Category: Just Because

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Friday

This has been the week from hell. While the concept certainly looks good on paper, our current policy of 50% in office/50% WFH, is presenting difficulties, not the least of which is I don't know what fucking day of the week it is anymore. We've been slammed with tickets, and it seems everyone has turned into a Karen, demanding that their problems be addressed now.

Honey, it don't work that way. Unless you're VIP, or the entire network is down because of your issue, you wait your turn like everyone else.

Despite my grousing prior to this in/out policy being implemented, I am enjoying being back in the office—if for no other reason than it allows me to do things I am unable to do remotely.

The biggest problem right now is that people requiring direct assistance are often on the opposite schedule from me. "Can I come up and check this [problem requiring hands-on assistance] today?" "No, I'm only in Tuesdays and Thursdays." "Oh…I'm WFH Tuesday and Thursdays, so I guess I'll see if one of the other guys can help you." Much ticket shuffling ensues.

There's also the question of the folks who have laptops with a docking station, as well as (often dual) monitors they brought home from the office. Now that they're shuttling back and forth two or three times a week, they're whining because they don't have the same setups in both locations to plug into. This has caused a considerable amount of drama in the department this past week, as this sort of setup is in direct violation of enterprise policy (one device and a maximum of two 24" monitors per employee, unless they are high level AutoCAD or GIS users, in which case they get one 32-inch and one 24" monitor). At one of our field offices, several employees took it upon themselves to grab unused monitors and give themselves three monitors, with a few of them asking for four. WTF? Why does an admin assistant need FOUR fucking monitors at her desk? Short answer, she doesn't.

Amid much gnashing of teeth, it was finally decided that enterprise policy would be enforced. Users will be allowed to have their monitors/docking stations at home or in the office, but not both. They can bring a monitor back into the office and use their laptop as a secondary screen, or leave the setup as-is until everyone is back in the office full time. We won't be providing secondary docking stations, but will have multifunction dongles available for them to use at home or in the office, depending on where the rest of their equipment ends up living.

"But, but…"

Honey, if you don't like it, you can return all the equipment and come into the office full time. THAT is the new policy.

The enterprise also lifted its mask/social distancing mandate for the fully vaccinated. This is strictly "on the honor method" so I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this—especially since it applies not only to employees, but also members of the public interacting with us. While I feel that the employees will have each others' backs and do the right thing, the general public? Not so much.

Thankfully I have absolutely no interaction with those unwashed, potentially unvaccinated masses.

I also need to keep reminding myself that masks don't especially protect you, but are to protect others from you if you're infected.

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Be Civilized

Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.

But no. Mead said that "the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed." Mead explained. In the animal kingdom, if you break  your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink, or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.

"A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts," Mead said.

We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.

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Friday Before a Week Long Staycation

Nothing really planned for next week other than not logging into work! (To be followed by an expanded back-in-the-office schedule starting June 7th—but that's a depressing thought best pushed off until that preceding Sunday night.)

On Thursday we may take a day-long road trip to north to drop off my Technics components to a guy in Prescott who is going to refurbish the innards (something long overdue). We're going to take Sammy along because it's been ages since he's been in the car without the destination being something unpleasant for him. And let's face it, after the past two weeks, we all need a getaway.

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The Diseases, and Casualties this year being 1632

* One of the leading causes of death in children in the London bills of mortality is "Chrisomes and infants" meaning the death of a child under a month (chrisom) or before it could speak (infant).

* For medical practitioners, the wolf was an appropriate metaphor for malignant disease and a widely used piece of cancer terminology. On very rare occasions, it was even a 'real' bodily interloper.

