In Part 4 I spoke of items I’d like to get accomplished during the week of working from home. I will certainly list and show progress on those, but before that, I will say that a major change occurred during the week.

I worked from home as was usual on Monday and Tuesday, as it was my work from home week. My staff was split in two, and the other team was on campus.

On Tuesday evening, we got the notice that the university was shutting down. This is despite the fact that there’s no state wide shut down. Our university decided that we needed to do more than we were, and so they sent the notice that only essential personnel are to report.

What did this mean for me? It meant that ALL my staff were now to work from home. It meant working Tuesday evening to communicate that, and communicate with my boss, and get some work done to get us squared away. We activated the calling tree I’d made in the previous weeks, and then I spent the remainder of the evening answering questions as they came up.

And now we are home for at least the upcoming two weeks if not longer.

Now to the list.

1. 1.  Don’t work during time off.
      That didn’t really work as we had an emergency situation. I stuck to it the first day but that was it.
   2. Wash windows outside.
      Totally got this done on my lunch break on day 1. I realized that this job only takes 15 minutes, and I need to remember that in the future.
   3. Deep clean bathroom.
      Nope, but I do hope to get it done this weekend.
   4. Rearrange living room furniture.
      Got this done with the help of Miss Butterfly. We also deep cleaned in the living room. This was something that took up a full lunch break, but it was nice to accomplish it!
   5. Begin deep cleaning bedroom.
      Big fat nope here as well, but I’ll get to why on this below.
   6. Get items I need to finish painting garage window frames.
      I did this!
   7. Bake bread.
      I did this too, but it wasn’t the bread I wanted to bake. I baked banana bread. I wanted proper bread. But I didn’t get to it. I did, however, make pancakes, french toast, and a dutch baby as well this week, so my powers of cooking breakfast were strong this week.
   8. Bake dog treats.
      Yep, this was on day one as well. I made them dehydrated sweet potatoes and they LOVED them! I am hoping to make this a weekly treat as long as the weather is cooler and Mr. Ink picks up sweet potatoes from the store.

So, one of the reasons I didn’t get started on some of the things I had anticipated working on this week is because once I realized we’d be home for weeks instead of just one week, I adjusted my thinking. I told Miss Butterfly that if she WANTED to, we’d decide on some paint colors and get the interior painted. Or at least a lot of the interior. We did go to the hardware store to pick up the items I needed for the garage trim paint job, and while there we picked up a bunch of swatches and tape as well. Miss Butterfly was well entertained that day doing her history lessons and then deciding on color swatches.

She did a great job with color swatches, she eliminated quite a few swatches and narrowed things down for me. It was another day before I got to really take a good look at them, but since she’d narrowed things down, I was able to choose very quickly. We had originally been looking to pick for the living room, dining room, kitchen, and hallway. We ended up picking for my craft room as well, as one of the swatches just looked super nice.

We don’t have the paint yet. I know that this type of paint order could really take some time, and I haven’t had the time to devote to that. Miss Butterfly is going to her dad’s home this weekend, so I am not anticipating picking up paint until this upcoming week. She has, however, taped a good portion of the house too, and that’s super helpful since I don’t have to deal with it. It has kept her well occupied and I admit that I am hoping the painting process keeps her well occupied too.

Here’s a bonus photo of my new “coworkers” hanging out in the craft room with me. They are getting VERY comfortable with this current situation!

I am still working on knitting and spinning, but I have this aversion to finishing anything because that means I’ll have to put in the effort of thinking what I should work on next. I don’t feel like it. So I just keep switching up the crafting work and hoping I never finish anything!