Not sure if someone posted this already, but the OP from the coworker with the imaginary kid followed up. Here’s what she said:
The OP*
March 23, 2020 at 12:25 pm
Thank-you for answering my question, I appreciate your thoughtful answer. I did end up quietly speaking to my manager. I only showed the public stuff from Facebook and I framed it that I had donated time off and then saw what I saw. I didn’t say anything about him faking or making up a kid. A few weeks later he stopped coming in and the company gave everyone back the time they had given him over the past year. They said it was given to him in error. Nothing else has been said. With all that is going now I had completely forgotten about him. I am stuck in my hometown because I was visiting before all this went down. We are all working remotely and it seems so far away now.
This is extremely silly but getting these as emails have been very soothing to me. It's so weird to basically have no structure whatsoever right now. Getting an email from you is a lovely part of my routine now. Also, very importantly I'm making nachos to eat with left over chilli! All good things!
Some exciting news amongst all of *gestures vaguely to the outside world*: I had a skype interview with the head of one of the masters courses I've applied to which went really well. My academic background (english) isn't really aligned to the programme (social policy) so he wanted to ask about my professional experience (minimal but enthusiastic) before making an offer. He was LOVELY and satisfied with my answers and said he'll be requesting the university to accept me!!! I'm relieved and excited.
This literally happened 1 minute ago so of course I needed to tell strangers immediately. Nicole, your emails make me very happy and add structure to my weird days now. Keep safe and well everyone.
Congratulations! That's so exciting! As for background, a superstar in my graduate program was an English major who absolutely smashed an evolutionary biology PhD out of the park. Enthusiasm matters way more than background.
Thank you!! And that's incredibly impressive, wow. I sort of want to do that too now?? Something very appealing about completely changing disciplines every time you go up an academic rung.
My wife and I are both working from home. The closet where my sweatpants/other cozy clothes are is right behind where we set up her workstation. Twice so far I have gone over to the closet and taken off my pants, and then remembered to check that she wasn't on a Zoom call. I have not yet taken my pants off in front of her office but this is very dangerous.
I was trying to remember which author tweeted the other day that she came down the stairs topless and didn't realize her spouse was on a videocall.....
oh *hello*. I saw this just before logging on to WFH and it a) sent me down a lovely Twelfth Night rabbit hole and b) energized me for the day. (That and the sunshine returning.)
Nicole, you are a gem. That prairie dog (?) is INCREDIBLE and gives me hope in dark times.
Yesterday I had to go interact with medical professionals to ensure that my heart keeps beating. (It almost certainly will, but only if I have regular access to medical professionals, and otherwise I am screwed, whereby screwed I mean dead.) SO MANY PEOPLE coughed on me. So many people. It was so incredibly scary.
But, I just got a paper accepted in a Fancy Journal (I am an academic), so, uh, part of the world is still turning.
Thanks! I'm not sure I want all my Nicole Cliffe newsletter comments to be linked to my real self (academics are ridiculously easy to Google), so let's just go with "birds!".
My coping strategy is "having an infant who has no idea the world is falling apart." I have to get up at the same time everyday to feed him and keep up with the routine. It helps that he is happy 90% of the time!
I look forward to these emails every day! Thank you for the smiles. I've been going on a brisk walk in the early mornings instead of my regular commute and I feel SO accomplished getting exercise AND an hour of literature reading done before second breakfast. 4/4 paws, recommend.
I'm quite busy with my work as an English teacher and translator, but let me tell you about one of my most common games I played as an introverted child. In the afternoons the sun would come in the living room window at just the right angle to illuminate all the dust motes floating in the air above the couch that was under the window. They generally floated in an upward direction, and at like a 50-degree angle. I pretended they were all passengers boarding one of those planes with stairs (V glam to board a plane that way, thought my kid mind). Then I would wave my hand through the middle of them and send them swirling into disaster (tornados... I lived in the midwest). After that, I waited patiently for the dust-people to collect themselves and get back into their orderly patterns until I could play disaster again. Fun quarantine game, right??
