I have truly enjoyed working at home, alone, just me and the menagerie. It gives me a little bit of emotional distance from my office and keeps my stress levels lower.

My house has a lovely enclosed from porch. It’s an old house, so it’s nothing fancy but it’s picturesque and sunny even on cold winter days.

When we first bought the house, my husband would tease me because I spent so much time on my porch— he said my superpowers would fade if I stayed away too long.

So today I had several really nice bright spots on my day.

1. Nala, my naughty Goffin’s cockatoo, was cuddly.

2. I put on real clothes. No bra, but a real outfit. Like office attire.

3. I found two generic knock-offs of dark chocolate Petit Écolier cookies in my cupboard and they weren’t even stale. They were breakfast.

4. Nala finally started ripping apart her huge paper toy. I was starting to think she didn’t like it

5. I have only left the house 4 times in the last 8 days and 3 of them were for work. Today, the mailman in my neighborhood was late and I had a very important grant application with proper postage and everything. I decided to go to the post office.

The experience ended up being a really good one— they verified the amount of postage, didn’t mock my packaging skills, added a tracking number and estimated the package’s arrival time.

Here’s where my isolation shows.

The postal worker looked at me and asked if I needed anything else like stamps, blah, blah, blah.

I got ridiculously excited.

You know, I am down to my last stamp at home. I would love a book of stamps.

Me, being a dork at the post office

“Are the orchids okay?” she asks.

“Yes,” I reply. “Orchids would be perfect.”

I was giddy over stamps.