Last Wednesday Workday in February

I can't believe it's almost the end of February already. That's already this weekend. Still, it's the middle of the week and it's just another day that I send Johnnie off to school in the morning. Look at the pic of him lining up with his classmates. Could it be that these would be the same kids he will call friends 20, 30 years from now? Oliver. Marshall. Emma. Sage. Look at the pic where he's still the shortest kid there. It's not stopping him or slowing him down any that's for sure. AND he's still one of the most behaved kids in the class I think. Today it was Dylan Ji trying to play tag with him and goading him into running down the hall. One look from dad (ME) and he's back in line. THAT's what I'm talking about :) Look at his smile. Just a happy child playing. That's the way I'd like to keep him. In the meantime I get to go to MY office and be with MY "classmates" today. We have the monthly Communications meeting right after lunch of course. I had presentation uploaded yesterday so I was ready to go. All in all, same old same old. We looked at visit numbers. We looked at everyone's updates. I gave my lecture on cybersecurity, especially since a few people clicked this month. We're still at less than 4% but when you've hit 0% almost 3 months in a row, the only direction to go is down. Can't beat zero and to do it 4 months was too much to ask. It gave me an excuse to make the group watch one of my videos. Anyway it was a nonchalantly uneventful meeting... until the very end when Barbara got into one of her "lecture" modes. The Health Center Managers were trying to skew optimism when they didn't meet their numbers. But somehow Barbara did not appreciate the positivity and encouraged all to simply do black and white we-met-the-goal, we-didn't-meet-the-goal. That's all well and good except that it does NOTHING in terms of motivating and inspiring everyone to do better. No one likes to get nagged. I liken it to that Yale parenting class about Johnnie. He does much better when I give him effusive praise. I thought the Health Center Managers are generally doing the best that they can. I think the providers are whining a little too much but given we have so few of them, we have to kiss their asses some. Still, it's better to lean positive than get snapped at for trying hard and making yourself feel better for doing so. All you can ask is people do the best that they can. Besides, I think we get too obsessed with these fucking visit numbers anyway. Still, getting past this meeting every month is a benchmark because it's the last meeting as a group for the month. And now we get to gear up for the next month. Still I finished the meeting and then went upstairs to the 5th floor to get 1000 steps out of the way. I wanted to get to 6000 steps by the time I got home. As it was I went home early simply so I could change. After all, it's Panda Express night. And I am SOOO glad that it is no longer dark when we get there. Which is the sign the winter is about to give way to spring and the time when its lighter later. And anyway today everyone is walking around with ash on their forehead. That would be because it's ASH Wednesday and the official start of LENT, at least for the Catholics. I'm not going there with any religious notions. All I care about is that Johnnie knows about the Universe and how it works. Which means I need to learn about it and how it works so I can explain.  But for today , it is more than sufficient to simply pick him up from school, have walk out with me holding his hand. And be the happy child that he is. He put away all of us teriyaki chicken at Panda Express too and since I put Frozen 2 songs on my music player, he didn't fall asleep in the back seat on the drive home. I think I found the formula for keeping him awake. And then when we got home, he asked to watch Frozen 2... again. That's ok. He did listen to all those songs from the movie for a good 45 minutes. Besides we got his reading all done, we got some math lessons in and then we worked on some of his writing skills too. He actually got some reading homework from school but they were so simple, Johnnie breezed through them effortlessly. I mean the kid is writing the word "dinosaur" for crying out loud. Anyway I wasn't as tired tonight as yesterday, probably because I got to catch up on sleep. That and the inner work on what was tensing me up physically, as well as those other physical things that have cropped up I think is working. And so I was not as fatigued. Still I went to bed early with Johnnie. And I was asleep by 10 PM. It's all good.