Skip to main content

Do This More

I had an important management meeting from 5 to 6 this evening. I try to avoid meetings late in the day since that's when I really need to be keeping an eye on the boys. Plus I find my mind slows down the later in the day it gets, especially on a Friday evening. This meeting couldn't be avoided though. 

So I prepped the boys. After Osamu's chapstick artwork on the TV a few weeks ago, as well as some other shenanigans, I have committed myself to working at the kitchen table after 3 p.m. They're super good little boys, but they are also super mischievous little boys. If I have a meeting with my team it's fine. They get that I am doing double duty. When I have a meeting with my boss or other managers, they get it too, but I have to maintain at least the appearance of full professionalism, even if everything outside of the Zoom screen view is a combination of escaped zoo animals, a prison riot, and the part in The Cat in the Hat where the cat opens the box with Thing One and Thing Two.

The boys played with their toy monorail, watched TV, did coloring and crafts, and thankfully didn't bicker with each other. That's the thing I worry about the most during these meetings. If Kenzo and Osamu start to fight, especially when my mic is on, the jig is up. They did pretty well, though. They wanted to come see, and they did, but I used discreet gestures and knocks on the table when my mic was muted to let them know not to come too close and disturb the meeting. The boys are masters at upstaging. The other managers and I were talking about some serious stuff and I don't want to be the one that everyone rolls their eyes at. Again.


Mama prepped some hamburg steaks and I popped in an oven pizza and added some avocado slices and mini tomatoes and we had a feast for dinner.


Eri knows I'm not a big cake eater, but she also knows that if I do eat cake it's gonna be cheesecake. I tried to resist, but what's the use. I topped it with some strawberry jam and talked for a couple of hours with friends online. I think I need to do this more.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not About Baseball

I stayed up past my bedtime again last night. I almost made it. I watched a couple of episodes of Ted Lasso and came to a good stopping point where I was satisfied with myself for enjoying some quiet TV time with my favorite show and even though it was after midnight, I was confident I could still get a pretty good night's sleep.  But no. For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to just lay on the living room carpet and put on a movie. I saw the first seven or eight minutes of Goodfellas and then I woke up when the end credits were rolling with Sid Vicious' is cover of My Way . I brush my teeth and I can see the light of day already shining in through the bathroom window. "It’s almost the longest day of the year," I told myself, to at least rationalize why I'm brushing my teeth and crawling into bed at this hour. I was trying to minimize the mental anguish I regularly put on myself for not just going to bed like I should. I told Eri that I was thinking a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Overpriced Highball for the Big Guy

I keep falling asleep at my desk and waking up all groggy and surly in the middle of night, stumbling downstairs to brush my teeth without waking anyone, and slinking back up the steps and into bed. So I was the last one up again this morning, but I made up for it by quickly getting ready and taking the boys out on a Sunday morning walk to look for bugs. Kenzo has been particularly keen on capturing another lizard. He doesn't understand that lizard season is ending and those guys are becoming more and more rare. He got his hopes up when we came across a little one walking up some woodsy steps. After that we took a break. Eri's sister and her husband stopped by to grab the car seats that the boys just graduated from. Their little girl Emika is just now big enough to start using one and next spring she's gonna have a brand new baby brother or sister who will also need a car seat, so the timing worked out nice for all of us. Emika apparently loves Thomas the Tank Engine (who d...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mr. Blue Sky

Man, I conked out so hard on the living room floor tonight. Right after bath time, before story time. I barely remember. Completely exhausted. Big adventure day. Another in a long series I hope the boys will remember when they’re older... our first IMAX movie, a downtown city outing, and some life lessons in the game center. We left the house at 9:15 a.m. and didn’t get back until nearly 6 p.m., totally spent but full of pizza and memories. The Wild Robot in IMAX was totally stunning. The scale, the colors, the sound. We could feel every gust of wind and rustle of leaves. I made sure we had prime seats, row G, right in the center. Two big buckets of popcorn too, which, according to Kenzo and Osamu, I  absolutely should not  be sharing. “You should get your own!” they kept saying. I think a little bit of popcorn thievery is well within my rights as the papa. After the movie, we headed through the cold and wind across to the game center on the other side of Sendai Station. Being...
Post a Comment
Read more