notes from home

[dragonlady7]

I rarely am home when Dude is. He works remotely for a company, but they have an office and he goes in. He just... starts at 7:30, and then they have a morning meeting via video/audio conferencing around 9:15, and then he takes a shower and gets dressed and drives in, arriving at his office sometime after 10, normally.

Our cat waits for him to start the teleconference, and then runs into the room where he is to make a lot of noise while he's talking. At first I was like, "what an asshole"-- she literally hears the logging-on sound and starts hollering-- and then it was someone else's turn to talk and I heard their cat hollering in the background too.

Now there have been like, four different dudes talking, and almost all of them have had cats hollering in the background.

It's a universal cat impulse to need to be included on conference calls. Our cat is not uniquely an asshole.

In health news, I've progressed to actually being hungry, which is great, so I'm going to go eat breakfast and maybe be done being so goddamn queasy.

Side note: am I finally old enough that I'm allowed to have stomach ailments without people immediately concluding it's morning sickness? That's definitely tapered off as I've progressed into my thirties. I might be officially Past That, if not physically?

Wow this dude's cat is making horrifying noises in the background! Our cat is by comparison very sweet-voiced and understated. My dear darling sweet girl.

Comments

[incognitajones]

I am Amused by all the cats having important conference calls with each other while the humans are trying to talk.

[harpers_child]

I was about to say the same thing. It's clearly talking time. They're telling each other important cat business.

[dragonlady7]

I think that's the consensus! I'll have to ask Chita what the business is about.

[dragonlady7]

Dude says he thinks the cats are probably conducting their own parallel business.

The loudest of them is named Lt. Col. Haze. He admits he's not sure of the names of the other cats. There's a Euclid, who I've met (that coworker lives locally), but the other cats haven't really been introduced.

(We're not sure how Lt. Col. Haze achieved that rank.)

[littlelostcat]

It's convenient that the cat conference is at the same time as Dude's!

[dragonlady7]

It is convenient. I will say, Chita seems a little hazy on when the microphone is actually on, as she just yells through the whole thing. I wonder if the other cats know when their mic is hot so they can time their yelling?

[marginaliana]

Cat conference! I'd like to think they are annoyed by the way humans keep talking when they're trying to have a serious meeting about different types of catnip.

[dragonlady7]

You know, one of these days we should just set it up and let the cats videoconference with each other.

[j00j]

My cat is deaf and still yells during my conference calls when I work from home. She knows. And she's super loud because she can't hear herself.

[dragonlady7]

One of the guys who used to be on the team had a beloved, aged deaf cat named Electra who woke him up every morning by standing on his chest and-- well,she thought she was just chirruping at him, but really she was screaming as loud as it's possible for a cat to scream.
I think she helped on the conference calls too, but unfortunately she crossed that rainbow bridge a while back now, and the guy actually also no longer works for the company. (I still follow him on Twitter, though. he's still got twelve cats.)

[shy_magpie]

<3 thank you for sharing I love your cat!

[dragonlady7]

Aw you're welcome. I love my cat too, she's great.

[paean]

I did briefly wonder about pregnancy sickness when you described how you were feeling. But then again, I’m 40s with little ones.

[dragonlady7]

oh, that's the thing-- I know fine well from looking at my own family geneaology that one is not really past that sort of thing for certain until well into one's forties!! But as you progress past your mid-twenties, I've discovered, and into your thirties, people stop bringing it up, even if maybe they still think it.

I keep thinking about that study everyone has just accepted for decades that says your fertility "falls off a cliff" in your early 30s, and how like last month I finally read an article that explained that they got those numbers? by looking at census records from 18th-C France, with zero control for the fact that generally speaking women of that era who survived into their late thirties probably had already had the children they wanted to and were probably knowledgeable/established/powerful enough to avoid additional pregnancies unless they really wanted to? And not one study has ever actually been done on conception rates vs. actual desire to conceive across different ages with any kind of controls at all??

Anyhow. My own mother had her last child at 37, after much planning. Neither of my grandmothers had a single pregnancy before age 30. And the first of my ancestresses I researched who came to the New World did not birth her last child until she was 46. (She didn't marry the first time until she was over 30 either, and she had 8 of them, all of whom survived infancy. She died at 97, in 1712. Farmsister is named after her.)

(And in 350 years of data, I have either one or two teenage marriages-- I think they were both 19. Everyone else was in their 20s or 30s at age of first marriage.)

[paean]

What sensible ancestors you have. I know the data says most European woman were in their 20s at first marriage. Unfortunately, come from a line of teenage brides. My mother at 19, although she did not have kids with that man. My grandmother married at 17, and proceeded to have 8 children over 20 years. And at least one of my greatgrands has first baby in her midteens after being raped. Fortunately, she married a much nicer man who gave the baby his name, and my bio greatgranddads name is now lost. I (and my approximately 30 cousins) all waited until our twenties and mostly our thirties for marriage or children.

I can’t help but wonder if we just finally learn not to speculate out loud as we get older. Cause I still think pregnancy at almost any woman being nauseous.