Clown pants

I work at home a lot.  My job is pretty much reading, thinking, and writing, and I can do that better at home  where there are fewer external distractions.  There still are some, but they're good:  a view of trees, a squirrel eating my tulip bulbs, children getting out of school, the changing light as the sun passes overhead.
I've got my stuff and my comfortable chairs and I can cook for lunch instead of reheating stuff or buying a grease bomb from down the street.  There is color on the walls here.  The rugs are nice.  It smells better (mostly--depends on Tiki).  If I want fresh air, I can open a window.  If I want music, I can play whatever I want as loud as I want.  I've got my dogs with me and I can hear them breathing/snoring, and feel Kirby's fur on my feet (he's clingy.  Tiki likes his space.)

I've got the best of the offices allotted to widget monkeys like me and I like my office.  But the external distractions are more numerous and more irritating:  loud hallway conversations, a neighbor's excessive perfume, the smell of another neighbor's laundry detergent, the churning grind of the ventilation unit, the paper jamming in the shared printer outside my office door (it's a piece of crap; we've been begging for a new one for several years), people fussing with the printer to clear the paper jam, the IT guys fiddling with the printer and devising a short-term solution but not solving the real problem (i.e., the printer is a piece of shit), the sound of sirens in the street, the picket line chanting in front of my building (some people don't like the landlord's business practices), demonstrations in front of the American Enterprise Institute down the street (some people don't like Dick Cheney or Karl Rove).  The walls are boring and the lighting is bad and the ventilation is OK but not good enough for my particular sensibilities and the carpet is grubby.  Etc.



You'd be surprised to hear that the internal distractions are pretty much the same.  I can fiddle with the interwebs either place, I can scribble in my notebooks or make phone calls, I can stare into space, I can embark on administrative busywork, I can wander off in search of a latte (the ones at home are better), I can daydream about my imaginary life.  Etc.

At the office, there used to be a law library with tables and chairs, so if you needed a different chair, you could take your work in there.  Smaller government means no more library, so your office chair is pretty much it for work spaces.

At home, I have a desk in front of a big window.  When I want something else, I can put the laptop on a tray table and go sit somewhere else.  Wherever I go, Kirby comes with.  Friday was a sunny day, so I sat in my lovely boudoir and the boys took a sunbath:

If it's a cloudy day, or if I sit in the living room, this happens:

That's my view looking down.  The stripes are my pants, and the dogbutt belongs to Kirby.  He's on/under my feet.  If I move, I'll probably kick him in the head.  It's sweet, but it can also be a real pain in the ass.

Kirby is doing much better.  The dog neurologist thinks he has an infection which, oddly, is treated with chemotherapy every six weeks as if it were cancer.  The treatments don't take long at all.  They suppress immune function, so he has a blood test after seven days to make sure he's safe, and we don't go to the dog park any more.  He's essentially back to normal, with an exception.  He's a bit slow, remember, but he's finally connected the appearance of the dog walker with cookies.  Today, a friend stopped by and she mistook Kirby for Tiki because Kirby was friendly and happy to see her, probably cos he thought she might be a dog walker.

Tiki is having some significant back pain and some days he doesn't get around like he used to.  When he feels a twinge, he lets out a yelp, which scares the crap out of us.  It's good though, because he's complainy enough to let us know when something is wrong.