The COVID-Telework Diary: Day 16, Let's Talk about Video Conference Calls

My immediate superior in my organization, it should be said at the outset, has always been a fan of Skype for Business.

I have not.

I don't like feeling like I'm in a fishbowl. I don't like that I feel rude if I have to (or want to) look at something that's not within the field of view of the other people on the call.  I don't like that if you want to roll your eyes or pull some other face, you can't because everyone will see you.

I don't like how I look on the screen.  Is that what I look like?

Last week, my immediate supervisor started trying to test out Skype for Business.  She'd place random calls through the device -- voice-only calls and video calls.  And with no or little warning.  I know that the efforts were (probably) sincere, but they felt like bed checks, especially since I was also trying to help my son with his school iPad and trying to keep him on task while I also did my non-impromptu-testing-of-Skype work.

All that testing revealed that Skype for Business took an enormous amount to bandwidth.  Our weekly attorney meeting last week was via video on Skype, but all the sound was via our office conference call line.  That's the only way we could do it which is to say it was unworkable.  And especially unworkable when we know that the courts are considering moving to video court.  We need the flexibility to be able to appear in court via video.

(Video court will also mean, of course, that we will have to get dressed in suits in our houses, at least from the waist up.  And that feels silly . . . silly, but necessary, though.)

So by the end of last week, our agency suddenly switched to MS Teams.  I say "suddenly" because nothing happens quickly in government, but in exigent circumstances, even the wheels of government can turn quickly, I suppose.

We impromptu-tested MS Teams yesterday. (I was troubleshooting my son's iPad again, naturally, when the unannounced and unanticipated call came through.)  It did actually work better.  (But my hair looked a fright.)

Today, we had our first real meeting with MS Teams.  I took the trouble to fix my hair (hair dryer and a round brush) and put on a little make up for the first time in over a week -- even lipstick.  I should note that I did this for me to make me feel better about looking at myself on the screen.  Also, I put a pair of R2-D2 earrings on and a gray cardigan over my Yoda t-shirt.  (It says, "Always in motion the future is.")

The meeting went okay, I guess.  I think that we could just as easily have done this by not-video conference call.  I don't know why we have to look at each other while we talk about stuff.  Again, my inability to pull faces during these meetings hurts me.  Actually, though,  I do pull faces, but now I know that I do it -- unlike in face-to-face meetings when I'm not looking at a tiny image of myself at the bottom of the screen making faces.  So, really, it just adds to my, "What are people thinking of me" unnecessary stress.  But anyway . . . .  They're happening.  They will continue to happen for the foreseeable future, so I and my overly expressive face had better get used to it.

Nighty-night, friends.

The COVID-Telework Diary: Day 15, Beginning of the Third Week

Well, Week 3.  How are we all doing?  What can we say?  I hope you're doing okay.

We've had technical difficulties on all three fronts:  my work, husband's work, kid's school.  Some of them are being worked out, some of them are ongoing.  We will muddle through.  We have to.

The good news for us is that, after 14+ days in isolation, none of us are displaying symptoms.  Well, not consistently, anyway.  On the weekend, for instance, I had a dry cough and I didn't feel quite right.  The pollen count was through the roof over the weekend.  Still, I checked my temperature a couple of times.  "Is 98.8 the sort of low grade fever they're talking about?"  Fortunately, I did not continue to register even a minuscule fever.  And, after taking three different types of OTC allergy medication (Allegra, Zyrtec, and Flonase), I felt much better.

We have several friends on the front line of this war against an invisible enemy:  doctors, nurses, other medical professionals.  I worry about them all, and their families.

We have a friend who works in the oil and gas industry who still has to go to work so that there's still fuel for the country.  I worry about him and his family too.

My fellow bankruptcy lawyers are bracing for the flood of both individual and business bankruptcies that will inevitably follow this crisis.  It will be sad and it will be hard . . . like after 9/11, but more cases across the country.

Also, how many desserts is it okay to have after lunch and/or dinner?  Three?  Is three the right number?  I think it is.  I think any number is the right number when you're under extreme and prolonged stressed.  Go get another cookie.

