Adventures in Adulting

Gatherer went to a conference yesterday. I don't usually "people" very much. I work from home (yes, I do work), I go to the gym, and I go to the Natives' games and practice. A long time ago I used to try to make time to hang out with friends but I started the running thing and between running, family stuff, and work, I just don't have time. Hunter gets some adult away time from me through work. FYI kids, if you go into Development, you will not be paid well, but you will have more coffee, lunch, and happy hour visits with donors and support units so maybe it makes up for the pay. Seems like too much interaction to me but Hunter is good at it. He also doesn't view it much as leisure because he's working but seeing as I talk to the dog while I eat...lets just say if you ever want to go for a beer I would welcome trying to squeeze it in between parenting duties. But you have to plan it, I'm just not that good at actually like actually making plans. I do show up though when they are made.

Back to the conference. The other thing to know about me is that I'm not warm and fuzzy. Most conferences that I could attend go so far into the warm and fuzzy that they annoy me. The rooms I work in don't tend to have people who want to talk about emotional intelligence (I don't enjoy it as a topic of conversation myself so there's that). I come from a long line of "suck it up buttercup" folks and emotions are immature and useless. I'm not saying its right, its just my background. As someone with big emotions, and big feelings you can see where this might have caused some conflict growing up. I'm a mad crier, I'm the sort of person who doesn't get sad doing advocacy work...I get mad. Like really mad and frustrated. So this conference was a Diversity conference hosted by the local chapter of a national HR group. I fully expected to roll my eyes, have a thousand reasons why "that doesn't work with my people", or to just to be frustrated at the lack of practical approaches. I was wrong. Well mostly wrong. Two sessions I didn't care for. One was just too "believe in yourself, have confidence, and make yourself emotional safe to initiate change". The other was a session on how to reduce ableism that was more of the individual's fight and struggle without much actionable information (it was good, just more of a story than these are 3 things most places get wrong, or even here's how to do it right). But two of them hit home. One was on using data to support DEI initiatives and that was right up my wheel house. The speaker was engaging and funny and I found myself identifying with everything she said. I have some good take-aways, I bought her book, and she doesn't know it but I want to be her best friend. The other was a local duo who do global work on negotiation and change. It was like a comedy hour but I walked away with some really useful graphics, phrases, and really good solutions to some work and personal problems I've been facing. As I didn't get a gym photo in, blog photo is obligatory conference selfie.

With all this conferencing, there was no time to gym. I rushed to Native 2's practice so no time there (plus, traffic. why on earth did I lose YEARS of my life sitting in traffic). Got home and threw dinner on, and by the time I sat down to eat it was 9pm. No big deal, one rest day won't kill me, in fact it's good for me right? Native 2 woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep so I spent the rest of the night holding him in his twin sized bunk bed, and trying to help him sleep. Obviously not my best night of sleep. The dog comes in at 5:30 whining wanting me to come down. At this point I'm up. I take care of the pets, make my coffee, roll up to shower. Natives get up and I start my morning routine of harassing them to get them to eat. We continue harassing to get dressed. We proceed to harassing to take meds and brush teeth (there's a theme here right?). I help Native 2 with his meds and as he is swallowing he sort of makes this gagging action. I think nothing of it, sometimes they just don't like the meds so it happens. I finish getting ready and the natives go off to play before we have to leave.

Just before we leave, Native 2 says his tummy hurts. Someone has figured out avoidance behavior so again...I'm letting it go. I ask him if he needs to drop a duce, and he says he ate too much at breakfast. We hop in the super cool minivan to roll out to school. Waiting in drop-off line for Native 1, Native 2 again proclaims tummy hurts followed by the comment "I feel like I'm gonna hurl". I open the van door, just in case and boys continue to play until I'm allowed to throw out Native 1 and book it over to Native 2's school. Native 2 starts asking when I'm going to pick up up and I'm 100% sure at this point he just doesn't want to go to school. I drop him off and then watch him walk toward the school. He makes it 5 steps, leans over, and out comes breakfast. Needless to say, he didn't continue walking into the school, I whipped it into a parking spot, loaded him up and he's chilling on the couch. Now my conundrum is when do I go the gym? I'm lucky because in the before, I would have had to cancel my meetings, I would have had to take the day off. Now I have my zoom meetings, I work on my workywork things, and he relaxes and eats toast. Minimal disruption. People always give me a hard time about the fact that I don't take a rest day and this is why. Because one is fine, but when life starts throwing lemons at you, it really doesn't give any shits about when it throws them. So I go every day because my best laid plans oft go awry. You may find me to be cranky until I am able to lift heavy (for me) things so consider yourself warned.