Tick Tock

Status report: 2 hours to go, first day back to work...

So far I've chatted with some colleagues, eaten an expensive, mediocre lunch, pigged out on a decadent chocolate muffin (SO good but now have throbbing sugar headache) and gave my dad the address to Matt and Lisa's so that he can pop in and see Amelia (how unfair that he gets to see her right now and I don't?!). Have done some token first day tasks, like setting computer preferences (e.g. gotta have Firefox) and learning how to use our new phone voicemail (when someone leaves you a message, it sends you an email with the recording attached. Weird.).

The positives so far include:

• Drank a coffee this morning without a little monkey at my side, trying to grab my cup.
  
• Am able to check email, read news and take care of personal business online without little fingers reaching around the side of the monitor and slapping at the keys. Expect a much higher volume of email from me in the future.
• I've had more social interaction in the past 5 hours than in the past five days.
  
• I'm not stuck in the kitchen trying to convince an 11 month old of the succulent tastiness of broccoli right now. Or watching her rub said broccoli through her hair just to get a reaction. Or trying to pick little broccoli florets out of baby's hair while she shrieks and bats at my hands.
  

Negatives:

• Have had more calories in the past five hours than in the past five days (not really but that chocolate muffin was naughty). I can definitely see the danger of plying myself with food to make up for the fact that I have to be at work.
  
• Very hard to accomplish any real work. Part of the problem is that I don't actually have any work to do. But still, I should be sharpening pencils, reading long, boring reports and setting up meetings instead of writing on this blog and gazing dolefully at desktop picture of Mela. (Choosing a picture took a good chunk of time; I went with this one but am thinking of switching to this one).
• Staying in one building all day, breathing recycled air, feels claustrophobic in a way my living room never does. And the beautiful window view is proving to be a little hard on the eyes (backlit monitor).
  
• Can't hug the baby right now. Enough said.

The good news is that starting in a week and a half, my Outlook calendar will display my last day of work (shows four months at a time), which means that every day when I look at my calendar, I'll be able to see the end in sight.

Small thing but makes a difference.

One hour and 55 minutes to go ...