#402 - First Day Back

First day back to work after a week of bliss at the cottage.

I was in no great rush to get to my desk, but my new lead was starting today, and I had to make sure I was around in case she had any issues or questions. But, because I got up, no one really needed me.

Figures, right?

She would have all the regular first day bumps in the road, but most of those had to be smoothed out by the IT department. The crew was onto a new episode, and I had paintings to revise and approve already assigned to me. I got stuck into that until my first meeting started. It was with all the leads, and we got to officially welcome our newest lead. She will be replacing one of the leads that is moving onto another show. Our producer joined the call so she could answer anyquestions and be a part of the welcome wagon.

The meeting ended just after noon, and I went about cleaning up my home studio space a little and unpacking my duffle bag. Most of the clothes were clean, (yay cottage laundry machine!), so it was just a matter of putting things were they belonged.

I made myself some food and sat downstairs on the couch and watched some YouTube, something I never get to do during that time period.

We had a one o’clock meeting with the entire team and I didn’t feel like going for a walk. Actually, that’s not true, I wanted to go for a walk but things around the house were bothering me. There were too many areas of the house where I had piled things up. My office, my bedroom, the yard needed leaves raked and the lawn cut. I’d purchased new front door seals to replace the damaged ones, bur had never installed them. And two of our toilets had a slow leak that likely could be fixed with a new flapper valve.

I spent the remainder of my lunch time moving things from my desk to our bedroom and things from our bedroom back into the office. There was no way to get it all done in the tome I had, but it felt good to at least have taken a swing at it.

The meeting with the entire team went well. Mostly we introduced our new lead and then talked about Halloween experiences.

While I was away, I received and invite to attend a breakfast meeting with the CEO of our company along with a dozen other colleagues. The inivute was passed along from a production staff via Teams as I didn’t have access to company email while I was away.

I read the email and responded that I would be interested in attending the breakfast. It’s not often you get direct access to the owner of the company. It was worth the extra time it would take to make it into the office. The pool of invitees seemed to be people like myself who had been at the company for many years. And that be itself was interesting.

I spent the rest of the day going through approvals and revisions on our current episode.

By five pm I was ready to call it quits for the day. The sky was already getting dark and hustled outside and set up the leaf blower/sucker and got stuck into that task. I filled up an entire bag of leaves just in the front. The grass underneath was long and needed a cut. I decided to make the front look good first and then if there was time I would tackle the backyard.

With the lawn cut, I had to charge my lawnmower battery. The extra height had used up more battery power than usual. Which was fine, because the leaf situation in the backyard dwarfed the front. The fencing and density of trees in the back meant way more leaves to clear out. My plan of attack was to clear the grass area first and then tackle the garden beds. The leaf sucker’s bag filled much quicker than it had in the front. I filled another full bag in no time and got most of the lawn cleared. But I had no more light to work with, and I packed it in for the day, happy with the fact that I got something done at least. I could cross off the front yard anyway.

I earned a bubble spa bath after getting all dusting and carrying the heavy leaf blower around. When I was back feeling clean and fresh, Robyn returned home.

Mondays are a long day for Robyn with work and school.

I made tandoori chicken with basmati rice, chana masala, baked potatoes and roasted onions. She was very thankful for the meal. I could see the last thing she wanted at that moment was to worry about what to do for dinner. It’s the little things like this that make your partner’s life better and I was happy to do so.

We ate dinner and then headed upstairs for a while to watch a show. We both went to bed early. The first day back from the cottage was always going to feel long and tiring. I settled into bed and put on my earbuds. I wanted to listen to the Children of Dune audiobook before sleeping. I’m finding that is a great way to settle down at the end of the day and ill keep doing it for as long as I am able.

Until tomorrow.