Anyway, one time, weather and wildlife got together to form the perfect storm of sorts, when I went inside to use the restroom. An armadillo whispered into my headset that I had so delicately and professionally placed on his back, mistaking him for a pillow. The client mistook his whisper, further garbled by the wind and rain, as my voice. Fortunately, I returned just in time to stop the emergency appendectomy on the patient with poor English skills, as it turned out she just came by to donate some PPE. The selfless, totally professional interpreter that I am, I prevented an awful disaster and another huge lawsuit. All thanks to quick zipping, hand-wash-skipping and pure dumb luck. That's the kind of heroics that, my colleagues and I, and other non-linguist, and therefore not as important, on-line laborers, have had to demonstrate in these tumultuous times. Sadly, it has gone mostly unnoticed. Thankfully, unnoticed just enough for me to keep my job. As much as I enjoy the freedom of working from home in my backyard, I still mourn the loss of dignity of workspace. No crying babies, barking dogs or whistling armadillos. No weather or wildlife in the form of family members, or other random animals adding their own soundtrack to the workday. Just an angry supervisor breathing notes of garlic, convenience store wine, and disapproval on my neck. I especially miss looking out my office window at the park across the street and thinking how cool it would be to work from a bench at the park. Nothing like a pandemic to knock some sense into my feeble psyche.

I have stacked copies of our company's guidelines for working from home where the missing leg of the cheap plastic chair once proudly stood, but the chair is still shaky. I have been telling my video clients that my Florida office is located right on top of a fault line in the neighboring state of California where such tremors are a common, daily occurrence this time of year, meaning year-round. It is a testament to the strength of our K-12 education and endurance of culturally inflicted geographical unawareness in this country that no one has questioned the validity of that statement. Florida borders California on the left, Canada to the north, and Mexico to the south. You never know when our prestigious high school education is going to play a crucial role in someone's career. Being outdoors have caused many technical issues. Especially on Thursdays, when we hang our laundry on the ethernet cable. It was a company requirement to have a hard wire connection. Otherwise, I'd be stealing Wi-Fi from the county jail down the street like everyone else. The county does change the password weekly, but one of the fine overgrown teenagers in the neighborhood is sure to go to jail every other day. So, the whole community has the updated password all the time. Because I was having issues constantly, with or without wet laundry hanging, and because the wired internet connection idea was theirs, my company set up a satellite IT office in my front yard, staffed by a technician around the clock to address my issues. I don't call tech support anymore. I just yell "help!" and the technician runs right over with the neighbor's two pit-bull dogs in hot pursuit. The technician is not only a well-trained network engineer, but he is also a very good runner. The company must train these guys extensively or hire only Olympic athletes. Even so, he had to get a few stitches last week when one of the dogs was able to catch up with him, but only because he tripped on our high-tech irrigation system which consists of a garden hose running from the kitchen window to the backyard. Having the technician camp out front has given my whole family such a renewed sense of security that I cancelled my security monitoring service agreement with my neighbor where we tied a long trigger wire rope to one of his dogs' tail at nights. We alternated nights with each dog. On Sundays when my neighbor drives his mother to church, they need both dogs to secure their own house to protect his extensive collection of vintage garbage bags, in case one of our many unscrupulous, sketchy neighbors was tempted. So, on Sundays, both dogs were on garbage detail. And they detailed the heck out of those garbage bags full of vintage garbage. And there were plenty of yelling and re-bagging of priceless garbage going on every Sunday afternoon when the neighbors came home from church. The good news was, because the dogs needed Sundays off, a raccoon, well known in the neighborhood for his mischievous escapades, got gainful employment, albeit part time, as our weekend security guard. The cancellation of the dog-powered alarm system saves me money because now I don't have to buy their owner a generic six pack of beer every week. The raccoon only worked for food, which he would have stolen anyway, so that is a net gain of zero dollars. He is still well-fed. While mostly a good thing, working outdoors does come with unique challenges in the form of wildlife and weather. Apparently, a raccoon perched on your shoulders is not a "professional look" for our company. The same goes for bird poop on our company shirt. Even when it lands smack in the middle of the company logo where color was sorely lacked. I personally thought it added an old-worldly charm and said, in vividly bright colors that only genuine bird poop can bring out: "we are one with nature", or "we are not a fashion, nor a fashionable company", depending on the bird dialect. I am an on-line medical interpreter, and as a professional linguist, I can appreciate these little nuances better than anyone. The weather is a harder pill to swallow. The constant howling of the wind and rain is sometimes perceived as words that no one uttered, causing many anecdotal issues, some leading to lawsuits which I am not allowed to talk about due to a 'gag order' as some cases are still under litigation. For those of you who are not professional linguists, or are not otherwise well-versed in legal jargon because they're not lawyers, judges or criminal entrepreneurs from the other side of the fence, I will pause here while you go and look up the words 'gag order' and 'litigation' in your favorite dictionary app. Or if you live in a different time zone, say 1970's, you can use an actual print dictionary. You know, like a book.

