April 5, 2008 by Linda Bergeron.

April 5, 2008, by Linda Bergeron

I’ve been thinking it was just me, a long-time office worker with a penchant for invoice details and getting papers into the right file, but I’ve come to believe that the necessity of a home office really has very little to do with a PC now in most homes and everything to do with the Great Records Shirk that has been on the increase for several decades.

This monster that few mention – the best I’ve been able to figure - is the result of small businesses, the federal government and other agencies, insurance companies (auto, home, medical, all of them) and the whole gamut of organizations and retailers who have come to require that consumers complete, renew, re-apply for, document, and – basically keep tabs on – a wide assortment of records.

Most days of the week I thank my lucky stars that I have office and general bookkeeping skills as a valuable endowment so I know enough to save receipts, mark bills paid, keep track of upcoming renewals, which medical bills occurred before or after the deductible…remembering to ask the question, Do I get to pay 80 percent now instead of 100 on that last visit?

Right now my desk, shelves and carpeted floor in the assigned small bedroom house the following:

* a pile of medical receipts (which needed several organizing file folders) that include original bills, the notification that the original bill is still the same amount due from the patient but in a pending status because the insurance company claims “requested report not received from physician or provider” yet - and meanwhile I keep track who I’ve seen, and when, and why, and whether or not, or how much, I’ve already paid;

* a thickening folder for auto insurance receipts including the old rig that was suspended while it was parked in deep snow all winter, which is now running (under reactivated coverage) yet parked out front behind a red-lettered FOR SALE sign on the dashboard (and somewhere I know I’ve got a record of when the tags expire next just in case that fact helps be a plus on the pick-up’s asking price);

* all the orthodontic receipts from my son’s office visits over the past two-and-a-half years just in case there’s some end note discrepancy about that $5,000 smiling adventure;

* three two-drawer files that are getting harder to wedge this month’s papers into that are holding all the rest of the chronicle of me and mine in these times.

I think this GRS (remember, Great Records Shirk) began one day in an office when the general manager said to the Human Resource director, “Hey, let’s have the client fill out the form so we can use a temp clerk instead of hiring another office gal.”

(He was trying hard not to use the four-letter “girl” word; and yes, he was probably a he.)

This time last year I had no health insurance. Life was considerably simpler, although my home office was still an active place. In truth, I was postponing medical attention here and there on this and that (mostly the that, because it was more expensive.).

If they – you know them, the dutiful members of Congress, the hard-at-the-bit gang of political go-getters, and those who truly care about and are wracking their college-educated brains over what to do about the dying-state-of-the-American-health-care-system – if they would only ask me and other hard-working home-office workers our opinion on where to save money on this Gargantuan system – and doesn’t it bring out the “Grrs” in your suppressed Angerphile? - I’d suggest this: let me pay for the service, you look it up in your multi-volume that explains what was or is a ‘pre-existing’ condition (which I’m sure does not have a footnote on genetics). If my designated plan is covered, make a decision that day – oh, my Gosh! - and mail me the results in seven to ten business days. You pay me back, or I pay the balance. If they keep all the paper generated from one office visit in their office, floating from pending pile to pending pile, sitting on this clerk’s desk until s/he is back from vacation or training (on that multi-volume text, you know), waiting on the poor physician who’s desperately trying to read her/his own handwriting from three months ago about the visit in question and getting swamped in his own home office of tall medical journal stacks….well, you can see where this is going. Home offices are on the increase; the paperless office idea talked about in the late 1980s is certainly mobilizing upward the recycling industry for the sons of the old timber boys, and most people are still not getting paid what inflation suggests they should be. Especially those of us with papers at home to file.

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March 29, 2008 by Linda Bergeron.

Politics is “the art and science of political governance,” that is, of citizens. Even in their own home. Observe the resident cat.

We have three. This morning our trio’s main spokesman, Nubbins, declared to me in his most able and annoying voice, while I was in the kitchen filling the dishwasher with last night’s dishes, that it had really been too long since I scrambled a raw egg for the three of them. It was true, so I complied. Sure, one high-priced omega-3 brown egg for the furred bunch to keep them glossy, happy and whisker-licking for awhile.

I hadn’t thought about him as a ‘spokesperson’ for the family felines before, although I have distinct opinions about this fellow whom I have been known to refer to in affection as adjectively catzoid, and to (less affectionately) send him off my lap with “Hey! Go! I don’t sit in your lap when you’re eating.”

Would the others get extras if it weren’t for Nubbins? Jetter, the speedy, tortoise-shell gorgeous princess, wouldn’t say a word, just crawl and rub close enough for her big winsome eyes to melt you, at which point you’d pet her and start chatting her up but she’d dart for the door once again ever eager to check in on the yard bird action. Draco, the queen, is super picky and does not even bother to ask for anything; one simply has to keep making the effort to please her, or appease her with a long (and repeated) head-to-tail-tip stroke as she gains your attention from on high – as from your dresser top, the knick-knack- and other delicates-studded buffet top, the porch rails, etc. She’ll accept brother Nubbins’ successful requests for appropriations, but never ask herself.

They are so bossy, so demanding, so absolutely full of themselves, and so among the beautiful people of creatures that one takes them in innocently when they are in their prime (five weeks and fluffy, and 150 percent endearing) in the full belief that you will “take care of them.”

No, as soon as they’re full-grown, able to leap tall bounds, their heart of hearts will lock into an armor of personality that deceives you through ardor. They will tell you when you need to be in bed; will find nasty, smelly ways to inform you that the litter box is definitely not fit for use; will not give a second thought to lingering at the open door to check the weather conditions while you know the 22-degree outside temperature is sucking out the house heat with every breath; will find your lap when you’re upset and look so deeply into your eyes that you will wonder why you could ever possibly dislike or not appreciate them; will make clear that their personal weakness is any of the following - a stack of papers for diving onto or checking claw strength, or an empty or not-empty box, a freshly laundered bedspread that they simply must personally scent for you, or your dark fleece vest so they can divest themselves of loose white hairs.

You come home from hours away – working, shopping, driving a distance and back, a meeting – and they arise from their slumbers awaiting your next gift. Have I never said out loud, although I wanted to, “You guys don’t even know what work is! You don’t know what I do when I leave!”

They rule outrageously. They talk us into working on their behalf. They keep our feet warm under the bedcovers, but they also thoughtlessly wake us at three a.m. when we accidentally left them out and a windstorm brews. They whine for attention and when you say you can’t, they stay close by, and turn their heads away from you as if they’re meditating on an object in the corner.

They govern terribly! And I don’t remember voting. All that I recall is how unbearably cute they were six years ago, and how long it’s been too cold and of too little sun to be able to bask in their presence and still smile.

Linda Bergeron, a freelance correspondent for the Hell’s Canyon Journal, writes poetry, autobiographical sketches, and regional history, and has been published in the Tinker’s Shop, In Context magazine and Rain magazine.

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February 21, 2008 by Linda Bergeron.

Newly organized home office – ah, at last. The poems have finally landed in an alpha file of standard folders (instead of the latest one loosely tucked in the front of an assigned notebook). I’ll be checking into the next entry deadline this morning.

The writing table went from obscurity under papers in the middle of a crowded room to a deserved place in front of the window-with-a-view. (Why did I wait so long?)

And the hardest task, but most rewarding when done right: reining in the obstinate self from a litany of diversions and distractions to the important work – facing the white page.

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