This afternoon, I had a telephonic hearing and, despite there being a sign on the door not to enter,

The Boy came running in with a Lego problem.  Thank goodness that the phone was on mute.  Signs, apparently, are ineffective in the face of an issue with your Lego man's arm.

Hang in there, friends, I think we've got several more weeks of this ride to go.

The COVID-Telework Diary: Day 14, The Dog's Diary

It's been like eleventy-hundred days since I have been to doggy daycare.  I'm not sure why my people decided not to send me there anymore, but they did and now I can't play chasey-chase with other dogs anymore.

Also, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma don't go anywhere anymore.  When I used to go to doggy daycare, they would go to their own daycares, I guess, and then either Alpha or Beta -- usually Beta -- would pick me up at the end of the day of playing chasey-chase, which, did I mention, I don't get to do anymore because there are no other dogs in our house.

On the plus side, I have been able to guard our den perimeter pretty successfully and have managed to keep many other packs from invading our turf.

Also, Alpha and I walk probably 30,000 miles a day now around our neighborhood on what I like to call wide patrol.  I do see other dogs when we are on wide patrol, but I have to tell those dogs to get outta here because this is my territory, unless it's the cute cavachon that lives on the cul de sac down the way (she's a pretty alright girl) or my best friend, G, who is often also out on wide patrol with one or more of her people.  Frankly, I don't know what this neighborhood would do without G and me protecting it from invasion.

Also, I get to sit with Alpha on the sofa a lot, and I get good head scratches from Beta.  So having the people around isn't all bad . . . but still, no chasey-chase with other dogs is a high price to pay.

Gamma plays a lot with his plastic blocks and little plastic men with claws for hands.  When I was a puppy, I chewed on one of those little men and swallowed a claw (not the rest of the man, just his claw).  Alpha found the claw the next day in my poop.  She's a good Den Leader.  I know that she's the Den Leader because she calls herself that and sometimes refers to us as Bears and not dogs (or people or whatever).

Also, though, she's the Den Leader because she's Alpha.

At the end of every wide patrol, Alpha and/or Beta washes my paws and sings a song for each paw.  This is a weird procedure, and not one we used to employ when I used to get to go play chasey-chase at doggy daycare, but it's better than this stinky stuff that Beta called "hand sanitizer," which they put on my paws for a couple of days after walks and THAT I HATED.  Alpha said hand sanitizer is not good for dogs and Beta agreed . . . because she's Alpha, and also she had a website to back up her claim.

Today, though, at the end of our last wide patrol of the day, Alpha didn't just wash my paws, but MY WHOLE BODY.  But I got her because I shook the water off all over her.  She said that I had started to smell "like a dog," to which I replied, "Well, duh, Alpha."  Alpha is smart, but she's still just a human.

Okay, well, I need to start getting ready to demand some part of the dinner that Alpha, Beta, and Gamma are going to eat.  They feed me my Royal Canin Small Adult Dog Food every night, but I like it topped with something tasty like green beans or broccoli or the soupy stuff from black beans.  I need to make sure that they do that, you know, by yipping at them and/or whining, and that takes mental preparation.

Your friend, The Dog 🐶

The COVID-Telework Diary: Day 13, Shopping and Sanitization

Saturday, March 28, 2020

Two things before we begin:  First, I lost count at 10 days.  I called my entry, "The Frog," Day 10, but it was really Day 11.  I . . . lost . . . count . . . after only 10 days.  Second, there is no entry for Day 12, which was Friday, March 27, 2020.  I was tired.  The boy was difficult to get to sleep.  I didn't write.  But, had I written yesterday, this is what I would have written about . . . .

Shopping.

Shopping is different, now, under the shelter-in-place order.  Only pharmacies, grocery stores, convenience stores, gas stations and liquor stores are open.  (Yes, liquor stores . . . because Texas.)  But we don't go to stores.  Going to the store exposes you to a lot more people, a lot more vectors for virus.

