YDay 65, self quarantine:
So I had my first office video conference call yesterday and to say it was a Saturday Night Live skit is putting it mildly. It was so hilarious, so charming, so endearing I was kvelling all over the place. Gary, who was in the kitchen cooking and overheard everything, was bent over double laughing.
Before the call, because I’m nuts and haven’t been out in months, I washed my hair and omg, even more importantly, I exfoliated my upper lip. Don’t judge me.
Listen, I did an amazing job.
Though okay, it burned a little and the entire ten minutes I sat with it on, I was worried it was like acid eating through my skin and when I washed it off I would have raw open wounds where my upper lip once was and my video call would be totally fucked.
It was glorious. I no longer resemble Groucho Marx and/or Tom Selleck.
So yeah, I was bummed we didn’t do zoom, instead we did our call via google. I wanted to be one of those squares, damn it. The google thing was cool, though. You’re a little avatar in the margin but every time you speak, you go full screen. I snapped this pic of myself on the screen after I blurted out something about wanting to see my boss’ new beard and forgetting everyone could hear me.
What the call turned out to be was the founding partner of our firm missing everyone. He’s eighty years old, he had the young IT guy in our office set up the call, which he took while riding in his car.
He never quite got the hang of it.
Omg, he took attendance the first 20 minutes of the call. There’s only like 15 of us.
I can't even.
I’m changing the names to protect the innocent.
"Where's Ben? I don’t see Ben. There’s Linda. Hi, Linda. Linda? Linda? Who's Linda?"
"That’s Donna,” sighed his long suffering assistant.
"Oh, hello, Donna. Wait, where’s Donna, now I can't see her. I'm in my car. It's a new car. I got it right before the virus. It parks itself. Hey, at least they’re opening the golf courses. Does anybody golf? Ben, is that you? You have a beard! There’s Robin. Hi, Robin. Wait, where’s Ben? I don’t see Ben. Oh, there he is. Ben, I like your beard.”
I’m not even lying. This went on for twenty minutes. In between, Gary is walking in and out of the kitchen with stuff for me to taste and I can’t say Mmmm or I’ll appear on the screen with the spoon in my mouth.
“So this virus, we lost a lot of people. It’s terrible. Terrible. It‘s the death squad. I’d like to tell you when we’ll be back in the office...”
...at which point my ears perk up...
“...it could be a week...”
No no no
“...it could be two weeks...”
NO
“... it could be another month...”
Keep talking...keep talking...
“...it could be two months.”
YES
“The virus will dictate. We have to wait and see.”
So that was wonderful to hear. We’re not being rushed back too soon, and I had a long heart to heart talk with my boss about my feelings earlier and we even discussed what changes would have to be made in our physical office before I felt confident enough to come back, virus aside.
For one thing, I’m not taking the elevator. We’re on the second floor, give me a key to the door, I’m taking the stairs.
And the bathrooms...where to begin...
Stuff like that.
So we’ll see. The main thing is, my boss now knows how I feel and won’t be blindsided in case things don’t end up working out and I decide to extend quarantine forever.
Oh, back to the conference call, it ended with, “This was great! Maybe we’ll do it again next week!”
Oy. Okay. Hey, at least I’ll have another reason to wash my hair.
In other news, I’m unusually excited for a Tuesday. Starting at 7:00 tonight we can put out trash, which will lead to serious progress in the garden. I can’t wait to have that solid “before“ picture.
This is what my quarantine has come down to. I’m excited for trash day.
It could be worse.
Ugh, maybe I better not joke about that.
Onward, fellow apocalypse dudes.
