No more T-shirts

Change is on the way.

For 78 of the past 83 weekdays, I have been a soldier in the army of nonessential workers – stationed in our home offices during the so-called war against the coronavirus. I took some vacation time on the remaining days.

If all goes as planned, I get to return to work in my real office on Monday. That means I have two days left in the home office. As an extrovert, I’m pretty happy about this. For the first several weeks of the pandemic, we were all home together. My wife, Janet, was working from home. My stepchildren were finishing their senior years in college and high school, respectively, from their bedrooms. And the college kid’s boyfriend was here for a few weeks, too.

Eventually, the two college kids went back to their university town for the rest of the summer. The high school kid graduated and started working for the summer. Janet started a new job and is no longer working from home. For most of the day the past few weeks, that has left me home alone. So I’m really eager to work around other people again.

There will, however, be a downside. In the first few days of working from home back in March, I dressed to go to work the same as I would have if I’d made the 30-minute commute to my workplace. That didn’t last very long. In no time at all, I was wearing nothing but shorts and T-shirts every day. In fact, I wore pants for the first time all summer just last week when I went to a friend’s funeral on Friday and my stepson’s high school graduation ceremony on Sunday.

Come Monday, I’ll have to break out pants and shirts with collars. I hope they will all still fit.