Here's a list of some of the more odd or confusing items, for anyone interested:

Ague = feverish illness, often malaria

Apoplex = stroke (the rupture or clogging of a blood vessel in the brain), paralysis resulting from a stroke – sometimes also refers to other spontaneous causes of internal bleeding like burst aneurysms

Meagrom = migraine, severe headache – this obvious symptom could be deadly if it originated from things like a brain tumor, bleeding within the brain / stroke, concussion / TBI / swelling within the brain…

Bloody flux, scowring, flux = dysentery / bloody diarrhea or otherwise severe diarrhea, often from diseases like cholera

Childbed = death during or shortly after giving birth

Colick, stone, and strangury = severe abdominal pain, bladder/kidney stones, rupture in abdomen (appendicitis, bladder rupture, etc)

Consumption = tuberculosis

Cut of the stone = died during/from the surgery to cut out bladder/kidney stones

Dropsie and swelling = edema, swelling of a body part

Falling sickness = epilepsy, seizures

Flocks and small pox = smallpox, other diseases causing pustules over the body like cowpox and chickenpox

French pox = syphilis

Jaundies = jaundice, yellowing of the skin and eyes often a symptom of liver failure

Jawfain = "jaw fallen" / lockjaw, often tetanus

Impostume = abscess, a deep infection full of pus

King's Evil = scrofula, aka tuberculosis infection of the neck glands. The touch of a king was said to cure this disease.

Lethargie = depression?

Livergrown = unknown, some think it might have been another term for rickets or it could be from diseases which resulted in a swollen, enlarged liver – things like chronic alcoholism, hepatitis, or congestive heart failure.

Made away themselves = suicide

Murthered = murdered

Over-laid = infant that died after being unintentionally smothered / parent rolled onto them while sleeping

Starved at nurse = insufficient breast milk, or the child had a disease that caused them to "fail to thrive" / not gain weight and die even though being fed

Palsie = palsy, paralysis or other muscle difficulties

Piles = hemorrhoids

Planet = aka planet-struck, any very sudden severe illness or paralysis that was thought to result from the "influence" of a planet. Like how the moon (luna) was once thought to cause insanity (creating lunatics).

Pleurisie = swollen, inflamed pleura – the membranous tissue surrounding the lungs

Purples = bruising, especially wide-spread – many causes

Spotted feaver = typhus or meningitis

Quinsie = tonsillitis / inflamed tonsils, especially when abscessed and obstructing breathing

Rising of the lights = as an organ meat, lungs are often called "lights" because they are very light-weight organs. Nobody's sure about what exactly "rising of the lights" was, but it may be related to severe coughing and the perception that during a cough the lungs would rise up in the chest. Perhaps croup, a respiratory disease causing a severe 'barking' cough.

Suddenly = unknown sudden death

Surfet = overeating / gluttony, vomiting from overeating. Aside from direct "death from overeating" it may have been a grouping for many types of death that often went along with being overweight – death from untreated diabetes, cushing's disease, heart failure, etc. "Surfet" also might have been the cause-of-death given if someone over drank, passed out, and died from aspirating their own vomit.

Teeth = dental infection leading to death

Thrush = yeast overgrowth / yeast infection of mouth (or genitals)

Tympany = either abdominal tumor growth, or other bloating/distension of the abdomen – especially when air or gas is caught within the abdomen or intestines, causing a hollow sound when thumped

Tissick = cough, can also refer to the coughing and wasting away of tuberculosis

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Yesterday…

…was the first time in nine months Ben and I were able to enjoy a [appropriately socially distanced from the rest of humanity] afternoon at Starbucks. It was wonderful.

We have to be out of the hotel room every Saturday for housekeeping to perform what they cal a "deep clean." This requires finding someplace to sequester the dogs while we're out of the room. Thankfully Ben's grandfather is more than willing to watch the little pee buckets at his place while we run errands, do laundry, and yesterday—grab a little respite from all the insanity of the last month.

After grabbing coffee and breakfast, we did our week's laundry and then we hit Best Buy to look at televisions. We didn't buy anything, because we have nowhere to store it, but we have a much better idea of what we want when we settled into our new place in a week's time.

