I’m working from home today.  The Kiddo is at preschool, so all there is to bother me while I work is the neighbors dogs barking, and the annoying whine coming from my crappy work laptop.

I have a pair of noise cancelling headphones that, even when they are not powered on, still do a fair job of drowning out most noises even with the volume of the music at a reasonable level.

I forgot that I had my office door open, and was working away, listening to my music, when suddenly my chair jolted violently.  I turned and looked to see whether my life was suddenly in danger by some uninvited criminal, and was looking directly into the face of my cat.

I flicked him on his side a couple times with my fingers and yelled at him for nearly giving me a heart attack and told him to get the heck out of my office.    Then I waited for my heart to slow back down again (heck I can still feel the adrenaline), and walked out to get myself another diet soda and closed my door on the way back in.

Ugh!  If I wasn’t awake earlier, I sure am now!

In my husband’s department at work, the time has come for people to change shifts – they are 24/7, so everything three months or so, people are given the option to move their schedule to another shift.

Currently my husband and I carpool, working five days a week.  In his department, they have the option to work four 10 hour days on either side of the week.  He used to work that shift pretty much consistently.  I don’t even remember why he switched to my schedule anymore, maybe it was to start carpooling, maybe it was to try to save some money.  Since working in the evenings in his department garners a 5% shift differential and there is no such thing on days, and when he worked that shift before, the Kiddo only went to daycare part time… ultimately it did not save us any money.

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