Catching Up

I woke up at 4:30 this morning, when Ben’s alarm went off and then instead of getting out of bed and letting me go back to sleep, he laid around grunting and groaning for a half hour.  There were also two kids in the bed and eventually I decided if I was going to lose 2 hours of sleep, which I can NOT afford to do, I might as well use the time for something other than being annoyed.  So here I am.

The title of this post doesn’t mean that I’m anywhere near catching up with all of the stuff that needs to be done…just that I want to catch up with any of you who are still out there wondering if I’m dead or having an affair.  Every time I see someone I know, they say, “I haven’t seen you in so long!”  It’s true.  I haven’t been to PTO meetings, I haven’t spent any time at school, and my blog posts are sporadic.  Why?  No, I haven’t been spending my free time with the Old Spice Man, except in my dreams.  Here’s why:

Shorter Days – Last summer I decided that I couldn’t survive on 4-4 1/2 hours of sleep, so I’ve been going to sleep around midnight or shortly thereafter.  The extra sleep is great, but I’ve lost 2 hours of my day, and most of my blog posts were done late at night.  I’ve got to find another slot in my schedule and make it habitual again.  I can’t believe I used to post almost every weekday (night).

B12 – I’ve been having weird symptoms for a while – tingling hands, face, and feet, and feeling off-balance.  The symptoms come and go, but when they’re here, they suck.  They make me anxious and uncomfortable.  When I have something “big” coming up I start to worry that it will be an off-day when the tingling/balance issues affect my presentation or whatever I’m doing.  I thought it was my thyroid medicine but it turned out to be a B12 deficiency.  It’s amazing what the lack of a vitamin can do.  Apparently my body isn’t absorbing B12 correctly because of my thyroid problem, so I’m taking a lot of extra B12 to see if I can get the level up.  If not, I’ll have to go to injectable B12.  I just had some blood drawn yesterday to check.  Unfortunately the symptoms are not from the missing B12, they’re from damage done by the lack of B12 so it takes a while to heal.

F-ing Cough – I got a cold right before I went to Las Vegas (2/17), and have had the lingering cough and scratchy voice ever since.  It is SO ANNOYING.  I had to speak in front of about 80 of my peers and my boss’ boss in Las Vegas and I sounded like I just came off a bender that included a couple packs of cigarettes.  I’m starting to think I may sound like this for the rest of my life.

Zumba – I love Zumba, and I have been really good about going at least 3 times per week for the last 6 months.  I’ve missed a few classes the last couple weeks because of my packed schedule and not feeling great, but I’m still fully committed.  Zumba is actually the reason I’ve missed a couple of PTO meetings, because sometimes I have to make tough choices…my health or PTO.

PTO/School – Speaking of PTO, this is a great source of guilt for me.  I know that some parents never attend PTO meetings or take on school projects, but I started taking on a lot of PTO responsibilities when Aliya was in kindergarten and Adlani started preschool.  I love the schools and I want to do what I can to help the kids, but I’ve had to cut back on the commitments because I just can’t get the stuff done.  Right now I have at least 3 projects for school that I’m behind on and are weighing heavily on my mind.

Work – Last month, my boss asked me to keep track of what I did for a month, because I’m spending a lot of time doing work for other parts of the company that is not part of my actual job description.  I called him the morning after the first day of record-keeping and said, “OK…I kept track and I spent X percentage on this and Y percentage on that…the bad news is that I worked 14.25 hours.”  Yes, in 1 day.  I was driving my boss’ boss to dinner the other night and he said that I put in more hours than anyone he knows.  A lot of my guys work long hours…it just comes with the job.  But keeping track has really made me take a good hard look at the time I’m spending at work.  I work until dinner time, and then I work after the kids go to bed when most people are watching Reality TV.  I work on Sundays when Ben takes the kids to see his mom, and any other time I can steal a couple of hours.  It’s not my company’s fault – it’s mine.  When I see something that I think should be done, I take it on.  Then I get overloaded and I fall behind.  I need to learn how to set limits, but it’s something I have a really hard time with.

My Other Blog – One of those work-things I decided to take on ended up being a great idea – my work blog.  It’s getting between 5,000 and 6,000 visits per month, which may not seem like a lot but it’s a website about doors so you have to manage your expectations.  Who wants to read about doors?  Well, door-people (lovingly called “Doorks”), who happen to be our customers.  The company wants to talk to them and especially to have them talk back.  And it’s working.  There are close to 800 comments on my work-blog, and the company has finally started to take notice.  The VP of Marketing called me “the poster child of social media for IR” during his presentation at our sales meeting in Las Vegas.  I think a lot of companies are still trying to figure out how to use social media and whether they even need to…I’ve got a pretty good head-start in our industry.  It takes me probably 8-10 hours per week to publish 3 or 4 posts, answer the comments and questions, and maintain the site, but that equates to hundreds of hours per month that the customers are reading what I write.  It looks like the company is finally going to start promoting the site as a resource rather than waiting for people to find it via Google or by word-of-mouth, so I expect a major jump in the number of visits.  This is one part of my job/life that I really love, and I feel is a totally worthwhile investment of my time.

The Kids – The kids are great.  Aliya is in the midst of finishing her SAGE research project, which is a website about Morocco.  As you can imagine, I have been helping with that.  Adlani is still threatening to run away every few days, but our next-door neighbor told him he should run away to her house, so hopefully he’ll take her up on the offer rather than heading off down Route 9.  Norah is doing great on the replacement thyroid hormone, and her scar is fading really well.  Her behavior has improved, although she does like to bug Aliya and Adlani whenever things are running too smoothly.  She’s starting to read and write, and is excited about going to kindergarten next year.  We have to send her to private K because of her 9/15 birthday, but I think it will work out well.  I realized the other day that all the kids can dress themselves, including putting their shoes on the right feet.  That’s a real milestone!  They can also buckle their own seatbelts, and clean their own rooms given the right motivation.  I have a new program called Cold Hard Cash, which rewards them for doing all the stuff they’re supposed to do.  Kind of like an allowance – earned 1 dime at a time.  Whatever works.

Ben – When I met Ben, he needed a lot of work.  He is the oldest child in his family and obviously male, which in Morocco means that you don’t have to do anything to help in the house and you can expect to be treated like a king.  Well, the king has adapted.  Since I’m “on duty” in the morning, he meets the bus in the afternoon and picks up Norah, goes to swimming lessons, soccer, or whatever is after school, and cooks dinner.  He even cleans and does most of the grocery shopping.  Thank God or we’d all live in filth and starve.

It’s 7 o’clock and Norah needs face-paint for the St. Patty’s party at school and Aliya needs her hair styled and sprayed red for Crazy Hair Day, so I’m off and running.  Have a great day everyone!