Finished there, we hit Starbucks, grabbed some lunch, and enjoyed the balmy December weather sitting outside for a few hours before picking up the dogs an heading back to the room.

Today we left the dogs in the room (they were amazingly well-behaved) and hit IKEA, where we picked up a few necessities that were going to be needed at our new home before we get the remainder of our belongings returned.

All in all, it was a good weekend.

Next weekend, however, is going to be crazy.

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Goodbye, Friend

Well, it's done. There are a few items remaining on the property that we need a truck for, but yesterday was my last trip to this house. (Ben and his friends will be removing those items next weekend.) The restoration companies (one for hard goods, one for clothing and linens) came out earlier this week and inventoried, packed, and removed everything that was salvageable from the house. The contents will be cleaned and restored and returned to us wherever we eventually resettle.

We hit the place after they had finished Wednesday evening and retrieved anything else we wanted to keep that they had deemed unsalvageable. For instance, they took the vast majority of my books but curiously left others that were completely undamaged.

We are somewhat fortunate in that with my anal-retentiveness, I'd scanned and saved receipts from many of our big-ticket items which will make getting money out of the insurance company that much easier.

Lately the most common phrase to leave my lips is "Fuck James." (James being our landlord whose negligence while sweating the water lines to the new water heater caused this disaster.) Every time I have to buy something that didn't need to be bought, every time I have to throw myself out into public after nine months of COVID isolation, I mutter "Fuck James."

All this could've been prevented if he'd only used a heat shield up against the wood when he was welding.

To be honest, there were a lot of things we grew to dislike about this house; little annoyances cropped up over the years that became sort of a running joke. (Like for example who puts the refrigerator directly opposite the stove, preventing two people from working in the kitchen at the same time?) Counter space was abysmal; the bathroom horrifically small. And the back yard…don't even get me started.

But it was still home.

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Home

I have a list of all the addresses where I've lived over the course of my life. Why? Because reasons. Because I'm an anal-retentive bitch.

Including our current residence, I've had 38 different addresses, starting with the one I came home to after my birth.

And—like many years ago when I mused this topic in my journal, I got to asking, "What is home?"

What  causes a suite of rooms in a non-descript apartment building on some obscure street to become a home?  That's a question I was pondering while going over the list of all the places I've lived, and which ones stood out as actually being home.

In my mind, home is a place of refuge and sanctuary; a place where I can shut out the world and unwind. It's a place where I can connect with the energy of those rooms recharge.

The length of time in any given place didn't seem to have a lot to do with it. Some places that I lived in only a few short months stand out as home, while others that I lived in for years don't make that mark.

The house where I spent my high school and early college years was definitely home. Even when my sister and I visited the then-for-sale property, I didn't sense any ghosts, just that same welcoming energy.

Of the eleven apartments I lived in Tucson, only two earned the title of home: the ones I moved into after I split up with both my first and second partners. They were places to regroup, reassemble, and most importantly, ground myself again.


Of the nine addresses in San Francisco I called home, again only two earned the title of home: the first place in the Folsom building, and likewise the first one in the 17th Street building. (In both cases I moved to different digs in the same buildings, perceiving them to be "better," but they never achieved the same home status as the initial ones.)

In contrast, after I returned to Phoenix, I lived in two separate apartments in the same complex and there, it was the second one who achieved home status. The first one was where I lived while going through cancer treatment, and while it was obviously a place where I could rebuild and recharge, I don't have a lot of pleasant memories of being there. The second apartment, which I moved into a couple years after my treatments were completed, became home with a capital H—and to this day remains my go-to mental sanctuary.

The places we lived in Denver were nice enough, but again, none of them could be called home in my mind.

And the current house we're in? After five years, that's still difficult to say definitively. We have issues with a lot of the aspects of this house, but our landlords—our next door neighbors—are great and in addition to our business relationship I count them as friends. Neither Ben or I are in any hurry to leave, and frankly the thought of packing this place up and moving again is horrific.