Sleepless in Oakland

Somewhere between drinking too many glasses of zin at dinner with the Politos and waking up at 7AM to attend a work event I lied awake in bed and fretted about Kate. Well, more about me really. And this whole work thing.

It’s super unusual for it to happen, but this weekend there is a big work thing going on that means I have to work Saturday and Sunday all day. Sure I’ll get to take two comp days some other time, but last night as I was in bed it seemed like being away from Kate for the weekend was almost unbearable.

Of course, the more I realized how desperately I needed to sleep off the wine and stow away some energy for two long days on my feet–the more wide awake I was. And sure my brain grazed several neurotic topics (and some of a practical nature), but it seemed to cling most fervently to this idea of Kate and my need to be with her.

Somewhere into my second hour of awakedness my thoughts of Kate made me miss her so much I wanted nothing more than to go into her room and be with her. And then, the baby who always sleeps (knock wood) from 7PM to 7AM with nary a peep, woke up and said, “Mama! Mama!”

I swear there is some crazy bond thing between us.

I’d never been so happy to get out of bed in the middle of the night. I’m sure Mark wondered why I was heading towards her room after the first seconds of her peeping. In general if this had happened she’d doze off again in a matter of seconds.

Anyway, I got her out of her crib and she clearly was bewildered by the suddent burst of attention she didn’t realize she was able to so easily summon. The moment I was holding her she pointed down to the mattress and said, “Night night!” So I put her down and satisfied myself with our brief visit.

Not long after that when I crawled back into bed I seemed to finally doze off. But today my thoughts of my work/Mama balancing act linger. Perhaps they’ll pass once this work weekend is over and we’re back to our normal routine. But if not I don’t want to sweep them under the carpet. If 4 days a week is too much, is 3 days perfect? Or is this a grass is always greener thing?

At any rate, secure in knowing I’m not going to let go of these middle-of-the-night thoughts, I’ll hopefully sleep better tonight. And in the light of day at some point I can spend some time thinking about what–if anything–I want to do to address them.

10 Things I Learned in Belize

1. Blue Morpho butterflies copulate for 5 hours straight.

2. Flying in 12-seater planes is both terrifying and exhilarating.

3. It takes about 5 seconds for safety-conscious parents to be convinced by an island cab driver that, “You don’t need to use a car seat–everyone drives slow here.” (Hey, what’s good enough for Britney Spears’ baby, is good enough for Kate.)

4. Apparently a fair number of Americans vacation in places like Belize and decide on the fly to move there and never go home. This concept has always concerned me. Do they truly not return home and “just stay” as they claim to have? In that case, what do they do with the contents of their homes? Do their mothers or friends clean up after them and put all their stuff on storage, or have a big yard sale? Aside from being way too much of a planner to take this approach to moving, it just seems plain selfish to me. Besides, paradise seems great until Week 6 of your job renting snorkel equipment to tourists. Sure it’s pretty there and all, but after a while those jobs have to wear on you as much as your cubicle gig did.

5. After days of constant togetherness, one day Kate was sweetly muttering, “Mama, Dada, Kate” to herself. I explained to her that Mama, Dada and Kate are what is called a family. She looked at me all excited and said, “Heiny!” Ah yes, the McClusky heiny. This is not something I learned while in Belize, but it was funny.

6. Bandits can be so meddlesome. Just when you want to check out some Mayan ruins, a group of gun- and machete-totin’ bandits hold up a group of tourists, and they end up closing down the place for the day before you can get in.

7. Spending a lot of money on an impractical white bathing suit is totally worth it if it makes you feel like you still got it on your 40th birthday.

8. The worst kind of American tourists are drunk Baby Boomers.

9. When not being toted around in a Gucci bag by Paris Hilton, Kinajous crawl around in trees in the jungle. Night-time jungle treks allow you to see these kinds of things, along with tarantulas, mega “witch” moths, and other creepy crawly things.

10. Having your husband spontaneously serenade you on the morning of your 40th birthday with a medley of Lionel Richie songs is both hilarious and sweet (and validates your choice in him as a life mate). Hearing a LR song on the cab ride back from dinner that night and bursting into song–along with the cabbie–is the perfect end to an evening (and validates that even at 40, one can still act immature).

