flossing the cat

Today, I have been mostly thinking about the pros and cons of working from home, which I’d like to share. I'll begin with the bad news:  1. Working from home can mean extensive periods of isolation, leading to a catastrophic degeneration of socio-personal skills. In extreme circumstances, this can mean going to ridiculous lengths to avoid human contact, such as using the sewer network to get to the post office, or leaping from branch to branch in the overhead tree canopy to avoid footpaths.    2. Conversely, working from home can also mean getting so ridiculously over-excited at the possibility of human contact, that when the postman delivers a parcel, you end up speaking in the jumbled, rapid manner of a psychotic:     ME: Oh, hi, sorry I took ages ... I was upstairs in the bathroom … Ha ha ha! Ooh! I’m so out of breath though ... can’t believe how unfit I am ... still, what’s it like OUT THERE? Haven’t been OUT today! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Le...

 (from The Extremely Over-Protective Mummy's Handbook)  There was a time, not so long ago, when I didn’t give a fu@k about air quality; a time when I’d gad about the place, just breathing normally, like some reckless demi-god. But then, eight weeks after the birth of my Precious First Born, when an opportunity to sleep came my way, my mind suddenly landed on a single, terrifying idea. Which was this: What if there is a carbon monoxide leak in the house? AAAAIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! "Salad, darlings? I washed it in Milton's."  Now, I’m not normally the kind of gal to go into a Blind Fucking Panic for no reason, oh no no no!! *suppresses horrible facial twitches, puts on weirdly superficial grin*. Neither am I the type to worry myself into an early fucking grave about a gazillion things that are all statistically extremely unlikely to happen, whilst at the same time doing precisely NOTHING about any of them. But if I were, these are the ki...