I was one of the few “lucky” ones. I worked from home. I enjoyed very much the quiet solitude that came from dramatically reduced human encounters. And the complete lack of traffic on my way to the spare back room. I complemented my insincerely professional look of company-issued, increasingly cardboard-crisp shirt with an even crisper Manchester United tie. The tie, totally unsanctioned by my employer, is a conscious nod to my repressed middle-school-aged inner child, and my proud contribution to internet fashion. It is also the second adrenaline-pumping risk I take on the job after the laptop radiation. Below the waist, I went weekend casual, as per the Florida state-mandated indoor dress code, with sun-starved chicken legs crowned with boyfriend boxers the last girlfriend purposefully left behind eons ago. I had already become a poor imitation of Howard Hughes. The same hygienic fortitude and social finesse, but with much less financial gusto. Then the pandemic hit. Suddenly, everybody started working from home. I was no longer a lone soulless internet grazer. I was joined by countless others. As a side order with this god-awful new reality, came the fact that now everybody was doing everything from home, not just their jobs. With all this widespread home-schooling, home-quarantining, and general home-hoarding, not to mention all this working-from-home, working from home became a challenge. Before all this, my family was never home together at the same time other than at bedtime when everyone went to their separate slumber pods, thus minimizing any risk of togetherness. We now found ourselves having to make some grand adjustments to survive our newly congested hallways, bathrooms, and the overall airspace. According to a certain individual I do not wish to identify for fear of retribution, whom I will refer to as “a household member of opposite gender with veto powers”, our normally quite roomy house stopped being roomy. We started losing square footage and air volume for no apparent reason. We were experiencing a severe shortage of breathable air and quiet serenity. Somehow, we popped a leak somewhere, and apparently it was not where three children whined annoyingly, two dogs barked loudly, and a certain female yelled lovingly. It turns out, the leakage concentrated around my little corner of the house where I had set up shop for quietly working from home, away from all the disruptive elements. Just like all other mysterious phenomena at our house such as missing items, broken toys, unexplained smells and unprovoked smirks, this, too, was deemed my fault. Something had to change. They had the numbers. I had the neatly nested red circles on the back of anything I might wear. As any self-respecting hunter knows well, by moving, a target can avoid getting hit in vital organs. But with that comes the risk of debilitating wounds with life-long disability implications. Faced with equally rewarding choices, I decided a coin toss is the prudent thing to do. The coin was shot in the air with a perfectly symmetrical hole right in the middle. She may not be able to tell a ladle from a spatula, but she sure can handle a firearm. Another reason well-justifying my decision to marry local. So, I had to move. Thus changed my ‘working from home' situation. Technically, I am no longer working from home, but rather, working from behind home. Age of internet, meet the great outdoors! I hung my blue backdrop from a tree in the back yard. I placed my laptop on an old, rusty barbecue grill dumped in my backyard by a recycle-weary environmentalist neighbor that has not grilled anything since colonial times. The grill disintegrated into dust immediately, so a nearby tree log dating back only to my childhood became my new workstation. Unlike cheap metal and social conscience, some trees just don't decay, I guess. My throne is a plastic lawn chair that is missing a leg, compliments of a wayward alligator who obviously mistook it for a four-legged white bird. We either have strangely mutated birds, or alligators with severe eyesight issues. Those obese lizards can spot a mischievous cat, small child or a clueless tourist hooking bait in shallow water from a mile away. So, my money is on the foul-smelling tint on the lake, causing mutations, compliments of the nuclear power plant down the river. Freaky creatures are such commonplace occurrences here that at the maternity ward shop they sell balloons that say, “it's a baby with all four, and only four limbs”. That gator is just fine. He's got better than 20/20 on all three eyes.