Well I have been going through it. My flights home got cancelled and I started looking into how I could possibly convince Australian Immigration to let me stay past my visa expiry, notorious sympathetic souls they are. Lucky for me my brother's mother-in-law is a no nonsense aged care nurse who never learned how to back down. She called Air Canada on my behalf and got them to rebook me for no extra charge... somehow, I don't really know what techniques she employed and I'm kind of afraid to ask. The new flights are rough - 43.5 hours total in transit, and they're tomorrow so I've only got six hours to pack - but it gets me back to a country where I have medicare and where I can look after my parents (particularly my dad, who still believes people are blowing this out of proportion 😐). It's been a scramble so I just grabbed weird Australian snacks to share out, but I did get an enormous stuffed wombat to give to my six month old nephew I've yet to meet!
Spring for a pass in one of the lounges! You’ll feel safer you’ll be able to get up and use the restroom and leave your stuff and not worry about it you’ll be able to snack all day on relatively healthy food without having to buy each individual item you’ll be able to sit more comfortably and it’ll be quieter so even if you’re just listening to TV or Podcasts you’ll be able to hear it over the quiet roar of the airport
Thanks! Probably some standalone stuff? I'm not confident in my brain's ability to concentrate much during the trip, ha. I'm very into You're Wrong About, and I've downloaded some recommended Reply All eps
I was going to say You're Wrong About as a general rec, so we're in the same ballpark. Ologies is wonderful and there are a lot of of episodes/topics to choose from. I also recently started I Spy, where former spies tell about spying. I would also recommend Samin Nasrat's new cooking podcast Home Cooking (it hasn't premiered yet but hopefully there'll be an ep by the time you need it), and comedy podcasts How Did This Get Made and My Dad Wrote a Porno. MDWaP is ongoing about terrible erotica but it doesn't really require you to remember anything.
Samin Nasrat podcast ♥️! Thanks so much for the recs - I have a three hour layover within Australia so think I'll take advantage of my mobile data while I still have it and get some downloads in.
I’ll say this counts as kink: learned from a friend that in the LA legal community, there are two bigwig celebrity/extremely rich people estate litigators who are FAMOUS NEMESES. They are such NEMESES that they will purposely find out which case the other is working on so they can go up against them in court. They measure their success by the defeat of the other in all arenas of life. They have been doing this for literal decades, mostly for the perverse thrill of it.
I... love this and want a Coen brothers movie of it?
Hey Nicole, a super unrelated but needed question during these quarantine times: remember when you went to Blackberry farms and bought a candle from their shop, but then found out it was being sold for far less on another platform? I remember you praising its smell but cannot for the life of me remember the brand name! What was it called?
True story: I went on an Internet hunt to get the name of this when you were off twitter, and it took forever, but I finally found it in a text I'd sent to my husband - I ordered the candle, and it is delightful. For reference "candle nicole cliffe likes" and "that farm that famous people go to" are not good search terms.
Re “what exciting new kinks and fetishes are we discovering in quarantine?”
I live alone, and I'm doing okay, but I am pretty damn lonely. So, new kink arising is kindness. Someone on twitter posted about he called a friend who lived alone and did simultaneous stuffed animal hug since they couldn't hug each other... and I got aroused just thinking about how nice that was that a cis white hetero male felt cool telling all of twitter he has a stuffed animal. :)
I'm have beenkeepingit together, but your praise at the end made me cry. It's very hard with my parents anyway, but now there's this kind of antagonism from my mom. It's difficult and complicated! I needed someone to say I'm doing a good job with my own family! So many times you've told me exactly what I didn't know I needed to hear. Thank you. Love you!
(My dad has dementia and is under the care of my irresponsible, alcoholic brother in a beach town in Florida and that is nightmare stuff that is also complicated!)
The longtime theatre critic of our local daily newspaper, who is a lovely man and has survived the paper's huge ups and downs over the past 30 years, has finally taken the paper's proffered buyout during the coronavirus crisis mainly because he and his equally lovely wife have a nearly grownup autistic son and now that that son's structure and routine, that were working wonders for him, have been upended, the gentleman wants to be home to help. All of us in the arts community will miss him terribly. When I messaged him to that effect he responded with such a nice compliment about our working relationship (I do PR) that it brought me to tears.
