BLOG 56-57 The dog ate it...HONEST!!!

“You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they don't.” Dagwood Bumstead (Main character in the long-running comic strip Blondie).

Oh boy… the moment when my Protestant Work Ethic would take a hit may well be upon us!

I’ve always been enthusiastic about what I do for a living, even when I‘ve done some pretty mundane jobs. My ethos has always been ‘Work takes up too many hours to be miserable’. But, saying that, I had been known to make my work life less miserable by finding things to do that were not exactly in my job description to entertain myself (and others).

I was, like most good Baptist girls, brought up with the Protestant Work Ethic – that the Big Man in the sky put you on earth to graft. But like most employees, I never really worked up much of a honest sweat of toil. Of course it wasn’t my fault; it was just that the reality of my employment never was as exciting as I hoped. I’d always thought that if only I had my dream job, I’d be a bit more ‘on task’.

Not that I didn’t do any work when I was a wage monkey, but like all employees… if there was a way out of getting on with it… I’d usually take it.

It was a constant battle between me and the wage masters as to how many hours I was actually manacled to my desk. No matter what, I made the simplest task into liberation from the shackles of work. Take walking to the water cooler and get a glass of water. I’d disguise it as being a team player of course… take as many orders as possible, as this would means I’d have to now look for a tray, then visit as every desk on my way back to drop of the orders. And if that meant a 3 minute ‘update’ (chat) at each desk so be it. At my leaving do, my boss gave an affectionate though barbed speech about my legendary desk absences for apparently ‘photocopying’ or ‘just checking something with accounts’. I noted my leaving card too contained many a joke on that theme.

But those days are long behind me. This is my 9^th month of having my dream job. I’ve always wanted to write full time, and now finally this is actually what I do. I’ve always wanted to work for someone who entirely gets me and doesn’t feel threatened or confused by my quintessential Jaxness. And now I work for my dream boss… ME.

I imagined that should the dream job and dream boss ever become a reality that I would wake up every morning and be not unlike a scene from an early Disney movie. “Hello Sun, Hello Shower, Hello Wardrobe, Hello Toast, Hello Coffee, Hello Laptop… lets GO!!!”

Ahhhhhh.

Not QUITE like that in reality.

The Day does start well. After all I don’t sleep for more than a few hours, so I’m up with the larks (actually usually a couple of hours before them… larks need to look at their work ethic also.)

So following a gloriously insomniac-style night, it’s finally 6.30 and the day starts for real. I pour my first coffee of the day. I take two sips and go into the dining room and turn the laptop on. (I can’t work in the study… my son has taken it over to do his animations in and I can’t work with half the cast of Piv0tDL staring at me). My toast pops up and I slather on some slightly salted butter.

While the welcome to windows theme plays, I go get my son up and push him into the bathroom. I wander back to the dining room and go into my e-mails and see who wants what.

It occurs to me that I have heard no movement from upstairs for sometime. I holler that someone better get a move on if he wants to get to school on time. There is no response. I take a slug of coffee to discover it has gone cold. Instead of getting annoyed with the coffee I get angry with slowcoach upstairs and holler at him again. How long does it take to bathe, dress and style hair into a reasonable facsimile of a hedgehog anyway?!

I pour another coffee and pretty boy finally comes down (in a cloud of Lynx… well, apparently teenage boys must smell like tarts now). He grabs a bowl of cereal and comes into the dining room and grunts an acknowledgement at me.

I try not to notice that he eats like a long term prisoner. I fail and make a comment about his table manners. He gives me the piteous look that only a teenager can deliver. Then he takes his bowl back into the kitchen and finishes his breakfast without having to have an etiquette lesson from his mother.

He pops back upstairs to brush his teeth. I holler after him the parent of male teenager list… have you got:

• Your homework
• All the books you need for today
• Your PE Kit
• Your school journal/ any signed letters
• Your lunch money
• Your head

Okay maybe not the last one… but with teenage boys, I can assure you, they are able to go to get something and return nothing more than a blank expression and a shrug. I hear a grunt which I take for a yes.

I take another slug of coffee then walk to the bottom of the stairs to begin the timecheck hollers that go on for at least 10 minutes before he re-appears. It’s a lot like the old Apollo countdowns, except rather than seconds to a space craft launch I am hollering how many minutes left before registration. It’s annoying, but it is a ritual and I think I’d miss it if he actually went upstairs to brush his teeth and actually came back.

