Balancing Work and Being Dad

And so I bring in a brand new month with a staff meeting at 8:30 AM in the morning. The first day of the month, especially one that starts the 2nd half of the year has me in introspection mode. As in, what did I do with the first half of the year? Not what I wanted based on the intentions I wrote down at the beginning of the year. Although we did have a major world pandemic that sort of shook things up a bit. But as our execs pointed out at the staff meeting, despite historically bad times, we did have some wins. And now that I DO look back at June, I seemed to realize that I did spend the first part of the month dealing with the Bells palsy stuff, and only towards the end of the month did I feel like I got my bearings back. I did have a lot of wins at work. And now maybe I can focus on some personal outcomes that I want for the second part of the year as well. But not today. I'm well aware that it IS a short work week and although I did get work done and I did do the Wednesday last-day-of-the-work-week Daily Huddle, I didn't have much to share. Maybe I did hit a wall a month ago and I'm starting to come back around again. Today I found myself focusing on Johnnie much like I did yesterday... repeating the pretty much the same lessons, and having him do assessments. As far as I think, he's at 1st grade level with math, kindergarten level with reading and language arts. But he's certainly not behind kids his age. Even when I tell him to sound things out and write the words as he sounds them, which means he ends up mis-spelling quite a few words, those are things he will remember in short order as he builds his vocabulary. Today I remembered that my intention was to be a good dad and that means not replaying all that control drama I pulled yesterday with lunch. In fact lunch ended up being the Italian sausage that we didn't barbecue last night and that we did in the middle of the day. I did that AND played baseball with Johnnie. And we had a good time as if it were a late Tuesday afternoon. Not only did he have a good lunch, I threw in some regular sweet sausage too. And we both ate spaghetti and sausage. Mine was mixed together, his wasn't. He ate well anyway. Just look at that smiling face I posted. My son is a BIG CUTIE PIE! Look at that SMILE!

By the time the afternoon had whizzed by and I checked off the Daily Huddle, Johnnie was ready to go scootering around the neighborhood. He did really well yesterday and he himself said he wasn't going to take a spill today, that's how confident he was. I loved it! And so I took us a longer route, going to Whole Foods, then around Stoner to Mar Vista Elementary and then on home. We were literally within 50 yards from the apartment when he didn't notice the raised pavement he was supposed to have slowed or stopped on. He was too busy focusing on me and how he didn't want to lag behind. He took a spill and a fairly nasty one. He scratched his elbow yet again and scratched a small area above his hip. He stayed down too and started to cry. I got him to somehow ride the short distance to the apartment and I patched him up right outside my door. It wasn't actually that bad. Just a pretty nasty scrape on his elbow. I put peroxide on it and then put a couple of Band-Aids on it. And he felt better. That was me being dad. And then I took us to Panda Express Westwood to get the usual Wednesday night dinner. I told Johnnie not to take his time eating though because we were headed right back out. This would be the last time he's going to injure that elbow while riding his scooter. As soon as we finished eating we headed out to Big 5 Sporting Goods on Sepulveda, a few miles away. I didn't even know if it was open. We got there 2 minutes before 7 PM, right before they closed. And within 5 minutes, I had an pad set for juniors. Elbow pads, knee pads, wrist pads... fit for a skateboarder. I should have gotten this much earlier.  And then I had it in my mind maybe the pads I got were too big <they weren't>. And so I kept on driving to Target Culver City at the Fox Hills mall to see if there was a pad set that was better. I knew they would be open. I worried about the contact of course, but then again with the masks on and hand sanitizers, I thought Johnnie and i would be just fine. I did not end up finding pads that were better than what I already purchased. But I did find some shorts and a shirt Johnnie's size that I could not find in Target Westwood last weekend. So I picked up some of those and then went on home. It took less than 10 minutes to get home on the 90 Fwy. And we were home before 8 PM. Just enough time for Johnnie to watch a few more Octonauts videos before it was time to get ready for bed. "Universe, he said. I wish for really good dreams tonight" while clutching his wishing rock (some pebble he brought back from Maui). Me too Johnnie. Me too.