You are here (but don’t want to be).

This is where you don't want to be.

As more people are being asked to return to offices it’s as though we have to remind people that working from an office was something we all did, all the time. We did it so much that we forgot that it wasn’t normal to be sitting at a desk all day. How the pendulum has swung. Nowadays if people are asked to go to the office, you can measure the collective groan from space. The collective sigh would affect the weather. I get it. I’m one of the moaners and my sighs are heavy, accompanied by eye rolls of disbelief.

How did it get this way? For years I worked in an office because well, that’s where the work was. Even when I was designing signage for trails and spent days on my bike to better understand the landscape (or just scoff off while riding trails in Gatineau Park) I still returned to the office to mark where I’d been and what I’d seen. When I started working freelance from home, I found myself going cabin crazy and would routinely run around the house meowing at the top of my lungs while jumping off the walls. Though that may have been the cat? The sentiment was the same. We were cell mates in a prison of our own making.

When I did start working for someone else again, I enjoyed the office and the camaraderie. We had just moved to Toronto and I didn’t know many people so it gave me a world of meeting people of my ilk. At some point though, doing digital work, it became possible to do it in the office or at home as long as you had a good internet connection and a desk you were fine. Yet that more often than not led to bringing work home when you really shouldn’t. The seeping of work into home life had begun.

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Word Play

I think this is how movie ideas are generated now.

Epic Penile Picnic Panic
There’s a hot dog joke in there somewhere.

Each morning I do a series of New York Times puzzles including Wordle, the Mini crossword, Connections, and Strands but I start with the Spelling Bee. That's how this gem of a sequence of words appeared as I puzzled away on the possible anagrams (where you try to create as many words as possible with the seven assigned letters).

It even included the word “Alien”. I only wished I hadn’t thought of it out of sequence. Can you imagine being confronted with “Epic Alien Penile Picnic Panic” first thing in the morning? Even separately there's fun to be had: "Epic Penile-anything" could be fun or terrifying. Who hasn't had a "Picnic Panic"? Or, if I may say so, who amongst us hasn't suffered a "Penile Panic"? The less said of "Penile Picnic" the better.

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Deep and Inscrutable 

Keena in halcyon repose. Ottawa, Ontario. Date unknown.

I knew a phone call at such a late hour probably wasn't something good (weird how the brain does that). It was Angela telling me that Keena, feline friend of over 18 years, had died.

I never wanted to admit, even to myself, how much I missed Keena. When I first moved into this apartment I still expected her to come to the door, say "hello" then turn around again. One time while coming back from the airport, I started dozing off in the cab and I thought how nice it would be to walk into Fern Avenue and be greeted by Keena. When I remembered where I was actually going, I felt a little cold.

Since I've lived in this apartment, there have been times when I have been asleep on the couch on a Saturday or lying in bed, and I hear various noises, I was so sure I heard Keena's complaint come from another room. I think I may have even called out, "Keena!" In the mornings she would moan-meow to be fed or at night when we'd just gone to bed and turned off the lights, you'd hear her, "ooowllrr". For some reason, just calling out her name would quieten her. Then you'd hear her padding into the bedroom, give another noise as if to say, "oh, you're here. Well whatever." and then make her way downstairs.

She could be a contrarian and anti-social but what few people knew was she was also a mouser. Patient and ruthless. Keena. The Keenster. Madame Piedlourde Kowalski.

“When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation”

What did T.S. Eliot say of the naming of cats? Read more »