Breakfast of champions…

My husband was home with a sick Boo Bug today (and yesterday), so he made dinner tonight: The time honored “breakfast for dinner,” which kids think is some kind of awesome treat and parents know is a desperate attempt to pretend everything is fine and they totally planned this.

…it’s not like they didn’t think about dinner until two minutes before it was supposed to served and only then realize that the Magic Dinner Elves were on strike and it wouldn’t be appearing on the table like magic, all by itself…

Then he turned to me and said, “Oh, by the way, we’re out of bread again. And cookies. And cheese.”

Because gracious knows, I can totally whip up a batch of Cheddar in the two hours between getting home from work and going to bed.

Ahem.

Anyway. Tomorrow, I will be staying home with the sick Boo Bug.

First of all, it’s kind of my turn.

Secondly, I too have a cold and it is rapidly developing to the stage where I can’t stop sneezing, coughing and yawning.

And third, I finally got the last pieces of the puzzle put together today, so I can actually work from home…which kind of blows holes in the whole, Wellllllll, but if I’m not onsite, how can I possibly work and earn money? argument.

So I guess I’m taking my first “floating” telecommute day tomorrow. SURPRISE! (I honestly thought she was going back to school tomorrow. She was fine last night, which led me to believe that today would be her 24-hour ‘symptom free’ period…but no, her sore throat and fever returned tonight, so! No school for the Boo tomorrow!)

Tonight I made sure I would be able to work tomorrow. I logged into the network, got the VPN connection working, tested my ability to ping servers, send and receive email, and most importantly write and execute scripts on the SQL Server.

Check, check and check.

Well. Allrighty then. I’m ready – I can stay home with the sick child (and my own sick self) but not lose an entire day’s pay doing so.

I don’t like to think about how much money I’ve lost through the years because I couldn’t do this – or how many jobs I’ve lost, come right down to it.

Of course, on the flip side…no more days off because I’m sick, unless I’m actually too sick to work. Which, let’s face it, is pretty darned rare.

Actually, I’m almost never too “sick” too work.

“Too hopped up on cold medication,” on the other hand…yeah. That can be a problem. I took some Dayquil yesterday? Holy crap.

FIRST OF ALL, “non-drowsy” my arse. About half an hour after I took those two bright yellow little dabs of sunshine, I was practically snoring. I was doing a constant head-bob thing. Doooooooozing of-HELLO! MY CHIN WASN'T HITTING MY CHEST, I'M WIDE AWAKE...doooooooooozing off again...

ALSO, it whacked me. My vision was weird. I swear, my eyeballs were actually crossing. I kept giggling. I would sit there listening to people in meetings and my mind was just wandering all over this weird little Dr. Seuss-like world inside my head.

I was, like, completely stoned.

On Dayquil.

This, dear readers, is why I will never be found pounding back random pharmaceuticals handed out by a friend at a party or some junk like that – I don’t need them.

Just give me a dose of Dayquil, and I’m good for hours.

ANYWAY.

I had a good laugh on myself tonight. All those years when I had no way to telecommute in times like these – when I would have given my front teeth to be able to do so. How many times did I find myself grousing that if only they’d let me, I could have finished this or that project, gotten this or that done, not lost an entire day’s wages because Baby was sick or daycare was closed or both…

Now I can. Precisely one (1) week after starting my new job, I can carry on a day’s work from right here, almost as though I were sitting over there instead.

This is how modern and with-it and accommodating my MegaBank has become.

And how great is my gratitude?

Well, it went something like this…

“OK, VPN is working fine…email is working fine…internal IM checks out…I can see the servers and the tables…test run of the SQL…OK. I…can totally work tomorrow, right from my home office!” {pause} “Damn. I could’ve used a day offline to {clean, plant, cook, shop, tend, nurture, etc.}.”

Heh. There’s just no pleasing some people, you know it?