Writing and Working from Home with Cats by Diane Bator

 

Writing and Working from Home with Cats

Every book I write, I create with a partner. Usually my cat Jazz who has become like a barnacle at my side daily and hates when I have to get up for any reason.

I am one of those people who have been working from home for the past nine months. There are a lot of good and bad that go along with that. For example, I’m thrilled to finally have a home office, but that only happened because my youngest moved out mid-pandemic. I also love that the bathroom is so much closer to my new office—but so is the kitchen. Rewarding myself for doing a good job has meant I wear yoga pants to work daily.

I have also had to juggle work and writing with two cats. While they weren’t too impressed with me being home every single hour of every single day, they seem to have adjusted. I can no longer sit in the livingroom during office hours. I can’t even go outside for a walk or run to the store without a lecture when I get home. Since my older cat Jazz is part Siamese, he can become very vocal.

Considering my normal job is selling tickets for a live-stage theatre, things were pretty quiet at my desk. Things have picked up a little now that we’ve moved to online performances. Still, there are days where I don’t have a great deal to do but stuff envelopes or help troubleshoot—and keep my cats amused.

So here are my top 10 ways I’ve kept busy over the past nine months:

1.  Cleaned and set up my new office.
2.  Rearranged my new office because there is only one set of plugs in the room.
3. Added a throw blanket and a rug under my desk because there is no heat vent in my office.
4. Weighed the pros and cons of moving the coffeemaker to my office from the kitchen which is ten feet away…then considered the lack of empty surfaces to keep said coffeemaker and the creamer. There may or may not be a hoarding issue in that room.
5. Added a second chair to attempt to keep my cat Jazz off my desk.
6. Stocked up on wipes since Jazz still feels the need to walk on the four inch path between me and my laptop at least twice during every Zoom meeting and leaves a trail of white hair behind.
7. Added another rug for my other cat Ash after stepping on her when she took to sleeping beneath my desk on the first rug.
8.  Started taking lunch breaks in the livingroom because Jazz feels the need to get away from the computer for several hours a day to have my undivided attention.
9. Started wearing slippers because Ash has claws and loves to play with my feet under my desk.
10.  Occasionally getting actual work done once Jazz and Ash are fed and appeased. Considering moving their food dishes ten feet closer to my desk…

I’m happy to say I have accomplished a little writing in between meetings and moving the cat off my desk. This year I have two new books coming out as well as a novella I wrote some time ago. I’m looking forward to another productive year. It helps to keep things light. A great sense of humour goes a long way!

                                                                     

By the way, Jazz has now become an honorary member of our staff as well as a couple writing groups I belong to. He loves to see who is on the screen during each meeting and sleeping next to me no matter what I do.

Ash is a lady of leisure. She prefers to keep her distance and join us at her own discretion.

As for me, I’ve been out of the office for the holidays. I’m currently organizing my calendars for 2021 and writing in my livingroom soon…

Happy New Year, everyone! 

 Diane Bator

 http://bookswelove.net/bator-diane/

The Man With The Hat

 

 

The Man with the Hat

Buying a first home is exciting at best. Our purchase was just that. An older home, needing much work, but it was ours. The first night my husband went back to work after we moved into our almost century old home, I went to bed exhausted, but happy.

Just as I dozed off, a noise came from the basement.  Our dog started barking. Scared half out of my wits, I picked up the phone and called my sister, who lived two streets away. She sent her husband over to check things out.

Doug looked around the house and didn’t see anything unusual. However, my dog refused to come into the dining room.  She stood in the hall growling and barking. Normally, a quiet dog, this was unusual for her.  Doug called her from the kitchen. She didn’t move. I called from the living room. She refused to come to either one of us. Her gaze focused on something across the room. Neither Doug nor I saw anything. Surely, if it was a mouse, she would have chased it. Her actions perplexed us.

Doug, seeing my fear, suggested we pack up my kids and spend the night at their house. I’m sure he just wanted to go home to bed.

In the morning, we returned home and all seemed normal. All day our dog ran through the house with the kids. Nothing distracted her.

