My husband had a virtual meeting today at 12 p.m. Now normally this wouldn’t be an issue — his home office is set up in our kitchen/dining room area, and my home office is in a spare room. Sure I can hear his work conversations even with my “office” door closed, but it usually works out well.
Until today.
Our house cleaners come every other Wednesday (don’t judge me, it’s the best money I have ever spent!), but sometimes they are not consistent with their arrival time. Today they were coming to our house for 12 p.m., so that means that my husband needed a place where he could set up his laptop on a solid surface and close the door. And it’s been raining all day, so he couldn’t go out back and sit on our patio. It’s also a tad chilly here today.
So I had to give up my office today at 12 p.m. And I don’t think that I was given an actual choice or that I was part of any discussion about giving up my office for an hour. My husband just set up his laptop on the big folding table I have set up across from my desk. I put the folding table there a couple of months ago because I was desperate for more surface area to sort papers, read my book during my lunch break or paint on the weekends. I knew I shouldn’t have left that table up, it was only a matter of time before he grabbed it!
And I couldn’t sit at my desk in the office during his meeting — I would have been in direct view of the camera, I’d have to listen to his meeting and he’d have to hear me typing! So what did I do? I grabbed my cell phone, a glass of water and some almonds and hung out in one room before the cleaners were ready to clean that room, then moved into the bedroom when they were done cleaning in there. I would have taken a walk, but it was really raining. It was pretty awkward!
I was able to respond to a couple of personal e-mails and free up some much needed space on my phone by deleting some crappy photos I’d taken the past couple of months, so that’s a bonus. But this really wasn’t how I wanted to spend my hour lunch break today. I probably should have just gone for a walk…
Notes from a Self Quarantine 