We shop online.

But even then, we take precautions to minimize the chance of the novel coronavirus entering our house and making one of us sick.  Here's what we do:

• We do not open the front door.  That's where packages are delivered and, therefore, that's the most vulnerable point in our space because that is where the most people who don't live in our house (e.g. possibly virus carriers/transmitters) appear.
• For nonperishable items:
• Once a day, my husband drives around to the front of the house and puts the packages in his truck bed.
• Each package is labeled with the date it arrived and a date three days out when it can be opened. (This is because the virus has been found to survive on surfaces for up to 72 hours . . . maybe a little longer.)
• We have three boxes in our garage for these items to keep Day A separated from Day B separated from Day C in order to avoid cross-contamination.
• Once 72 hours has elapsed, my husband opens the packages and wipes them down with a disinfectant (bleach wipes or Lysol or an isopropyl alcohol solution) and brings them inside.
• Once inside, I put the packages away.
• In the case of clothing (some summer clothes for The Boy arrived this past week), they go straight into the washer (which is our general protocol anyway).
• For perishable items:
• My husband wipes each item down immediately and I put them away.
• Vegetables and fruits are washed in the sink with soap and water and set out to dry or dried by hand before we put them into the refrigerator.

Yes, it's a production, but, as I've noted before on this blog, Dr. Fauci has said that if it seems like you're overreacting, you're probably doing the right thing.

This production of bringing items into our house, though, has made me re-evaluate my online shopping habit.  And it is a Habit.  Now, if I find that I am bored and I think about perusing the Talbots or ModCloth or HerUniverse websites, or even Amazon or Lego, I think about what would have to happen before the item I am considering can be incorporated into my closet or played with by The Boy.  Is it worth the effort?  Often, it is not.  I don't know if it's coincidence, but I seem to be getting more and more emails from my favorite retailers -- Kate Spade is especially pushy -- offering sales and deals.  I'm probably not the only person in the United States rethinking their online shopping habits.

Also, I've decided to buy fewer fresh fruits and veggies for the next several weeks and will rely, instead, on frozen or canned items.  It's easier than the sink-full of fruits and veggies.  Of course, we washed our food before we ate it pre-COVID19, but we did not necessarily do all the washing immediately upon bringing it into the house before it went into the fridge.  And we didn't always use soap and water.  I think, now, however, I will always use soap and water, just to be safe. 

This virus has taught me -- taught us -- that, as modern as we think we are, we are not invulnerable.  In fact, we had become complacent thinking that all the dread diseases of yore -- small pox, plague, measles, polio, diphtheria -- were mere sepia-toned memories of a brutal past, not something our technicolor world need worry about. We thought we didn't need to worry about wildly infectious diseases anymore, we who luxuriate in our First World Problems and abundance so great that online shopping is a habit.

Some of us had even become so arrogant about infectious disease that we refused to vaccinate our children against them.  The idea of a disease cutting down wide swathes of a population was so ancient a proposition as to be laughable to certain segments of our society.  In our modern hubris, we have become less careful about everything.  I hope that has changed.  My complacency about my own health and safety certainly has.  I hope it's changed for others too.

The COVID-Telework Diary: Day 11, The Frog

A frog lives in our backyard.  I didn't know this until Sunday, but he (or she) is back there.  (I'll get to how I found out on Sunday that The Frog was back there in a minute.)

This morning The Frog was sitting by the side of the pool at around 6:30 a.m. when I left through the backyard to take The Dog for a walk.  And I know this because, as I walked past the pool, I heard a plunk into the water.  I looked back into the pool in the general area of the plunk and saw this.

That's The Frog sitting on one of the steps to our pool waiting for me and The Dog to get the heck outta the backyard so he (or she) can get back out of the pool to eat some bugs or whatever he (or she) was doing when The Dog and I so rudely interrupted.  (This photo also shows how desperately we need to get our pool resurfaced, but you are going to ignore that, recognizing that we'd planned such maintenance for this spring but now that project, like all other non-essential maintenance project, is being deferred indefinitely.)

