A Dog's Life

I'v worked from home for about 6 weeks now and I can finally answer the question, "what do my dogs do all day?" Sleep. They literally sleep. On their bed, snuggled together together. In the past, CityCrab and I have pondered this question. Our assessment was that as soon as we leave, they scour the kitchen floor for anything that may have inadvertently dropped during breakfast. Then make their way over the the garbage can (this is good sniffing, after all). Then maybe chill out for a bit. But then the party starts. Let's have a party and throw the cushions off the couch, then take every toy out of the box, play with it and drop it in the most remote corner of the house. Then, let's jump on the window sills, lick the windows and look outside. Then just as the party is winding is down, let's eat dirt out of the potted plants in the den. Why not? It is a party, after all.

How did we come to this conclusion? Dry spots of saliva on the kitchen floor, wet nose prints on the garbage can, toys everywhere, couch cushions on the floor, foot prints on the window sills and tongue marks on the windows. Our buck wild imaginations allowed us to create a day at the fun park for them.

So, now that I'm home? Nothing. They lay around all day. Occasionally, they'll move from one bed to another or perch themselves on the couch. Which, in our dog's oasis of a house, is allowed. I'm almost disappointed when I come down the stairs and witness them practically comatose.

So, I've decided when I come back, I want to come back as my own dog.

Secular Sabbath

Yesterday's New York Times Style Section featured a very interesting article titled . Mark Bittman, a chef who incidentally lives in my hometown (I never pass up the opportunity to name drop), wrote about the concept of a Secular Sabbath . The idea here is that you choose a day or weekend where you disconnect from all media. Phone, internet, blackberry, TV, etc. It's a hearkening back to the day when people actually took a Sabbath. It's important to note that there are many people who observe a religious Sabbath like this today.

So, this got me thinking. What if there was one day a week I disconnected? I could maybe do it on Sat or Sun. My work precludes me from doing it during the week. But the weekend is when I like to catch up on my blogging and my friend's blogs and check Facebook and help my single girlfriends screen men on match & jdate? That's a good deed right there. But then I thought about not having to log on and get sucked into work or inane gossip that sadly makes up a lot of my leisure time. So, yesterday afternoon I tried a mini Sabbath. Around 3pm, I had this incredible urge to log on to my laptop. Like a junkie, I always promise myself just a few emails and I'll log off. But it never ends there. It turns into 3 hours of checking email and then I am sucked back into work, 15 hours too soon. I resisted however and sat down with the rest of the paper. (There was also a very enlightening article in the magazine that I might blog about soon.) I proposed a Secular Sabbath to CityCrab who had the same initial reaction I did. But we decided to try it once, sometime in the future. When it's convenient.

My Own Writer's Strike

I've been on a writer's strike of my own the last 6 weeks. I would like to tell you that all the time I spent walking in the picket line outside my house resulted in a substantial raise and residuals for all that online content. But I am here to tell you that my the last 6 weeks were comprised of moving, unpacking, settling in, putting away dishes and linens, finding places to stash the voluminous stuff we have collected and coordinating cable, furniture delivery, housekeepers and all varieties of workmen. As I mentioned in a previous post, moving is no fun. And, on top of that, it's not something that has a definite end. I'm sure I'll still feel like I'm moving in another 6 weeks. But the good news is that now that I realized my own writer's strike was a figment of my imagination, I am back to blogging.