It’s now 2 minutes to when he should leave. I can see other kids from his school walking past our house. (How do their parents do it… if they are walking past ours they MUST live even further away, which means they must have left even earlier). Finally he reappears at the top of the stairs.

“I don’t like my hair today” he says in his first complete sentence since being awoken “Can you blow dry the front for me?” he says in his second.

I inform him he should have left 3 minutes ago so there is no time for a blow dry (he has wavy hair so blow drying will give him the porcupine quills that Year 9 boys think are so cool). He sends me that “It’s so unfair” body language. To avoid a totally strop out, I run up the stairs grab any old hair product and spray it at his head. “THERE” I say. Not entirely convinced, but realising that was as good as it is going to get, he turns his head a few times in the mirror and pulls a few tufts vertically. “Okay, that’ll have to do” he says magnamously and agrees to descend the stairs.

We wish each other a nice day, hug, then I toe him out.

It’s 08.05.

I’m slightly hoarse as I close the door. I am also confused as to how this morning routine ever came to pass. Only 9 months before, we BOTH had to get up dressed and out the door by 07.50 so I could be on the 08.09 train. How now (when there is just the one of us leaving) does everything take so much longer?

Hey ho… not much time for pondering life’s unfathomable’s….back to the e-mails.

I log in with all the best intent in the world… how else am I to know what themes editors are looking for, or which articles the publisher I edit for I’m supposed to be checking. But more important to me than any of this, how else am I to track reactions to the blog?

I have many wyas of doing this, but what is dangerous for my work ethic about this is my more vocal (any therefore jolly useful) readers have joined a page on Facebook where they can let me know what they think about the blog. Which means I have a legitimate reason at 08.05 to be on Facebook.

For an easily distracted soul like me… unsupervised access to Facebook is LETHAL!!!! I can see why so many work places have the thing banned.

I have good intentions, I go on to see the latest blog reactions… then I notice I have 8 notifications on my personal page so rationalise that it won’t take long to have a quick peak. And yes, most are uninteresting… someone is trying to sell me a duck from their virtual farm, or someone has the highest score in some ridiculous quiz. Great, just whizz down the notifications make sure there is nothing important. Facebook is great for finding people you thought had gone out your life for good. There is nothing more heartening than looking through your notifications and reading the line, “Betty Barclay has sent you a friend’s request” and you are like “OMG!!!... I haven’t heard from her since school!”. It’s kind of like a human lost and found penn. Never hurts to scan the one liners on your notifications page.

But then I read the line that informs me that someone has posted a new photo album. Suddenly I am distracted by Miki’s bikini pictures. It’s not enough to just drop her a quick line to tell her I am jealous of her new Elle Macpherson Bod, I feel called upon to add witty comments to some of her snaps. Then I notice I have comment on my status…which I sensibly set at ‘JAX IS… working hard and can’t be disturbed till the weekend’. I see Simon has put ‘Yeah right! YOU are doing WORK???’. Oh I can’t let him get away with that…and add my rebuttal ….

And before you know it is 09.30… I got sucked into the vortex that is Facebook for almost an hour and a half and didn’t notice! I feel wretched and leap away from the laptop and go into the garden for some air and to give myself a good talking to! (That’s the thing about being the boss - who else is gonna do it).

I come back in… chastised. Quick! I’ve missed 15 minutes of The Wright Stuff… must get up to date with today’s topical debates! Grab another coffee and settle down (with laptop on lap) in front of TV. Watch TV and answer e-mails in commercial breaks… look at me multi-skilling!! The boss is happy.

All goes well, then the phone rings.

I don’t know why, but when you work from home, people feel that they must check in with you in case you get lonely or bored. Now the sentiment of this is great but the reality is usually that those kind-hearted mates actually feel that they can give your day purpose and meaning by asking you to do errands for them.

Thing is, the vast majority of the people I know work ‘in town’. This means that they are in central London whilst I am out here in the boon-docks (suburbs). The trouble with working in town means that the set up there is very much business orientated. There are few domestic services available. Thus, should a friend need something that can only be purchased in the suburbs, it occurs to them that as Jax has nothing better to do, they’d be assisting both of us if I went to get it and they could pick it up on their way home from work. Trouble is… (as the song goes) I’m just the girl who can’t say NO.

So, having discovered that I have now agreed to go pick up the camera/mountain-bike/sunlounger they ordered at the weekend that Argos SHOULD be getting delivery of today… I find I have now got myself two deadlines.

