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Not going to lie. There has always been a part of me that’s thought fondly of the idea of working at home. It sounds so intriguing when you read it in a novel: sitting at home, leisurely making coffee in the morning and then retreating to your home office that overlooks a lake, from which one begins unraveling an ages-old murder mystery that somehow involves the Knights Templar and a global conspiracy.

I read a lot of books, alright.

My working at home experiment, something I experienced on Monday as I type this, isn’t near so luxurious. Instead of an office from a home on a lake, I’m looking at the side of our neighbor’s house.

Instead of solving a world wide conspiracy … I’m writing about what it would be like to work from home. My novel wouldn’t be terribly long.

Still, I’m enjoying it. I do have the aforementioned coffee and the window is open, letting in a nice late September wind. Had some soft tunes playing and I was getting things done. Could use a larger desk of the polished cedar variety, and a few more bookshelves to reflect how stately I am would be nice, but you work with what you got.

And to this point, I have my one lone distraction to this little tale in the form of a ginger office assistant who doesn’t quite get the important notion of a work day like maybe he should.

It should be said from the onset that Buster is not very good as an office assistant. In fact, he’s rather distracting and doesn’t take dictation. Granted, I did pick him up off of his bed, which is my office chair, so I guess he does have a right to be somewhat annoyed by my sudden appearance upstairs on a Monday afternoon.

The office is Buster’s room for most of the time. It’s where he retreats to during the day and later at night, further cementing it as his room, but sometimes he just needs to learn to share.

He disappeared not long after I put him down so I could sit and work, but not long after he was back, taking full advantage of the fact I was home and demanded attention. This trailed to him jumping into the open window to take stock of the outside and then trying to jump on the back of my chair.

To my knowledge, he only does this when I’m sitting in it and to be honest, I’m not entirely sure why. It’s not like he looks real comfortable sitting on the back of the chair, especially this one.

Next, I decided to try shifting to another desk to see if maybe that one works a little better for my needs. As I did so, I shifted chairs because the chair at that desk is covered in the hair of my office assistant.

I tried this for a while, but was interrupted by Buster first using the cloth backing of the other chair as a scratching post, and then by again trying to climb on the back of my original chair, which was something of a surprise given I was sitting in it.

I moved back to the first desk, but forgot to move the other chair back. That’s when I heard a commotion behind me and discovered that the chair gave Buster access to a new frontier he really hadn’t been able to get to before.

Before long, he was curling up on a shelf that couldn’t support his weight for long, much less leave room enough for the items on said shelf.

And now, he’s back scratching on the chair again and trying to climb to areas he shouldn’t be. Just a moment.

Back on the back of the chair, and my office assistant is eying another shelf that cannot support his weight or his girth. Oh and those papers I brought home to work off of that are laying on the floor? They have become a cat bed because why wouldn’t interview notes serve in that capacity?

Yes, I was kind of enjoying being able to work at home, but I may have to rethink how often I do this. Office assistants are supposed to support you in the work you need to get done, not drag jingling toys from the other room in the hopes that it’s play time.

I mean it is, but only for a little bit. I still have plenty of work for him to interrupt.