Welcome to the Lab

Tonight when I gave Kate a bath I held out the mesh bag o’ bath toys for her to pick a few, and then was overcome by some force of kookiness beyond my control and decided to dump all the bath toys in there at once.

This is probably 15 times the number of toys Kate usually bathes with. I decided to conduct a small experiment. Would this many more toys make the bath that much more fun?

I’m sure you’re at the edge of your seat. It turns out that it was somewhat more fun than our usual bath time, but not because Kate was creating some uber-complex pretend scenario in the tub that involved the integration of all 71 toys. (I counted them while putting them away.) Instead the fun factor seemed upped simply by the fact that Kate reconnected with some toys that apparently were wedged at the bottom of the toy sack and weren’t getting a lot of play. Why knew those plastic turltes held such allure for her? Why, I wondered, had I been denying her them and only selecting the toys each night that I deemed play-with-able.

The bath did seem a good deal more fun for me. Just was kinda funny seeing her sitting amidst a bobbing mass of plastic crap.

But as we all know, an experiment is hardly statistically valid if it’s just conducted once on such a small population as one (even if she is of world-class cuteness and brilliance caliber). Perhaps I can start a trend where parents everywhere throw caution to the wind and dump all the bath toys into the tub at once, then feverishly record their findings and report back to me. I’m not sure what the ultimate result would be, but I’ve no doubt it would be quite powerful.

Baby Borat

Mark and I had a sort of marital standoff about seeing the Borat movie. He’s a huge fan of Sacha Baron Cohen’s show, and–call me crazy–but it makes me uncomfortable watching someone interview a Bishop and asking them questions about sex with animals and such. To me it’s not funny, it’s painful. But Mark–and evidently millions of other Americans–find it uproarious.

So when we were in North Carolina for Thanksgiving, and were thankful for having Mark’s mother not only offer to but want to hang out with Kate solo for a few hours to allow us to skip out to a movie, the issue came to a head about the Borat movie.

Ultimately Mark caved. As much as he wanted to see it, he didn’t want to see it sitting next to me if I was going to squirm and sigh and make quiet disapproving noises while chomping on my popcorn. It’s a sad kind of victory when your mate gives into you based on the knowledge that when you don’t get your way you can be so unbearable that it’s better to just give you your way.

But be that as it may, I won.

Sadly, the movie pickin’s were slim. It’s the typical scenario like those rare times when your parents were feeling generous when you were mall-shopping as a kid. When every other shopping adventure left you desperate to own something that would change your life it was so great but you couldn’t get it, when you had the green light to shop you never found anything you really liked. But you bought something anyway, because you could. And like that, Mark and I still went to a movie. I mean, how often do we get to do this without spending a small fortune on a babysitter? Like all my friends with kids before me said, it really does make a good case for waiting for movies to come out on DVD.

It’s shameful what we settled on, and worse, how the whole afternoon panned out. I am, or rather was, a huge Jack Black fan. (Wither the days of High Fidelity?) So we went to see some abominable movie that he was in with his Tenacious D band mate. The movie was clearly for 15-year-old stoners. I mean, the opening credits were an animation of people farting, propelled around the screen like wayward balloons by the amount of gas they were expelling.

But we had hope. We had a babysitter and we were free!

Alas, the movie droned on. Painfully. So painfully in fact that our bad decision to see it in the first place was made more glaringly evident as each minute passed. Somehow through whispers in the dark we managed to come to the joint conclusion that cutting our losses and leaving mid-way would be the best tactic. We returned to a house full of Mark’s relatives, our heads hung low with shame. “How was the movie?” they all chimed in excitedly, knowing what a treat it was for us to get to one. I almost felt tempted to lie.

Well, shameful for us, but as an actor, you’ve got to be embarrassed about being in a movie that the parents of a baby–people who adore movies and never get out to them–are compelled to walk out of.

God, Jack Black. Fire your agent, dude.