I think that The Frog is a Southern Leopard Frog.  Southern Leopard Frogs sound like THAT.

About a week ago, The Working Dad and I were awakened in the night by THAT sound, except that it sounded muffled and almost mechanical. We could not figure it out.  We thought maybe it was a wounded bird, maybe a baby opossum . . . a frog, we did not come up with.  It would go silent during the day.  "Nocturnal," we thought.  We settled on it being a baby opossum who had lost its mom.  We were sad for it.  We tried to, but could not find it.

Every night -- or really around 5:00 a.m. -- THAT sound would start up again.  Muffled and mechanical and, we thought, the sound of a dying baby opossum that we could not find.  It was tragic.

The Working Dad started leaving the back porch light on to maybe stop the creature making the sound (nocturnal creatures not being fond of the light, you see).  It seemed to work, but then . . . .

On Sunday afternoon, we heard THAT sound.  In the broad daylight!!!!

I went into the backyard and waited for the sound.  And it happened.  I moved to the area of the yard the sound seemed to be coming from and picked up a stick.  I gently prodded the bushes, hoping to cause the creature to make the sound again.  And it did make the sound again, but it was coming from behind me, where the pool was.

I turned.

I heard THAT sound again.  And, remember that I said it sounded almost mechanical?  The sound was coming from the pool drain.

I opened the drain.  It was full almost to the top with blossoms that had fallen from our pear tree in the backyard.

I waited.  And I heard the sound again.  It was definitely the pool drain, I decided.  Something was stuck in all of the detritus and it was making our pool drain make THAT sound.

I stuck my hand in, heedless of what might lie in wait for me, and started pulling handfuls of pear flowers out of the drain.  When I was halfway done, I saw it:  A frog's leg kicking away from the flowers, trying to escape the drain and the giant hand that had scooped and reached so near to it over and over and over again.  THAT sound wasn't the drain and it wasn't mechanical.  It was the muffled call of a trapped frog.

After a couple of tries, I managed to catch The Frog and set it on the pool deck.  The Frog sat for a moment, stunned, and then hopped off into the ground cover next to the pool.

As far as I can figure, The Frog had gotten stuck in the drain at some point on Thursday night last week.  It couldn't escape the drain, but because the drain was so full of flowers, it had a nice little island to sit on, rather than be sucked to the bottom and drown. I imagine that the odd bug made its way in there at one point or another, which served as sustenance.  So for four or five days -- which must be an eternity to a frog, it was stuck on an island of flowers eating bugs, catch as catch can.  I'd like to think that The Frog was happy to be free, however harrowing that escape might have been.  I was glad to have been of assistance.

I wasn't sure I'd ever see The Frog again, so this morning, I was delighted to find that, despite The Frog's not-so-fun several days in our pool drain, he (or she) had decided to hang around our house at least for now.  Welcome to the family, froggy friend.

The COVID-Telework Diary Day 10: Jelly Bellies

I just ate a handful of Jelly Bellies, but just my handful.  Maybe a quarter of a cup.  Too many . . . putting my pancreas to work . . . but not, like, the whole bag.  Anyway . . . .

The bubble gum flavored ones are vile, cloyingly vile.  But I ate them and kept eating them . . . because they were in my hand.

Also, chocolate and berry are surprisingly good together.  I didn't intend that combination.  I thought the chocolate was another berry.

Also good:  toasted marshmallow and buttered popcorn.  Another happy mistake.

I also like the black pepper flavored ones . . . and, of course, licorice.  (I didn't used to like licorice.  As a kid, I hated it and would always wonder why my dad would eat it.  Now I know why.  And the reason is because kid's don't know anything and that shit is delicious.)

The sour cherry one that I ate all by itself:  Devine.

There were no weird ones in my hand, thank God, like grass or booger or ear wax or vomit (damn you, Harry Potter).

I saved two watermelons for last.

The COVID-Telework Diary Day 9: The One with Photos of a Lovely, if Lonely, Afternoon in the Backyard