This aspiring novelist, writing enthusiast and food blogger was born on July 16, 1968, in Flint Michigan. Her musical talents began at a very young age. She began singing in church at the age of 7 and had the violin mastered by the age of twelve. Then, before she knew it, she was whisked away with her family, to sunny Florida to live. She was a middle child who grew up and spent her teenage years on the boardwalk of Daytona Beach. She attended a private Christian academy where she was active in cheerleading, dancing, journalism, and swimming. After high school, she decided her horizons needed broadening. She attended college in Michigan and obtained her degree with a major in Business. Then she got a job and wore black pumps to work every day. She had lunch with the girls, drank coffee every day, wore suits to work, and treated herself to manicures on a monthly basis. She became a top seller in lead sales in her division and overall ranked #13 in the United States as the top seller in her field. She was given a bonus, a promotion, and a lovely spa package. She was managing to raise four children as a full- time mom. Her children were all teenagers by this time. She was working many hours overtime, parent-teacher meetings, homework, school plays, science projects, and after-school activities. She was that one woman trying to achieve it all and trying not to allow her kids to feel left behind. One morning, she woke up for work and found her thirteen-year-old son half dead, slumped over on the living-room sofa. She had him rushed to the emergency room. It turned out that he happened to be sick and needed hospitalization for several months. He would need after-care treatment once he returned home. After very little thought about her decision, while her son was in intensive care, she went to her work and turned in her keys and resigned. She felt deep in her heart that her son needed her. She belonged at home with her son. Financially they were fine. She had her savings, 401K, and bonuses she managed to save. Her son remained her only concern. A year passes by, and her son became strong and healthy. They all started going to their local church not far from their home. She became a Sunday School teacher. She also started singing in the adult choir and played her violin. She began teaching at a girl's club in the church and she also taught at the Christian camp every summer. She was scheduled to sing a solo one night. She waited to be called up to the stage. Once announced to the stage, she briefly told her testimony. She glanced around the room and noticed people whispered to one another. They pointed at her. It made her feel awkward, but she continued with her song. They graciously applauded and she took her seat. After she had taken her seat, she felt someone rub her shoulder, and she turned around. Nobody was there. Then, something caught the corner of her eye. Laying draped across her shoulder. She gasped. Her hairpiece that was attached to her ponytail had fallen off. It had fallen across her shoulder. Her face started to turn beet red, and she started to sink down into her seat. She could see the people that sat around her with their pitiful smiles, It made her feel more embarrassed. She had to find her escape route immediately. She excused herself. She took her children and herself at home. She didn't return back to church for a couple weeks. Unexpectedly, she met and fell in love with a southern gentleman. He lived in Alabama. Now she lives in the country in Northern Michigan. Her days are spent working in the garden, planting flowers, cleaning the dirt out from under her fingernails and making gravy. They have a home that they purchased and are fixing up. They are renting out the guest house and are in the process of painting and redecorating. It is a chore but the process has been refreshing. It took a while for her to adjust to being without her children. It was the five of them for so long. She went through empty nest syndrome. She even cried and went through depression for a short time. However, she found writing as a way to escape. She would journal and also write in her food blog. She would also find refuge in her garden. I'm sure if her adolescent self could see her now she would cringe at how she traded in her idea of becoming an unmarried, without children, fashion designer in Paris, to a Business degree achiever, writing her first novel, completing an E-Book called “Comfort Foods for the Soul,” and falling in love with a better life. A life full of possibilities, a life much better for her.