Of course, this whole scenario just provided Mark with more Borat ammo. Every time any friend relayed some scene from the movie to us, and when we were quiet and they’d ask us if we’d seen it, Mark would just sigh and look at me with big cow eyes. “No, no, we didn’t,” he’d say, his voice heavy with regret. Sometimes he’d mention the other movie we saw instead. And sometimes he didn’t even need to say anything.

So once the Borat movie came out on DVD I was, of course, backed into a marital corner. What option had I other than to consent to bringing the awful DVD into our home? At least it would save Mark from the social stigma of not being able to chat with friends and coworkers about the movie if it ever were to come up in conversation years from now–it being so terribly past the point when all other humans had already seen it.

And I have to admit. It wasn’t that bad. It certainly wasn’t half as bad as that other movie, the name of which I’ve committed to deep repression.

At any rate, just when I thought we’d buried the whole Borat plot line from the McClusky family existence, Kate picked up a small verbal affectation. When she’s bidding her adieus to people, or inanimate objects as is sometimes the case, Kate lets lose a Bah-Biiiyeee that is a remarkably uncanny imitation of Borat. I mean, she did it at Macy’s yesterday to the saleswoman in the Faconnable area. And as I stooped down to pick up the hat that Kate’d dropped I muttered something under my breath about Mama’s little Borat, which the saleswoman heard and squealed, “Oh my God! She does sound like him! How funny!”

Adorable, I think as we trudge off, as Kate, excited that the woman is laughing and smiling at her, smiles back a huge grin and calls out another, “Ba-Biiiiyeee!” over her shoulder. The woman chuckles and shakes her head as she reaches to ring up the clothes of the next person in line saying, “Did you hear that little girl? She sounds just like Borat!”

Wonderful. Just the sort of thing I’d hoped for my daughter. This sort of karmic backlash will teach me to give into Mark’s preferences a little more often. When the next Lord of the Rings movie comes out, I will feign enthusiasm and put aside whatever “good” movie it is that I’d rather seen. Better that then risking Kate taking on some dwarfish Hobbit-like qualities that I’ll never live down.

Our Baby, Our Bull Dog

It’s not something I brag about openly, but there is a certain sense of pride I have about my teeth. They’re not all that dazzling, but they are pretty damn straight, and I never had braces.

It’s something that never really phased me, until those who had gone through the apparent social and physical trauma that is braces have responded with all manner of hoopla when they have found this out about me.

So it’s particularly concerning to me that just the other day I realized that Kate seems to have an underbite. I’m still holding out hope that every time I ask to see her teeth she is just jutting her jaw out, but I’m fearful that’s not the case. And maybe if she does have a bull dog’s bite it’s nothing to worry about since these are just baby teeth.

At any rate, it’s clearly Mark’s genes at work. Ah well. He can start saving for the orthadontist.

Back to Just Us

February has been Come Visit the McCluskys Month. Perhaps it wasn’t printed on your wall calendar, but it was on many other peoples’ and they made good. Which is a good thing mind you! We love seeing all the family and friends who we never see anywhere near enough of because either we decided to live out here, or they decided to stay back there. I’m not sure who is to blame, but the outcome is far-awayedness and not-see-each-other-alotedness.

But now everyone is gone and our subterranean guestroom, which is in our low-ceilinged unheated basement, is left empty for the time being. My brother-in-law John is probably in some cranial contusion unit of a hospital by now for the number of times he wacked his noggin on the beams down thar. Ah well, at least we had him sign the legal disclaimer when he arrived.

Anyway, Mark and Kate and I are now working our way back into whatever routines we used to have when it was just us. Well, Mark and I are. Instead of just being a nice mundane lass for us, I went into her room this morning to get Kate and she was lying in a small puddle of barf. Poor girl even had a corn kernel stuck to her forehead. And she’s just lying there all sweet and mellow and freshly awoken, having soaked in the stuff for God knows how long. It was sad, but the corn thing was also kinda funny, and I had to take her to the bathroom where Mark was showering to show it to him.

So I clean her and it all up and open the windows and spray some hippie non-toxic odor eater around and then after all that notice it’s still not smelling quite right. Then I see the previously undiscovered pile of puke that’s on the wall and the floor at the head of her crib. D’oh! At least the poor gal managed to aim most of it away from her sleeping quarters.