Deadline 1. Finish work by the time my son gets home from school… 3pm, Deadline 2. Pick up camera/mountain-bike/sunlounger they ordered at the weekend that Argos by 7pm when they will knock for it.

Ah… it’s now 11am.

Haven’t actually achieved anything other than answer a few e-mails yet.

Okay. Focus.

Back to dining room. Sit down START WORKING!!!

1pm. All has been going well for 2 hrs. But now the fridge is calling me.

Danger of working from home. Okay, my tummy has only seen toast since 6.30, but lunch when you have a whole kitchen rather than a deli is a dangerous affair.

Having eaten just about every combo possible… on a tray in front of the telly, and resisted getting sucked in by a repeat of an 80’s mini-series, its back to work.

It’s now dangerously near 3pm and I’ve e-mailed edited articles back to my publisher and am going through the editors pick for subjects for the blog. Its 8 hours since I got up and I haven’t even started JaxWorld yet.

I hear the garage open… someone is putting bikes in. BIKES? I only have one child.

Umm… not anymore… he’s home from school but he’s brought company. Great. Now I have to be hostess with the mostest and I haven’t written a thing for JaxWorld… and I STILL haven’t made it to Argos to pick up the camera/mountain-bike/sunlounger my mate ordered at the weekend.

Quick round of Nutella and Peanut Butter sandwiches… (I KNOW, but if you are 13-14 this is what you want!). They must have swallowed them whole as in a flash they are up in the study making cartoons.

Right… back to work…. What was the theme… ah yes Weddings and Marriage.

Errrr… how the HELL can I write about THAT??? I’ve never been married… I’ve never even set foot in a bridal shop…. Think think. Totally blank. I get so frustrated with myself. Two blogs a week, every week for 9 months and now… nothing. I wondered if I could just post “The dog ate my homework Miss”. Well, that excuse used to work real well at school.

I stared at the screen, getting nowhere fast. I could hear the boys creating their cartoon upstairs.

“Come on!” one of them cried out “Our subscribers will stop if we put out THAT crap!”

OMG, my son and his mates have a more dedicated work ethic than I!

I had to get my brain working…. maybe I’d get inspiration at Argos.

I shout up to the boys that I’m popping out for a moment… not that they care cause THEY are actually working.

I enter Argos; give them the code my mate gave me. The 12 year old behind the counter asks me to take a seat and wait. It is a tradition in British Retailing to only staff counters with people unable to make any kind of decision on their own. True, in this case the decision involved walking to the counter behind her and passing me the pre paid for parcel that I gave her the code for… but what would this nation be without it’s time honoured traditions. In this case… join the bloody queue. But in Argos’s defence… at least they provide seats.

However, seating doesn’t help…I get antsy… I’ve left three 14yr olds unsupervised in a house. That means I have two extra sets of people to kill me should something awful befall them. I start seeing headlines about ‘Good-Time Mum’s’ who leave teenagers at home whilst they run of to Greece with a 23year old waiter. Okay I’m at Argos at the top of the road… hardly Santorini, but I’m having visions of the three boys hammering at the window whilst the house is licked by giant flames.

I ask the three twenty something girls sitting next to me if they know how long this will take.

“Gawd knows” says girl 1.

“Yeah we’re bringing back our mates wedding presents and that twat...”, we’re she points at the 12 year old behind the counter “says we have to wait for the manager” says girl 2.

Okay this is too good to be true. I’m stuck writing a blog on Weddings and Marriage and these girls just happen to be sitting next to me. Maybe they could give me an angle… maybe their mate got too many toasters!

“Oh… did she get too many of the same thing?” I asked.

“IF ONLY!” snorted girl 3 “Bluhddy thing got called off… he reckoned she was more into the wedding than HIM!... we’ve got a car load of presents out there… that’s why we have to see the manager”.

Well. I’m pleased to say when I got home at 6pm… there was no fire brigade standing by smoking embers. Piv0tDL had created another animation masterpiece. The two mates cycled home. My son and I had a look at his homework. My mate popped round and picked up her camera/mountain-bike/sunlounger. We settled down to watch a movie with our tea.

In fact, in the end it turned out to be a most productive day as approximately 1am… having finally settled down to do some work after my son went to bed; I posted a blog on Weddings and Marriage… inspired by Argos.

JaxWorld has been nominated for ‘Best Blog about Stuff’ in the Bloggers Choice Awards. If you enjoy this blog please vote for it using the following link:

http://bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/80516?load=comments