Also, the oldest city newspaper in the USA, which has been serving our city for 72 years, called it quits and laid off its entire staff today. I was their contributing copy editor for three years earlier in the past decade and have also written for them on and off for years. They are a lovely group of people and do such great work. Overnight they became unsustainable.
These may be minor things but... everything about this pandemic sucks.
I would 1000000% be down for a movie night. I request “9 to 5” because it’s got everything a movie could possibly need (except for more than one POC in a speaking role...).
I don't personally know anyone who has been hospitalized for the 'rona but one of my neighbors killed himself last night. Suicide is also contagious, and it's harder to keep people connected in community during this time of social distancing. I'm worried for whoever else is struggling.
Not sure if someone posted this already, but the OP from the coworker with the imaginary kid followed up. Here’s what she said:
The OP*
March 23, 2020 at 12:25 pm
Thank-you for answering my question, I appreciate your thoughtful answer. I did end up quietly speaking to my manager. I only showed the public stuff from Facebook and I framed it that I had donated time off and then saw what I saw. I didn’t say anything about him faking or making up a kid. A few weeks later he stopped coming in and the company gave everyone back the time they had given him over the past year. They said it was given to him in error. Nothing else has been said. With all that is going now I had completely forgotten about him. I am stuck in my hometown because I was visiting before all this went down. We are all working remotely and it seems so far away now.
Fair decision.
This is extremely silly but getting these as emails have been very soothing to me. It's so weird to basically have no structure whatsoever right now. Getting an email from you is a lovely part of my routine now. Also, very importantly I'm making nachos to eat with left over chilli! All good things!
I agree--I smile whenever they show up in my inbox. Also, nachos are great.
Yes me also. What even is time??
Some exciting news amongst all of *gestures vaguely to the outside world*: I had a skype interview with the head of one of the masters courses I've applied to which went really well. My academic background (english) isn't really aligned to the programme (social policy) so he wanted to ask about my professional experience (minimal but enthusiastic) before making an offer. He was LOVELY and satisfied with my answers and said he'll be requesting the university to accept me!!! I'm relieved and excited.
This literally happened 1 minute ago so of course I needed to tell strangers immediately. Nicole, your emails make me very happy and add structure to my weird days now. Keep safe and well everyone.
Congratulations! That's so exciting! As for background, a superstar in my graduate program was an English major who absolutely smashed an evolutionary biology PhD out of the park. Enthusiasm matters way more than background.
Thank you!! And that's incredibly impressive, wow. I sort of want to do that too now?? Something very appealing about completely changing disciplines every time you go up an academic rung.
oh, yay, congratulations!
Congratulations!
congratulations!!
My wife and I are both working from home. The closet where my sweatpants/other cozy clothes are is right behind where we set up her workstation. Twice so far I have gone over to the closet and taken off my pants, and then remembered to check that she wasn't on a Zoom call. I have not yet taken my pants off in front of her office but this is very dangerous.
I was trying to remember which author tweeted the other day that she came down the stairs topless and didn't realize her spouse was on a videocall.....
Hello sapphics I am here to flirt.
My resume: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cmYjMRYdfJW1Tgc4N1oz-rSiqHv4OZP-/view?usp=sharing
This was a lot to handle this early in my day.
Good morning!!
Good morning to you! Are you taking advantage of this time to try out new gay haircuts? If so, do feel free to share.
Currently just pretty short, but a home cut is in my future in a couple weeks which will be good and gay. How about you?
Finally got the undercut I have wanted for years recently! (luckily I also invested in trimmers, so I'm all set at home)
Stringy crone. I wish they were casting for a horror movie (if that were at all a good idea at the moment).
Straight-ish over here but damn that's lovely
Always happy to bring out the -ish in people!
oh *hello*. I saw this just before logging on to WFH and it a) sent me down a lovely Twelfth Night rabbit hole and b) energized me for the day. (That and the sunshine returning.)
Hello to you as well! Very glad for the sunshine and thoughts of Viola/Cesario myself.
i am VERY charmed by resume
So glad to charm~
YUM
:))
Haaaaayy.
Hello! What's up?
I'm really into the dark pink lipstick you're wearing in your resume pic.