That night the same thing happened. This time, as Doug started down the basement steps, he stopped, came back, and took a knife out of the kitchen drawer.

He swore someone was watching him. He checked out the basement and everything seemed normal. Again, we spent the night at their house. 

This went on for several nights. Doug came over and took us to his house.  The nights Roger was home we didn’t hear anything and the dog remained calm. Roger insisted it was my imagination, but Doug confirmed the actions of the dog.

When Roger went to work, it happened again. This time Doug brought a tape recorder to our house and set it up in the dining room before we left.

The next day, we played the tape.  Sounds of our dog growling and barking were predominant, but in the background were other sounds that we couldn’t identify. Sounds like chains being pulled across the floor and others noises sounding like scratches and moans.

No doubt, Doug was getting tired of picking us up every night, and I’m sure my sister, although she didn’t say anything, was tired of us intruding. Besides, I I wasn’t crazy about waking my kids every night. Eventually, I’d have to stay home. Noise or no noise. I’d just have to get used to it. This was our home after all. Somehow, I tuned out the noises, quieted the dog and managed to sleep.

A few days later, my three daughters played upstairs in their room.  They screamed and ran down stairs.  “There’s a man up there,” they cried in unison.

Since we’d been home all day, it was impossible. But to appease them, I went up to check.  They insisted a man with a hat had been watching them.

Of course, no one was there.  I explained it was a shadow of a bird going past the window.   Although the room felt much colder than normal, and I had an eerie feeling.

My daughters described him clearly, a tall man, in a brown suit coat, wearing a hat. They couldn’t make out his face, but they said he watched them play.

After that, they refused to play upstairs, and I often had a hard time getting them to go to bed at night.

Up until then things had been normal during the daylight hours. Now it seemed our nightly visitor had decided to appear when it was light out, too.

Also, until then, Roger thought it was my vivid writer’s imagination.  That is, he did, until one day, he was working in the basement.  He came upstairs, white faced.

“What’s wrong,” I asked.

“I just saw a man wearing a hat watching me. At first it was a shadow. But as I stared at it, his form became clearer.”

That shook me up. He described the man the same as the kids, we had a ghost. Roger now realized the noises weren’t my overactive imagination

I finally met some of the neighbors and told them my feelings of being watched.  I didn’t mention the man.

One neighbor said it was probably our nosy neighbor looking in the windows. I knew this wasn’t the case, but didn’t elaborate.

I asked another neighbor about the people who lived there before us.

“Oh, a nice old couple lived there. The wife died a long time ago. Her husband, John lived alone for a long time,” she said.   

Later I found out John died in the very bedroom I slept in.  Eventually I told my friend about some of the things that were going on. I asked about John and she said he was a nice old man, who kept mostly to himself. “He loved to work in his garden and yard. Funny,” she said. “He always wore a brown suit coat and a hat.”

John was our ghost. He appeared many times after that. Roger often saw him, especially when we remodeledthe kitchen. One of my sons said John used to sit on a chair upstairs and watch him play.

I never saw John, but I heard him and often smelled cologne or after shave. Several years later he simply disappeared.

You can find all of my books here. 

BWL Publishing Inc. New Releases January 2021

 

Just like jumping out of a plane without a parachute while holding a one-year-old baby in her arms, Janet and her husband, Ted, leap from the stability of family, friends, and financial security into the uncertainty of fulfilling their dream of owning and operating a floral business. Going against the norms of 1976, believing a woman’s place is in the home, she spends sleepless nights wrestling with how she can balance motherhood with the demands of working outside the home.

 With no knowledge or experience operating a business or selling fresh flowers, can they safely land on their feet? The shop owners, Nellie and Jack, whom they’d just met, assure Ted and Janet the flower business is healthy, and they will help them learn how to run the operation. But can they be trusted? Janet and Ted face the monumental task together to nurture their baby daughter and their new business.

 Follow their inspiring story, filled with the joy and triumphs and the obstacles and failures experienced by these blossoming entrepreneurs as they travel along the turbulent path of turning dreams into reality.