Three’s Company

So it’s day three of this thirty day sprint during which I’ve committed to writing a post every single day. Seems like it would be a breeze, right? Aside from work, which ebbs and flows, I’ve  got nowhere to go but the laundry room. But, humans (or maybe just me) are astonishing in their ability to procrastinate. Things I did this evening instead of writing this post: ate steak tips (dinner, that’s allowed), sang N*SYNC’s “It’s Gonna Be Me” to Steve and Hudson as they retreated to bed (I could heard a very ungrateful “close the door” as I walked out #losers), talked to my best friend in Australia for an hour, named our new Cherry Blossom (Pandora, she’s very skinny), and braided and unbraided my hair for a good twenty minutes.

In my defense, when I mentioned work “ebbing and flowing” I meant that literally, some days work drives me to the point of insanity or it’s a ghost town on my computer. Like everything else, these feelings are exacerbated by the fact we’re all on house arrest. I either end the day thinking my email is broken or it’s full on madness (until I declare it Happy Hour and give up). Today was the latter. If you don’t know me that well, though the fact you’re reading this means you likely do (Hi Mom), I work in Sales in the Healthcare IT realm. What does that mean? Well it’s not like Deloitte where everyone acts like they’re normal and wears suits with Patagonia vests instead of jackets. It’s sales. Even in non-pandemic times no one gives a fuck what you wear as long as you’re announcing closed deals more regularly then not.

Also it’s Healthcare IT – one of the fastest growing business sectors in the world. Imagine what a global pandemic will do to an industry already busting at the seams … TBH I’m living it and it’s wild. In a matter of weeks my company changed their whole product trajectory to match the way COVID-19 has forever changed ambulatory patient care. Keep in mind, this is the industry that wouldn’t adapt or change for decades – I had seen it first hand after college. I worked as an Ortho Tech for several surgeons who still used paper charts at the time, it was 2010! Actual paper. It blows my mind even thinking about it.

I remember clocking into work one day (how retro that sounds) and asking about one of the first patients on our schedule, the receptionist said the chart was missing and shrugged. Makes me laugh just typing this. I walked to my boss’s office to see if he had left it there after dictating (talk about retro) the day’s appointments. No dice. When he arrived he heaved a handful of charts into my lap, and said “deal with these.”

As I flipped through the outer jackets of each one, I noticed random jots of color, lots of it in erratic lines and dots. It’s what I assume a butt dial text would look like if it had a set of highlighters and paper. Did his pen explode? Who has a pen like that? I honestly couldn’t figure out what had defaced all of the charts in my lap. Finally, I opened one up and saw a My Little Pony Sticker staring up at me. A real fortress of security were running here, i remember thinking. Flipping through the rest of the charts I saw one touted the same sticker but it was stamped right on her X-Ray report from the Radiologist’s office. HIPAA. Alas, we do the best we can.

And people wonder why there aren’t enough N95’s to go around. Everyone’s wandering around in the dark, it’s terrifying.  But that’s not the point, none of this is except to say this day was wild. Two client meetings, four hours of unfucking our new SalesForce, demo prep, contract changes. And I had to work in a serious Peloton sesh. It was actually during my first ride of the day that I started thinking about what I’d write in the day’s journal entry. Those thoughts were quickly derailed by my class choice. I decided on Denis Morton’s Country Ride, and it kicked off with Chattahoochee, a classic by Alan Jackson — whitest sentence ever written — and I loved every minute. When the final song came on, I cheered. It was Mary Chapin Carpenter! Though it had likely been a decade since I’d heard one of her songs, I knew them all by heart. Every single one. Evidently, in my family our exposure to music was a little different than others.

When I was growing up all we had until I left for college was the good ole Compact Disc. At the height of my middle school tenure it was the late nineties and acquiring CD’s was very cool (as was filling an entire CD binder – what were those things called?). CDs were also annoying. One bad swerve whilst removing a CD from it’s case and there goes the first three tracks of Savage Garden’s latest and greatest. They also moved from place to place a lot. So, when one found its way into Mom’s suburban, we held onto it for a while.

Looking back, I can benchmark the timeline of my youth in CD seasons. There was Phil Collins in the Land Rover in Australia right after we’d just arrived. That CD had a Merry Go Round on it in red and tan. In Dad’s Jag, he had Santana and Nora Jones, and there was a period of time where we only listened to Jerry Seinfeld standup while driving to and from the Lake House. Mary Chapin Carpenter holds claim to one such season in my childhood. So when “Down at the Twist and Shout” started playing on my Peloton today I was one happy camper.

I was hoping to stretch my peloton endorphins until happy hour but then the phone dinged, and slack chimed, and a deal fell through even before I left the basement. Good thing there’s always another meeting, I thought, rolling my eyes. Ugh another Zoom meeting. As an aside, for everyone out there living like I am on planet Zoom are you experiencing high levels of technology ignorance? How is the Zoom learning curve flattening slower than the coronavirus’s. I don’t even care if that question offends anyone, I just need answers. UNMUTE YOURSELVES BEFORE SPEAKING BOOMERS.

