Work From Home Blog: Day 21

Oli would like you to know that I need to rearrange my desk.

I mean, he’s not wrong, but if you could see the way he tries to get settled in the morning – So he jumps up on the middle right of the desk, behind the Laptop “Stand” (Carcassone on top of a book on top of a board game I have a writing credit one), to the pile of things I have to deal with – some book tape, some paperwork, and what looks like the sealer for big mylar bags, then behind the monitor “stand” (Complete Works of Shakespeare and then a stack of cookbooks through – I don’t normally look back here – muslin?, a 3×5″ spiral notebook, a half-burned candle stack from when my mother was getting a lot of teacher gifts…

…Mom taught 4thish grade for several years, from after I left home ’till she retired, so probably about 4 years ago, and I never actually knew teacher gifts were a thing growing up, but Mom certainly had a lot every time I went home for Christmas.  T. likes the Ferrerro Rochers and I like the containers they come in, but there’s also the scented candles, the mugs, the hot cocoa mixes….

…I kinda like this one, it smells like cinnamon.

Okay, so over the cinnamon candle and the cute corner punch – oh, that’s where that went! – and now he’s to the far back left corner, so he wends his way through two pen cases and a take-out soup container of pens, two books and right now a piece of 2×4 and a box of screws, and then he’s got to deal with my bullet journal, whatever pens I haven’t put away, my keys and cell phone (both of which I sometimes need to get into work programs), and of course, breakfast.

Then he MOSTLY fits in front of the monitor “stand”, though he has a habit of putting his foot right where my mouse goes on the keyboard shelf pull-out thing, and then he is Very Frustrated that I keep touching his foot fuzzies.

(He’s a Norwegian Forest Cat mutt.  He has fuzz everywhere, including between his toes. )

So yeah, I need to clean up my desk, and sitting at it every day is sending it more in the other direction (don’t even ask about the boxes to the side of the desk…) than tidier.  I had a goal of picking up 10 things on my desk every day, but – ahem – well, then there was this fridge crisis?  And I mean, that in the middle of this, you know, pandemic crisis which means that I spend more time worrying than someone on anxiety meds normally does.

Which is to say, um, I spend a lot of time self-medicating with Minecraft and other distractions, to be honest.

I actually have a plan to build two “boxes” for the monitor and the laptop – I’m picturing tunnels, more or less.  The monitor one would be Oli Long and Oli/Monitor high (that’s about the same when Oli is lying down) with the part facing me open, so he can slide in there (be slid in there) and get love and watch me without destroying my bullet journal or without getting his tosies played with.

The laptop one would be open on the short sides instead, so I could maybe have a place to store all these Really Useful Boxes (that’s actually the brand name) that I’ve been working on filling with all this mess (Yeah, it was worse before) since the order came in.  Or maybe Oli could fit there, too.

(Neither of the other two cats do this.  Theo will sit on the back of my chair mostly, and Merit sits on the back of the armchair to my right, which is one of Her Spots. )

So, ahem, maybe I should go back to my pick-up-ten-things-every-day thing now that the fridge is finally dealt with.

(We have a fridge!! It’s beautiful!  It keeps things COLD! And it is clean and it’s pretty and… it keeps things COLD!)

And maybe I should go out to the garage and cut some plywood there to make these stands.

I might want to play Carcassonne again sometime soon, after all.  Since there’s not going to be a going-out-to-dinner sort of thing going on any time soon and all…

So does anyone else find themselves spreading out and making a mess of their work-from-home space?  How are you keeping it in order?

How are your pets (and family) dealing with you being home all the time, if you are? Or if it’s new, I suppose.  How are you dealing with THEM?

(Merit is totally sick of me being home and glares at me a lot.  “Go away, tall coyote!”)

(T is at least politer about it…)

3 thoughts on “Work From Home Blog: Day 21

  1. Ours are being very chill. Probably even more than they are when we’re working-from-office. Not much in the way of clambering onto my desk, though Rabbit has had to set up a chair next to theirs so that Desu will sit there instead of in bun’s lap/on the desk. Desu is a bit annoyed that I’m using the chair in front of my desk all the time now, though – that’s his chair! for naps!

    Glitch seems just really happy to have extra cuddles, though she doesn’t understand why I can’t up and play with her constantly during the workday.

    • I had a chair next to me for Oli, but I had to move to my Big Chair because the wobble chair was hurting my back after a while, so now he doesn’t have that anymore.

      Oli definitely doesn’t understand why I can’t pay attention to him every minute.

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