Too bad you can’t see me right now.
No really, it’s a shame because I’m so dressed up for work: baggy sweatpants, a hoodie, mismatched fuzzy socks, slippers and I’m swaddled in a blankie because my house is chilly.
Ah, the joys of the 21st century workforce — I get to toil from home where no one but the dogs can see me.
It’s a good thing.
My regular commute is 40 minutes. One way. This is mind-numbing and because I already spend 90 percent of my life sitting on the dingy, crumb-covered leather seat of my minivan, shuttling my children places, the last thing I want to do is work. I mean drive to work.
Really, the only downside to telecommuting is I am developing an unnatural attachment to sweatpants. Also, I occasionally so crave human contact that I will happily over-engage the window salesmen who just want to quickly drop off a flyer and get the heck out of the neighborhood.
Still, a little loneliness is a small price to pay for the chance to feel like I can breathe again.
Settled in front of the soft glow of the computer with the fridge humming in the background, I can relax — well, as much as one can when one works in an industry built on deadlines. But, the insane weekday morning scramble of herding three different kids to three different schools with departure times at 6:30, 7:30 and 8 a.m. is over, and I’m at last alone — with all the munchies squirreled away in the hidden recesses of the pantry that no one else knows about.
The kids were asking just the other day why I stopped buying fruit snacks. Who says I did? Mwah ha ha ha mrumphsh. That was my evil laugh through a mouthful of Welch’s mixed-fruit snacks. Whoops, a mini peach is now stuck on the computer screen. Dang. Those are the best ones.
I don’t turn on any music, preferring to listen to the sound of my house with no one else in it. Well, let me correct that — no one else with two legs.
There’s actually a fair amount of barking and door-scratching because it’s not like working from home doesn’t have its annoyances, and they are a combined 200 pounds and drive me insane. If Dogs Nos. 1 and 2 are out, they want in. If they’re in, they want out. As soon as I open the door to allow them to indulge in their wildest backyard desires, they nearly take my toes with them in the mad dash to chase imaginary intruders and not-so-imaginary lizards, which they catch and leave headless in the frass (fake grass) along with huge amounts of vomit, which wouldn’t be there if they would stop eating lizard heads.
Dog No. 3 is perfectly content to stay inside — as long as she has something to chew, like a throw pillow or toilet paper or some plastic-and-metal doohickey that goes with the Tivo thingie and is probably stupidly expensive to replace. Thankfully the gnaw marks across the top have not compromised its effectiveness. I think.
My next pet is going to be a Roomba. I will glue on googly eyes and name it Reuben. Reuben the Roomba. Not especially cuddly, but the fact that it would suck up hair instead of leaving it everywhere is an undeniable bonus.
But, the best part about working from home is it gives me an opportunity to do what any mother loves most — to multitask!
I can dash off a few paragraphs, then check my voice mail while tossing a load of school uniforms into the washer (and maybe, just maybe, even remembering to press “start” this time). Or, I might one-handed type an email while using the other to re-roll the toilet paper Dog No. 3 has unspooled down the hallway.
Working from home allows me to triple my productivity. I mean, look at how I had absolutely no idea for a column when I started typing but now I’ve let the dogs in and out 10 times, have dinner simmering in the crockpot, and, if you promise not to tell my editor, I even watched Channing Tatum’s recent “Lip Synch Battle.” Twice.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear someone tiptoeing up to the door to leave a flyer about new windows…
