Back to Work

Tomorrow feels like it day of school. Except it is work. The corporation I work for is officially opening the office Monday morning after working remotely for twenty-six months because of the pandemic. 

I'll be one of the new kids, just like there are always new kids who start a new school in the fall. I have been in the office for a few days in the past month, which makes me like the nerd who went to summer school. As the new kid, no one will see my hair and go "What the heck happened? It is so long!" They don't know they I gained thirty pounds because they don't know what I looked like before. They won't say "You found cupcakes instead of sit-ups during the pandemic!" They don't know I at one point lost ten pounds, but I gained it back. Ugh. Re-gaining lost weight isn't as awful as people think. When I re-gain weight, I think I am glad I didn't add another ten pounds to my prior weight. If I hadn't previously lost that weight, I'd be enormous by now.

(My hairdresser thinks I've lost weight since I've seen him, so that is good.)

Since the pandemic, I lost my ability to pull together an outfit. Before the pandemic, I had a few dozen combinations for my clothes that looked good and pulled together. God-only-knows what I will wear tomorrow and what I will look like. Today, I went to Easter Brunch with a friend, and I had no idea what to wear because I forgot how to dress, especially for a season or an occasion. For the past two years, I've worn yoga pants and gray sweater dresses. Every day of the fucking pandemic. Yes, I wore charcoal colored clothes in July. Because I could. All of the seasons blurred together. I went to dinner with my friend H once last year and I wore a long sleeve black turtle neck and an ankle length skirt. In May. I looked like I was going to a Christmas party but I was six months late.

Speaking of parties...the people at HQ are going to have food and whatnot for the first two weeks back, like a party. Which of course is very nice, but after the pandemic when everyone has been sitting at home on Zoom meetings and eating breakfast, lunch and dinner in our pajamas, maybe they should open a gym with yoga and pilates and give gift cards to Nordstrom to buy new clothes instead of having feast. Wasn't every day during the pandemic a feast? All food a no movement?

Some people might have gotten a lit of exercise during the pandemic, but I wasn't one of those people. I feel like I've wasted the pandemic. There was a golden opportunity to do sit-ups or lunges or squats every day three times a day. I'd be in the best shape ever if I had done that. Instead, I moved my snack basket ten feet from my desk. It was a lose-lose situation. I wasn't even getting in steps to get a snack. No wonder I gained thirty pounds. Oh well. I can always fix that in the next pandemic.