Tuesday evening
OK, got my one required commuting day for this week out of the way today. Lately I've been trying to put in a full workday when I commute instead of leaving early. It's taken me a long time to try, because commuting days are at least 2.75 hours longer than work from home days for me. The commute is at least one hour each way, often longer because of Metro delays. And getting ready to leave in the morning takes about 45 minutes, including cat prep, packing, setting out clothes, grooming, showering, dressing. So today I began getting ready at 7:45am, and arrived home at 7pm.
It used to take even longer when we had Dax. I regularly burned up most of my paid leave to arrive late or quit early back during the Dax years, because I was often taking him to doggie day care, which added a bunch more variable time to the commute.
Sure, it is my choice to live in the suburbs; I used to live close enough to the office to walk there. But after two years of working from home and getting the job done just fine, each commute day feels like a kind of tax on my time and energy.
Plus, I can get chores done at home in between work stuff, or take a work break to do some exercise, tacking on extra work time at the beginning or end of the day. Everything is much more flexible when working from home.
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So, now I'm home, I've eaten a dinner cobbled together from leftovers that included bread, cheese, meat, and vegetables. No intoxicants tonight, I want to get up and stretch and then run 3 or 4 miles tomorrow.
I'm looking at train tickets to go up to see T next week -- two nights and one full day on Friday, to accompany him to the island where he works. I've got tickets in my cart, but for some reason T is not checking messages or answering the phone right now and I want to make sure the times are OK with him before I pay. Perhaps he's on a date! He doesn't give me a lot of details about his Northern social life.
Otherwise ... I want to get to sleep on the early side tonight, because I want to run tomorrow and I need to run errands tomorrow. T forgot to bring enough of his medicines with him, and K forgot to pack his mouthguard -- I hope to send both of these tomorrow. I also need to fill up the car with gas, and get some alcohol for the house. There's plenty of food here, probably more than I can consume before it goes bad, because T bought too many groceries while he was here. At least now I get to skip Blue Apron deliveries when the food piles up too high.
At the moment, after a long commute day, and scheduling my trip up to CT, I'm not thinking about scheduling local social activities yet. But there are people I haven't seen in a while because of holidays, MAL, K & T being here, getting sick twice, etc. I got to see Ben and spanking buddies over the weekend, who can I see next ... I'm not feeling the sort of social isolation I felt a year ago when I was first adjusting to T's new job.
It used to take even longer when we had Dax. I regularly burned up most of my paid leave to arrive late or quit early back during the Dax years, because I was often taking him to doggie day care, which added a bunch more variable time to the commute.
Sure, it is my choice to live in the suburbs; I used to live close enough to the office to walk there. But after two years of working from home and getting the job done just fine, each commute day feels like a kind of tax on my time and energy.
Plus, I can get chores done at home in between work stuff, or take a work break to do some exercise, tacking on extra work time at the beginning or end of the day. Everything is much more flexible when working from home.
-----
So, now I'm home, I've eaten a dinner cobbled together from leftovers that included bread, cheese, meat, and vegetables. No intoxicants tonight, I want to get up and stretch and then run 3 or 4 miles tomorrow.
I'm looking at train tickets to go up to see T next week -- two nights and one full day on Friday, to accompany him to the island where he works. I've got tickets in my cart, but for some reason T is not checking messages or answering the phone right now and I want to make sure the times are OK with him before I pay. Perhaps he's on a date! He doesn't give me a lot of details about his Northern social life.
Otherwise ... I want to get to sleep on the early side tonight, because I want to run tomorrow and I need to run errands tomorrow. T forgot to bring enough of his medicines with him, and K forgot to pack his mouthguard -- I hope to send both of these tomorrow. I also need to fill up the car with gas, and get some alcohol for the house. There's plenty of food here, probably more than I can consume before it goes bad, because T bought too many groceries while he was here. At least now I get to skip Blue Apron deliveries when the food piles up too high.
At the moment, after a long commute day, and scheduling my trip up to CT, I'm not thinking about scheduling local social activities yet. But there are people I haven't seen in a while because of holidays, MAL, K & T being here, getting sick twice, etc. I got to see Ben and spanking buddies over the weekend, who can I see next ... I'm not feeling the sort of social isolation I felt a year ago when I was first adjusting to T's new job.