Too bad she didn’t wail or cry or do anything to indicate to Mark and I that she was doing something other than sleeping peacefully. Alas, she and the room are now fully scrubbed and back in order, and she seems to be perfectly fine.

So now we can get back to our mundane routines. Ahhhh.

When the Bough Breaks

Today we had a scary scary experience at the local play structure. Brother-in-law John, nephew Gavin, and Kate and I wandered to Frog Park while pregnant sister-in-law Lori took a nap.

At one point while Kate and I were climbing on the wooden structure, she started to head off somewhere just a few steps ahead of me, and in a weird slow motion moment while realizing it was happening but unable to make my body catch up to my brain, I saw her toddle, stumble, then horrifyingly fall backwards off a 4 foot ledge, landing on her neck, head and shoulder, and letting out a heartbreaking wail.

I was terrified that she could be hurt in some horrible head or neck way. From the moment I saw her tip over I started screaming like a crazy lady in some way hoping that drawing attention to what was happening would signal Kate’s guardian angel to swoop in and catch her. My screams only alerted the other mothers to run towards us, as I jumped down alongside the fireman-like pole where she’d fallen to gingerly gather her up.

Thankfully, thankfully, thankfully, she seemed fine. She didn’t seem to have anything broken or terribly wrong. She was sobbing, and later chanting, “Bump, bump, bump” about her head (though it wasn’t until an hour or so later that I realized that was what she’d been saying). She had to have felt some pain but as I clutched her to me, I was totally okay with that. I was just grateful to the gods that she wasn’t gravely hurt. Bruises or a bump on her noggin we could totally deal with.

Thankfully, she landed on woodchips which were covering some kind of spongy astro-turf-like playground cover. Designed for the very purpose of cushioning the fall of your most beloved and adored and cherished wonderful child.

John assured me I wasn’t a bad mother for not being right there to prevent it from happening. A nanny who was nearby looked at a little red patch on Kate’s head and brushed off some woodchips from her hair. A dad who had been on another part of the play structure and saw it all go down assured me she landed on her shoulder and not right on her head. It was one of those times when the smallest kindness from strangers was wholeheartedly welcomed and appreciated. Yes it was scary, they all seemed to say, but it was going to be alright.

From John’s cell phone (am I sure I’m not a bad mother for also not having mine on me?) I called Mark, and then Dr. Robbins. The receptionist ran through the concussion checklist which provided further encouragement. (She didn’t lose consciousness! She wasn’t bleedling! She cried when she fell! Questions that gave me insights into worse scenarios and made me realize on a deeper level how terribly lucky we were.)

Tonight, following doctor’s orders, Mark woke Kate up a few hours after she went to sleep to check on her. She responded in the way that indicated all was well. A kind of yo-why-you-wakin’-me-up? reaction, before settling back down to sweet baby sleep.

All is well, save my regret about not being closer, about not having caught her, and about not always having a helmet strapped on her head. Our dear sweet Kate who we love more than life itself is well, and I got a sudden big dose today of appreciating just how lucky we are in so many different ways.

Some day I may even take her to a playground again.

We Must Have the Manual Somewhere

Back the summer before last, when I was tres prego and we had no interest in going anywhere for Labor Day weekend, we got together for dinner one night with our friends the Mullins at a local old-timey burger and ice cream place. They live in Sacto, but were in town doing something or other since they already had birthed their two kids years earlier and were mobile and social as young families are.

We don’t see these fine folks anywhere near as often as we’d like, but work and life and their kids’ schools and Deanna’s busy career as a doc and the fact that there’s more than an hour’s drive between us, tend to throw a kink in making casual plans. Their last-minute call to get together was a welcomed surprise.

This dinner was the perfect setting for Mark and I to get us some parenting advice from pros. Dave and Deanna had been waiting patiently for years for Mark and I to even just get hitched, never mind have kids, and finally we were in the home stretch to parenthood. But that evening Mark and I learned the most from them about what our future roles would entail from just observing.

At one point in our meal their youngest, the beautiful Avery (who I’ll take bets right now will be a bigger pop icon than Britney Spears some day), took a bite of her burger which she insisted on smothering with ketchup and mustard, chewed it for a few seconds, then spit it out.