Back on Zoom a little while later, I found myself engaging in a hideous amount of small  talk and racing through my presentation, wishing I could just turn my camera off and get up for a snack. A few weeks ago I recorded a product demo of mine and have been  relying heavily on it in lieu of having to actually speak to prospects. “Just let me know if you like it and call me back, if so!” is what I really want to say to the people staring back at me from their stacked Zoom quadrants. Instead, I begrudgingly engage in hideous banter, and at one point comment on the background in someone’s Zoom frame – “wow they’ve got you in the basement, I see! Haha!” I hate myself immediately after uttering the words. It has to be done in Sales. These days, I find myself asking prospects, in my best Anne Curry coo/whisper, “How are you doooooing?” followed immediately by “this is just insane” which I hope cuts off their response entirely. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s all just a lot these days.

With my social battery completely zapped I decide to take my show on the road, and by that, I mean I move my laptop to the deck in hopes that my currently grey body might absorb some of the sun’s healing rays. Unfortunately, There’s  4 hours of spreadsheeting and salesforce servitude to do. Have you ever used to excel outside in the sun? I’m going to assume that’s a no, because it’s almost impossible. However, I was undeterred. It was 57 degrees, there was a frosty breeze, and the sun was shining. My legs turned red shortly after I sat down to work, and I can assure you it wasn’t a sun burn.

Sometime later Steve came home from work, gun on his hip like the hometown hero he is. Love him! But also, ya’ll may have gotten the wrong impression from my extremely effusive previous posts where he’s mentioned quite lovingly. Yes, he’s great. But if you think we haven’t wanted to sucker punch one another for something as stupid as the volume on an Instagram story you are mistaken. The thing is, we’re all stressed. In Steve’s case, compound that with having to work split shifts that I won’t explain but basically you don’t sleep for four days. Add the stress of potentially contracting and becoming a vector of deadly plague and sprinkle in the issues a cop faces on a normal day, and well let’s just say he’s doing the best he can.

Today he really tried hard not to be a demon after his shift. I knew he needed an antiterrorism nap, but he wouldn’t go down. Like a five-year-old, he stomped his foot and said he had things to do and also that he was having a Cherry Blossom tree delivered later that day and needed to prepare (like, what?). Before leaving me, presumably to google the ins and outs of arboriculture, he huffily carried his potted lime tree to the deck table, “Larry Limón needs sun” he said and turned and left.

Well Mr. Limón may have needed sun but five minutes into our tanning date he was also attracting every half thawed yellow-jacket and wasp from Burlington to Somerville. I was not prepared to deal with quarantine, Steve’s grumpiness, and insects that inflict pain all at the same time. Thus, Larry was moved back to his stool in the kitchen by yours truly. I resumed my SalesForce spreadsheeting and hoped I was absorbing all the sun Larry couldn’t.

Just as I started getting comfy again, now able to work without worry of an imminent hornet ambush, the sliding door flung open. Steve was carrying Larry like a baby, his arm cradled around the rim of the black flower pot, the bottom of which he had resting on his hip. He held the plant away from me protectively, like it was something I might snatch away. His brow was furrowed in that angry-sad way that you know means you’ve disappointed someone. In a breathless voice he emitted the a string of words “why…is..he..back..what…is..he” that I assume were an attempt to ask about the relocation of his tweenaged lime tree.

“It was attracting bugs, sorry! Mr. Limón will tan another day” I said. It was no big deal, right? No. It was a big fucking deal. Steve could barely respond to my statement. All I heard was the word “selfish” over and over again. As the situation escalated, I couldn’t believe exhaustion had such hilarious effects, if only he could see this himself, I laughed. Steve continued to carry the potted plant like a baby as he moaned and groaned, then he audibly counted the ways relocating Larry made me a bad person. “He NEEDS sunlight!” Steve said at one point, whipping around so quickly Larry’s feeble branches did a whiplash dance before returning to their original position. I imagined the same scene but with a toddler on his hip, the baby’s head bobbling as Steve laid into me, the poor thing’s eyes wide as saucers.

Bottom line, Larry was not to go back inside. Steve carried him down the deck stairs, ceremoniously holding Mr. Limón at face height with his arms outstretched. He was like one of the wise men delivering a gift to baby Jesus in the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular. As I watched him settle the pot containing Larry onto a pile of neatly stacked bricks, “The Circle of Life” played in my head. I was almost in tears holding myself together, amusement is in short supply these days.

I guess I didn’t get the memo that it was plant day at the Kernan-Conroy house. A little heads up next time, please! Actually, scratch that. Picturing Steve pace with that plant was something I’ll never not laugh out loud at, and I can only thank him for that brief respite from the soul sucking monotony that is #AloneTogether.

Wow, I’ve written a lot. I’m not sure that journal entries come to a point and I’m too tired to google whether they’re supposed to or not. A hard stop feels right, anyways. And, lucky for you, there’s always tomorrow. It’s apparently going to rain which means even pricklier moods will abound and Larry’s chance at UV exposure will be nil. Fraulein Steve will not be pleased.

Oh, and the Cherry Blossom did end up getting delivered. After settling Larry on his throne near the edge of the patio Steve spent three hours nestling his new charge into the waiting hole in the front yard. On our nightly walk with Hudson I suggested that (obviously) the tree was a birthday gift and that I should get naming rights. The NO came out of Steve’s mouth so fast I stopped in my tracks. He then retracted it with equal expedience and said I could name it but it could not be a gift because no one gives trees as gifts. Knowing some of the very first cherry blossoms in the country were in fact a gift, I just smiled and said “anything can be a gift if you try hard enough. Her name’s Pandora.” He didn’t seem to mind my choice.