Ty ty ty. It was a very well loved satin lipstick pencil from NARS that I don't think they make any more,
Nicole, you are a gem. That prairie dog (?) is INCREDIBLE and gives me hope in dark times.
Yesterday I had to go interact with medical professionals to ensure that my heart keeps beating. (It almost certainly will, but only if I have regular access to medical professionals, and otherwise I am screwed, whereby screwed I mean dead.) SO MANY PEOPLE coughed on me. So many people. It was so incredibly scary.
But, I just got a paper accepted in a Fancy Journal (I am an academic), so, uh, part of the world is still turning.
congrats!! what is the subject of the paper?
Thanks! I'm not sure I want all my Nicole Cliffe newsletter comments to be linked to my real self (academics are ridiculously easy to Google), so let's just go with "birds!".
My coping strategy is "having an infant who has no idea the world is falling apart." I have to get up at the same time everyday to feed him and keep up with the routine. It helps that he is happy 90% of the time!
I look forward to these emails every day! Thank you for the smiles. I've been going on a brisk walk in the early mornings instead of my regular commute and I feel SO accomplished getting exercise AND an hour of literature reading done before second breakfast. 4/4 paws, recommend.
I'm quite busy with my work as an English teacher and translator, but let me tell you about one of my most common games I played as an introverted child. In the afternoons the sun would come in the living room window at just the right angle to illuminate all the dust motes floating in the air above the couch that was under the window. They generally floated in an upward direction, and at like a 50-degree angle. I pretended they were all passengers boarding one of those planes with stairs (V glam to board a plane that way, thought my kid mind). Then I would wave my hand through the middle of them and send them swirling into disaster (tornados... I lived in the midwest). After that, I waited patiently for the dust-people to collect themselves and get back into their orderly patterns until I could play disaster again. Fun quarantine game, right??
Well I have been going through it. My flights home got cancelled and I started looking into how I could possibly convince Australian Immigration to let me stay past my visa expiry, notorious sympathetic souls they are. Lucky for me my brother's mother-in-law is a no nonsense aged care nurse who never learned how to back down. She called Air Canada on my behalf and got them to rebook me for no extra charge... somehow, I don't really know what techniques she employed and I'm kind of afraid to ask. The new flights are rough - 43.5 hours total in transit, and they're tomorrow so I've only got six hours to pack - but it gets me back to a country where I have medicare and where I can look after my parents (particularly my dad, who still believes people are blowing this out of proportion 😐). It's been a scramble so I just grabbed weird Australian snacks to share out, but I did get an enormous stuffed wombat to give to my six month old nephew I've yet to meet!
Also: I've got a sixteen hour layover in LA. Anybody got any tips for passing the time? Perhaps podcast episode recommendations?
Spring for a pass in one of the lounges! You’ll feel safer you’ll be able to get up and use the restroom and leave your stuff and not worry about it you’ll be able to snack all day on relatively healthy food without having to buy each individual item you’ll be able to sit more comfortably and it’ll be quieter so even if you’re just listening to TV or Podcasts you’ll be able to hear it over the quiet roar of the airport
This 100%. My friend introduced me to the lounge life last time we flew together and it totally makes a longer layover a less terrible.
For comfort podcast, I am very much enjoying The Fitzroy Diaries. It's like Lake Wobegone, only narrated by an Australian mother of young children.
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/the-fitzroy-diaries/
Safe travels. The stuffed wombat sounds very cuddly.
Good luck on all your flights! I always podcast recommendations. What do you want: comedy, comfort, news, crime, interesting stuff?
Thanks! Probably some standalone stuff? I'm not confident in my brain's ability to concentrate much during the trip, ha. I'm very into You're Wrong About, and I've downloaded some recommended Reply All eps
I was going to say You're Wrong About as a general rec, so we're in the same ballpark. Ologies is wonderful and there are a lot of of episodes/topics to choose from. I also recently started I Spy, where former spies tell about spying. I would also recommend Samin Nasrat's new cooking podcast Home Cooking (it hasn't premiered yet but hopefully there'll be an ep by the time you need it), and comedy podcasts How Did This Get Made and My Dad Wrote a Porno. MDWaP is ongoing about terrible erotica but it doesn't really require you to remember anything.
