Remote Control

The Snow Queen bitch-slapped Chicago last night. Here in Wheaton, we got pelted with 9 inches. Every school south of Canada shut down for the duration. DS has been sick ever since we returned from Ohio, I’m on Day 3 of my period and I have some bizarre thing going on ‘down there’ that my doctor, despite hours of intense examination can only diagnose as ‘YuhGotMe’. Given the high probability that I would wind up in the county jail for assault if I attempted the plow-challenged roads and the Traffic Amateurs, I worked remotely today. Turned on my laptop, fired up the VPN, and started billing.

I stayed in my sweat pants all day, I rode the treadmill until I was dizzy, and I ate lunch at a real table, rather than at my desk. I got about 3 days worth of work done, and I still managed to shovel a little bit of the driveway, arrange my movie collection in the living room and receive 2 packages that required my signature. Sometimes I really miss telecommuting.

It’s not that I detest office working so much, really. It’s more that I have lots of things that I must do doing Normal Business Hours that are not part of my job. But I try to do them anyway, since I have scant time to spend with DS as it is, and I am only moderately successful at dragging him along with me on the weekend, while I jockey for parking spaces with the Saturday Psychos.

These things were a lot easier when I worked from home. I could check my e-mail while I waited on hold for the HMO to refuse coverage yet again, and then I could sort my bills while I spewed obscenities at the Customer Care Representative (where 'customer care' is Latin for 'oxymoron', heavy on the 'moron'). I could write out instructions for the nanny or notes to DS’s teacher while I was on conference calls, and sometimes I could even go out during the day and (gasp!) work out.

The job I have now does not allow telecommuting, and anyway, the nature of the position dictates that I must be at the office. I don’t really mind it. But on the days when I work at my home, I remember the glory of being alone for hours, and of getting everything done, including my work, and I really miss it. And every time I have to take hours away from work to do one of my myriad errands, I wish I were back at my cheap-o card table that serves as desk, quilting table, and writer’s corner.

I want to telecommute, but I want to move up the ladder more, and so I’ve made the compromise to do the ‘face time’ at the company headquarters. I still harbor guilt for doing personal business on company time, but as I have no real choice, I made my peace with the small amounts of time-stealing I must do. I keep it minimal, and sometimes I make it up to the firm by working at night and not charging them for it.

I’ve noticed over the 19 years of my career that the office has gone the way of the pension and that everyone but the C-level executives hunker down in cubicles. I’ve also noticed that ‘cubicle’ is taking on a whole new meaning. It used to be that a ‘cube’ was to an office what a townhouse was to a single family home--more compact but also more efficient, and rather nice, if you didn’t mind that you could hear your neighbors sometimes. Sure the walls didn’t reach to the ceiling and there was no door, but you did have some privacy and you didn’t have to listen to marital disputes and little league conference calls as a matter of course.

Then came the 4-pack—an office-sized ‘area’ with 4 desks bolted to the cube walls, with everyone facing away from the center. It’s more like a dormitory suite than a townhouse. Everyone has their space, and then there’s some common area in the center-white board, conference table, air hockey—whatever that company deemed appropriate for the schmucks who have neither walls nor ceilings. The 4-pack still had an entrance of sorts, and everybody’s name was on the outside wall. These contraptions always reminded me of a carpeted Alamo, with the corresponding results, and they soon gave way to the Time-Life Operator workspace, a low-walled, zero-privacy area so small, it can only rightly be called a “C”, because it’s too small to fit the other letters of ‘cubicle’.

These “C”’s are quite modern and sleek, but they stink re: productivity and concentration. I’m not playing video games at my desk, but sometimes I need to have a private conversation, and I’d rather not share these things with the sardines in my tin, as it were. I lobbied to get a "C" spot in the back row, away from the programmers who neither speak nor move all day, and who hate me because my phone rings constantly, and I have the nerve to answer it. I was told that contractors don’t get back row seats, and if my neighbors complained, well then perhaps I should just keep it down.

Okay, then.

In response to this, and because, at least for now, I like what I’m doing, I’ve developed a few skills to operate at my desk without going postal. For example, I developed a voice I call the Cubicle Whisper, that is low enough so as not to be heard by my neighbors or anyone standing more than 6 inches away from me, including, sometimes, the person on the other end of the phone. I have also altered my seating position in my office chair, so that my body covers the bulk of my laptop screen, and anyone coming up from behind me (which is everyone, given the arrangement of my desk relative to the walkway) can’t just ogle what’s spattered across my screen. I sweet-talked my way into a docking station and a privacy screen, so when I really need to look at something and not have it ogled by the Public At Large, I slide it to my desktop monitor and work with relative peace.

See how much easier this would all be if I worked from home? I’m starting to miss it again.

The one thing that helps me about working on site is that I’m nowhere near my kitchen, except at meal times. Despite grunting out 23 minutes on the treadmill (260 calories!) and humping wet snow for an hour, I worked all day long at 2 jobs: (1) my paid contract, and (2) keeping my fat ass out of the kitchen.

At the office, I go day after day at the office without any temptation to eat at mid-morning, and if I do, I just ignore it, or go drink more water/coffee to fill my tummy until lunch. I’m off coffee right now, while I figure out what the Down There Disease is all about, and so my appetite is a little stronger than usual, but nothing I can’t handle. Or so I thought. I made it through today without a breech, but I can see where being at home and around all of DS’s peanut butter crackers could drive me to a much slower weight loss pace. Suddenly I get why it’s so hard for the Stay-At-Homes to keep themselves on program.

So let me focus on the good things. First of all, my weight is all screwy because of my period, but I think I have a shot at a 187.0 weigh in tomorrow, which would bring me to 64.0 pounds lost and a whopping 25% gone from my original body weight. I’m three-quarters of my old self! I also recalculated my BMI, and I’m at 26.8, with 25.0 being 'normal' vs. 'overweight'. I can really see Normal from here, and it’s not that college town in downstate Illinois, either.

This particular site gave me a percentile rating, saying that for 5’10” and 187 pounds, I’m in the 53rd percentile, which means I weigh more than 53% of women ‘out there’. Curious, I typed in my old weight, 251, to get the percentile. Know what it was? 90. Ninetieth percentile. At my peak, I weighed more than ninety percent of women. Sobering, but also satisfying, because I am no longer there. I am 64 pounds away from that woman, and I am never going back.

Plus, after my period is over, I’m going out shopping for size 10 jeans. No "stretch" jeans for this old broad, so I’m sure I’ll be stuffed into them and sporting the side seams as skin ornaments for hours after I peel them off. But still, size 10. I started out at 20W, and I’m going to pass through a 10 on my way to…where? I don’t know. All I know is that I won’t have to telecommute to get there.

A the C(ubed)