I started my new job today. It was a unique experience, to say the damn least. It’s a testament to how quickly this whole pandemic escalated that when I chose this start date a week ago, I had no idea that I’d be starting a remote job. But here we are.
It’s Saint Patrick’s Day, and we are stuck inside with nary a green beer in sight. I succumbed to a Krispy Kreme ad in my Instagram feed, and ordered a dozen St. Patty’s Day themed donuts for delivery (via DoorDash) at 8am, so we could have something celebratory before I headed into the office. The boys devoured six of them in two minutes flat.
After the green food coloring fiesta, I had to leave the house and go into the office briefly, and I dressed with the care taken when preparing for senior prom. After taking a shower, doing my hair, slipping on a green dress, doing makeup, re-checking my hair, plucking eyebrows, washing my hands seven times, and then moisturizing, I headed off into the Car! To drive somewhere! How novel! I arrived at the building at around 10 am and pushed all of the elevator buttons with my elbow to head up to the 20th floor. I met the managing partner and receptionist – the only two there – and did things like turn in my passport copy and direct deposit forms. Next I did some quick unpacking – enough to make it possible to move around the boxes.
I gathered up all of my plants to take home, got my laptop and password, and sat down to quickly download all required apps and sort out passwords for remote work before leaving to work remotely for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, since the entire firm was unexpectedly working remotely today, IT was really backed up and a lot of my work accounts and passwords were not quite ready. Five hours passed before I had *most* of it sorted – I had no food, no company, was trying not to touch anything . . . it was not an auspicious beginning.
Once it was finally all done and dusted, I left the building. Upon my arrival home the boys embraced me like I’d been gone for days. (Once this is all over we’re going to have some separation anxiety, I’ll bet.) I kissed them all and then sat on the couch and tried to continue watching my training videos and sending emails, and immediately they caromed around me in a whirling dervish of chaos. I instantly felt snappish and anxious, and barked at them impatiently. So . . . that’s not gonna work. It’s been nice to have a solely domestic focus during this pandemic season, but that brief time is over, heavy sigh. It was stressful to navigate all of the New Normal going on around here, and so my harsh word or two can be forgiven. But we’ll have to figure out a situation where the working parent can be as far out of the chaos as possible. Our house is not large, and our backyard is even less large, but we will try our best. There’s already school and art supplies all over the place.
Headphone Candelabra and Charging Station 
There is school stuff everywhere 
Every damn where
Tonight for dinner I made shepherd’s pie (with ground turkey and homemade vegetable stock – one does what one can with what one has). We had soda bread with homemade butter – I tried to whip some cream yesterday for a French silk pie that I made, and ended up overwhipping it to the point it turned to butter. It’s really surprisingly easy to make butter in a Kitchenaid mixer. I didn’t have enough cream to whip any more to top the pie, but that’s ok – we ended up with butter for tongiht.
Whoops. Overmixed. 
Whipped-cream-less pie. 
Butter!
Last night, we had burgers on the grill, plus homemade potato salad and caprese salad. The boys opened Easter packages sent by my sister, complete with cascarones – confetti eggs she’d made by saving eggshells in nearly-whole form, cleaning them, and filling them with confetti. Virgil ended up covered in confetti. I’m so glad this pandemic is happening in spring.
Cascarones! 
Mozzarella and garden-fresh basil 
Garden-fresh parsley in this one. 
Cheese.
Now I’m off to bed – me and my little sticky friend, hanging from the ceiling above me. # of days sheltering in place: 4. # of times we have had to get out a ladder to scrape sticky things off the ceiling – >1.
Pray my house is still standing when this is all over.