Samin Nasrat podcast ♥️! Thanks so much for the recs - I have a three hour layover within Australia so think I'll take advantage of my mobile data while I still have it and get some downloads in.
My Dad Wrote a Porno should only be listened to in public if you're willing to be seen hysterically crying laughing to yourself
I’m only a couple eps in, but Dolly Parton’s America is great. Also, Dear Prudence is a fantastic standalone!
I'm really enjoying the "Family Ghosts" podcast: occasionally creepy and mostly true tales of family secrets and how they are uncovered (or not).
I, Podius. Ear Hustle, You Must Remember This
I’ll say this counts as kink: learned from a friend that in the LA legal community, there are two bigwig celebrity/extremely rich people estate litigators who are FAMOUS NEMESES. They are such NEMESES that they will purposely find out which case the other is working on so they can go up against them in court. They measure their success by the defeat of the other in all arenas of life. They have been doing this for literal decades, mostly for the perverse thrill of it.
I... love this and want a Coen brothers movie of it?
Hey Nicole, a super unrelated but needed question during these quarantine times: remember when you went to Blackberry farms and bought a candle from their shop, but then found out it was being sold for far less on another platform? I remember you praising its smell but cannot for the life of me remember the brand name! What was it called?
ILLUME: Balsam and Cedar
True story: I went on an Internet hunt to get the name of this when you were off twitter, and it took forever, but I finally found it in a text I'd sent to my husband - I ordered the candle, and it is delightful. For reference "candle nicole cliffe likes" and "that farm that famous people go to" are not good search terms.
I mean, they aren't "bad" just don't get the right results.
LMAOO
thank you have a wonderful day!!
Re “what exciting new kinks and fetishes are we discovering in quarantine?”
I live alone, and I'm doing okay, but I am pretty damn lonely. So, new kink arising is kindness. Someone on twitter posted about he called a friend who lived alone and did simultaneous stuffed animal hug since they couldn't hug each other... and I got aroused just thinking about how nice that was that a cis white hetero male felt cool telling all of twitter he has a stuffed animal. :)
I'm have beenkeepingit together, but your praise at the end made me cry. It's very hard with my parents anyway, but now there's this kind of antagonism from my mom. It's difficult and complicated! I needed someone to say I'm doing a good job with my own family! So many times you've told me exactly what I didn't know I needed to hear. Thank you. Love you!
(My dad has dementia and is under the care of my irresponsible, alcoholic brother in a beach town in Florida and that is nightmare stuff that is also complicated!)
you're doing SO WELL
The longtime theatre critic of our local daily newspaper, who is a lovely man and has survived the paper's huge ups and downs over the past 30 years, has finally taken the paper's proffered buyout during the coronavirus crisis mainly because he and his equally lovely wife have a nearly grownup autistic son and now that that son's structure and routine, that were working wonders for him, have been upended, the gentleman wants to be home to help. All of us in the arts community will miss him terribly. When I messaged him to that effect he responded with such a nice compliment about our working relationship (I do PR) that it brought me to tears.
Also, the oldest city newspaper in the USA, which has been serving our city for 72 years, called it quits and laid off its entire staff today. I was their contributing copy editor for three years earlier in the past decade and have also written for them on and off for years. They are a lovely group of people and do such great work. Overnight they became unsustainable.
These may be minor things but... everything about this pandemic sucks.
I would 1000000% be down for a movie night. I request “9 to 5” because it’s got everything a movie could possibly need (except for more than one POC in a speaking role...).
I have NEVER seen "9 To 5" and it would be very apt right about now.
I don't personally know anyone who has been hospitalized for the 'rona but one of my neighbors killed himself last night. Suicide is also contagious, and it's harder to keep people connected in community during this time of social distancing. I'm worried for whoever else is struggling.
I’m so sorry. Virtual hugs to you.
That is so tough. I'm praying for you and his family and community.
Thank you. It doesn't feel real because nothing feels real right now, but I'm really worried about people who are already at a loss hearing about it.
Sharing your worry. Holding you all in the light.