THANKFUL FRIDAY

I spent three days, four really, not leaving my house. I did venture out early Wednesday morning to take my weekly COVID test, but then I was right back at home sitting at my desk and staring at a computer screen. Occasionally throughout the day I would get an email asking for help and I would log into whatever microscope the user needed help with and troubleshoot their problems remotely. The problem with being stuck inside my house for this amount of time is that I start coming up with remodeling projects. Like when we replace the doors, can we make the kitchen door swing out instead of in? I shopped for new stoves. I imagined tearing out the kitchen and replacing everything. I thought about the possibility of cutting up into the attic and making a loft of some sort.

Then I did nothing.

On Wednesday, I checked on a coworker/friend and he replied with that gif of the dog sitting in the room that’s on fire and “I’m fine.” I told him to go eat some colorful fruit. Then I took my own advice. I forget to drink water and eat fruit when I’m at home. I also put my headphones on and listened to some Harry. This led to some chair dancing and outrageous lip syncing. Michael was in the process of calling parents, so I couldn’t sing out loud, but sometimes outrageously lip syncing is more fun any way. It is definitely some good silliness.

On Thursday, the sun came out and I went in to work. I had signed up to scan a whole batch of slides on our confocal spinning disk that has a slide loading robot. Lately, me and this system have not been getting along. There’s an issue with the robot that requires it to be turned off, unplugged, plugged back in and turned back on before it will connect with the software. Then there have been issues with the software where it will just decide to flip to a different objective in the middle of acquiring an image. Setting up a batch of slides has been taking hours and has left me crying and furious. So when I walked into the microscope room yesterday, I was ready for whatever gremlin this machine was going to spit out at me. I set up the batch and the darn thing ran without a hitch. On the first try! I don’t even care that later on in the day, it crashed twice.

Last night, I dreamed of Spring. Brightly colored flowers where lifting their petals to the sun and I walked through them, gently brushing them with my finger tips. In the distance, a thunderstorm brewed and a tornado funneled down from the sky. I turned my back to it and continued to walk through the field of flowers. The temperatures here are warming up, but snow is still predicted for Sunday. We are not on the edge of Winter, but fully in the thick of it. It will be weeks before those brightly colored flowers even begin to peak out of the ground. So for now, I will turn my back to the cold, but my face to the sun. I will eat colorful fruit and engage in some good silliness.