When I was younger, I felt like I needed everything.. and everything needed to be extraordinary. I had so many lives in mind for myself, I could never choose which one I wanted. "Greatness" was such a selective thing to me back then.. It would be a lifetime before I realized that there are too many kinds of greatness for me to be able to explain what "greatness" meant to me. There, I had found my talent. My ability to see the greatness in all things. My passion to bring greatness out of a story, even if it wasn't mine. My love for finding greatness in what I never knew could be. It is in this life, I get to live through many different eyes, through many different stories. Through success and mediocrity. Through both sorrow and accomplishment. It is in this life that I became part of something much bigger than myself. It is in this life that I live extraordinarily.

Anyone can become a hero. This provocative philosophy is featured in the popular anime show Boku no Hero (or My Hero Academia, the English version). Yes, this is about an anime show, but no this will not be lame; stick with me and you'll see. The most limited of resources in this world is motivation. Everyone wants to be part of something that's bigger than themselves, but mostly people get stuck settling for a job that just pays the bills. We all dream of being a hero, but it takes a lot of hard work, dedication, and mainly failure. Me specifically, my dream since I was young was always to study music. Growing up, the only places I felt wanted or even safe were home and band. I loved band so much I joined choir, then the school musical; but what really changed my life was becoming drum major in my sophomore year of high school. I wanted more than anything to continue to do music for the rest of my life, and so I began to look at going to college for Music Education. Now, for those of you who don't know, auditioning at a music school is rough. There are tons of applicants, you need to perform two contrasting pieces, then you take a piano placement test, then you have to take a theory test, then you have to take a different theory test out loud during your audition, then you have to do an interview. There were two main problems here; One: I had never taken theory in my life. I knew nothing about it at all because my high school had such a small music department. Two: I had (and have) been diagnosed with severe generalized anxiety disorder, so auditions were my worst nightmare. I started auditioning anyway in my senior year of high school. I got so nervous before my first audition that I physically couldn't eat for a week prior, because my anxiety had manifested as severe stomach pain. After that audition, I did five more and they became easier with each one. I checked the mail every single day, praying for an acceptance letter. I didn't make it. None of the music schools accepted me. Most of it was that I had no theory knowledge and didn't know how to play piano. One school said that I was vocally inadequate on top of all that. With no idea what to do next, I applied to a nearby community college. I was then faced with a dilemma; was I going to ignore my embarrassment and re-apply for the schools that I had been shunted by (all of which I would have to work extremely hard to afford), or was I going to stay at community college and find a new career? I gave myself half of a year to decide, which turned out to be the best decision I've ever made. During that time, I learned a lot. I learned the value of a work ethic, I learned a little bit about how to play piano, I learned to balance work and school, and most importantly, I learned what really good friends look like. These friends would be really instrumental (pun intended) in bringing back my musical confidence. I met Grace on the first day of school, and though it took a while, we eventually became really close. One day at the beginning of my second semester, Grace invited me to her ceramics club. There I met Andrew, who quickly became one of my best friends. Andrew was really into anime, and I was kind of casually into it, so we would hang out a lot and binge watch different series until eventually he convinced me to watch Boku no Hero (now we're coming full circle). This was around the end of the deadline I had given myself, and I was still undecided. I wanted to try again, but I honestly didn't believe that I was good enough. I had never gotten any solos or lead roles in high school, I had never been very good, I had always been on the more administrative side of things. I had always worked hard to get were I was, rather than getting there by being talented and I considered that a huge flaw. Boku no Hero saved me from that type of thinking. It's the story about a young boy named Deku in a world where being a superhero is a legitimate career and everyone has superpowers, except for him. Deku, despite being powerless, runs to save his childhood bully when he is in danger and catches the eye of the number one hero, All Might. On his way home afterwards , All might stops Deku and tells him that "You can become a hero". Spoiler alert: Deku becomes the number one hero, and not because of natural talent, but because he works harder than anyone. I decided to try out for the one school I hadn't auditioned for; Millersville University. I prepared for weeks with the help of my friends, and I found out a week later that I had been accepted! I was making my dreams come true, instead of waiting for them to come true. Later that month I got a tattoo to commemorate my new found pride in my work ethic: the sun that can be scene when All Might tells Deku that he, too, can be a hero. I got the tattoo to remind me that I can always work harder. Now, a year later, I'm studying Music Education, and doing well at it, and I have never been happier.