Getting Busy All of A Sudden

So Tuesday it is and we're up at 7:30 PM and Johnnie is having breakfast. I tell you I'm DETERMINED to keep him to his school routine as much as I can. And so as soon as he got done with his eggs and sausage and cereal and Peep and Chirp we dove right in to today's Lesson Plan (thank you Ms Gee). I actually have a feel for how his morning goes just going through the plan. There is a focus on phonics and high frequency words, and then a little bit of math and then a whole hour on Mystery Science. This week the topic is FORCES. Funny thing is that Johnnie is usually done with his lessons in MINUTES. That's minutes. I think he needs work with his writing but he can read on the kindergarten level already and he can definitely do math... at least addition and subtraction. And the trick is to get him moving around too. And so after a natural break in the lesson plan, I had him race from one end of my apartment hallway to the other. That would be about 125 steps or about 100 yards already. He was panting pretty hard after 2 laps which he was happy to do. But boy he was panting. And mind you so was I! That done I then had a spate of meetings starting at 11 AM. Eloisa wanted to deploy a centralized COVID-19 site so all resources are in one place and there is no misinformation. And project management was handed off to me so I met with our Communications guy and Eloisa's assistant who would basically be in charge of the content. And then I had to meet with my team about the Intranet which was now a problem because those working remotely won't get the auto-redirect we propagated. You have to be on the QC network for that to work. Gee why didn't we turn on LOCAL ADMIN when we could!!! And so I had to meet with my team about solutions for setting the homepage. Really benign-sounding I know. but it's those little things that make a difference. And then starting today, I was asked to be at the daily afternoon huddles of the Leadership Team. Don't they know we're working? Who has time for all these huddles? And then I recalled my IS Team Daily SCRUM meetings when I got started. Those helped stabilize my operations. OK OK. I'll go to those daily afternoon huddles. Even though they're scheduled at 4 PM - 5 PM! Humph!

Today's huddle actually went well past 5 PM. Crap... I don't even stick around until 4:30 on a NORMAL day at work. And here I am listening to people just drone on. I know it's important to keep communications channels open and I do realize that for me it's a lesson in patience and listening. But boy this sure is not painless. Especially when all I wanted to do was to go on with my Tuesday evening routing. This, of course, was all about barbecuing Italian sausage and then baking cookies together. We've done this since fall. All through the cold winter evenings. And now that it is lighter earlier, you can bet I'm going to take advantage. Although it isn't necessarily warmer out either. Besides, Johnnie needs exercise more than ever now that he isn't running around the schoolyard at Mar Vista Elementary all day long. I made him take his soccer ball out and hit it against the wall while I barbecued our dinner. Just like last week. And a couple of weeks before that. All the while he was doing that a couple of guys were in the other side of the wall doing their exercises. We're all trying to cope our way, finding ways to have a sense of normalcy somehow. Yes things may be different for one reason or other but as long as the intention is there it doesn't matter. Example, no more sweet Italian sausage at Whole Foods, but Johnnie ate up the chicken sausage just fine. He didn't even know it was chicken. I haven't had penne pasta in a couple of weeks. But Johnnie ate up the multi-colored spiral pasta which was the only kind of pasta left at Trader Joe's. You put it in chicken noodle broth and he didn't even care. No more chocolate chip cookie dough but we still did have Lisa's homemade chocolate chip dough from a couple of weeks ago. It worked out just fine. And so we do what we can and you know what? We had a very familiar Tuesday night together Johnnie and I. Right down to the dinosaur train on TV. And a little bit of Tumble Leaf too. And why don't we throw in the Magic School Bus while we're at it. With all the activity I had to do today, I congratulated myself that I did manage to do my work AND Johnnie's lesson plan at the same time. And I even managed to get to 11,000 steps well before 9 PM. Piece of cake! Not. I also managed to keep my head down and away from negative stuff that is now starting to creep into people's consciousness. You listen to Lisa and you may get an idea that situation is dire. And maybe she is right that it is. I choose to look at this whole thing as an opportunity to reset and rethink the way we live our lives. Welcome to the new normal for a little while. At least we all hope, it's just a little while  I was pretty tired by the time it was Johnnie's shower and bedtime. And I knocked off just as he did before 10 PM. Tuesday done. Wednesday on tap...