white board command stripped to the closet too. Yep. Need space to hang stuff.
SUMMARY: I like it. For now. I don’t feel the satisfaction of finishing a good days work. I’m working more than ever because I can’t just jerk around because i’m “at” work technically. I have to show productivity. However, I don’t get to leave it behind. I feel like I should have done more. Like I should go back and do more. You don’t have that when work is across town.
Also, I need more chit chat in my day. I wanna talk to my coworkers. I wanna go out to lunch. This WFH thing may rock for a little while, but I can’t just never leave my house. How will I make friends? How will I get to know my team? I think ideally, I’d go in twice a week and work from home for the rest.