You could actually see Deanna’s blood pressure shoot up.

“We don’t do that, Avery,” she said levelly. “Please do not do that again.”

Well, you can probably see where this is going. Avery of course, took another bite and did it again. And Deanna was as unpleased as a Mama can get.

“That’s it! No dinner for you! We’re going to the car!”

And before we could say, “Hey, so how is work going, Deanna?”–since through all this Mark and I were naively trying to carry on our Grown Up Talk–Deanna whisked a bawling Avery out of the restaurant and into their parked car where they sat for the remainder of our meal. (From our vantage point we could see them in the parking lot, and I remembering being impressed that Deanna seemed utterly calm and relaxed once she addressed the situation properly. In fact, she quickly appeared to get engrossed in a novel we learned from Dave that she kept on-hand for these very reasons. Little did I know at the time, as a mother, a rare opportunity to read is something that must always be taken advantage of, despite the circumstances.)

Inside the restaurant, now a party of four with Dave and his older daughter, Kendra, Dave explained to us that the spitting out of food is “Deanna’s thing.” It’s her hot button. The thing she just can’t deal with. His was, well, I can’t remember what it was that puts him over the edge, but there was something.

Later that evening, like anthropologists furtively recording data in our field notes, Mark and I marveled over our new discovery. These parental hot buttons were both powerful and fascinating. What would ours be, we wondered? Would the same thing set us both off, or would the things that each of our parents stressed we couldn’t do as kids define our personal boundaries of acceptable behavior? Apparently we wouldn’t know until we experienced it.

Well, nearly 17 months into Kate’s life, we can now safely report that we know what at least one of these is for us. Kate does this thing… To even think of it gets my blood boiling, and I actually take it much better than Mark does—though at times an outside observer might witness my reaction to it and beg to differ. In the microcosm that is our blissed-out nuclear family life, a small war is waging, and Mark and I are utterly at wits’ end trying to determine how to put a clean end to it.

It seems silly to even say what it is, because in writing it seems far more benign than the searing frustration it elicits from us. But I guess that’s the nature of these things. You don’t know what will cause your undoing until you’re in the midst of a blind rage.

The thing is, she throws her food off her high chair tray.

See? It sounds so banal.

Whatever. So you have to pick it up. But, no. It’s much worse than that.

It started with her casually chucking things off the edge. A Cheerio or an unwanted steamed broccoli floret. Then she must have seen it get a rise out of us, and she started doing it more slyly. So, while engaging us in direct eye contact, she’d sidle her fist, which was clutching say, some scrambled egg or a chunk of avocado, over to the edge of the tray and release it slowly as if we wouldn’t notice.

Sometimes she’d do it more forthrightly, while saying, “No, no”–baldly tossing our admonishment back at us. The first time it was kind of funny to see her do it while saying no, though God knows we used all our powers of holding-back-laughter-in-church to not positively reinforce it. And the second time it turns out it wasn’t even remotely amusing.

More recently Kate’s Projectile Party involves chucking the entire bowl or dish contents and all over the edge, then taking a sidelong swipe of her arm and sending the sippy cup flying as well. It’s messy and loud.

And the one that really adds insult to injury is when you’re on your hands and knees picking up whatever has been tossed, and you get a fistful of baked beans tossed onto your head. In those instances, if we weren’t already at home, I’d have her in the car seat with no more dinner in no time, and not just because I’m really into the book I’m reading right now.

All this brings to light the stunning parallels between raising dogs and children: consistency and consequences. We have started taking her food tray away when she does this, but we haven’t really made the consequences sufficiently dire. I’m not saying we’d resort to anything worthy of calling Child Protective Services on us, mind you. But just something negative enough so she learns that doing that leads to something she doesn’t want. No more salt lick. No more pellets.

What prevents us from following through with sufficient consequences is that often when The Tossing takes place, she hasn’t eaten what we feel is a sufficient dinner. We can’t bear the thought of sending her to bed hungry. (For the love of God, she might then wake up in the middle of the night!) So the punishment just amounts to a brief interruption in her repast. Eventually the tray comes out again with a different food item on it. We try again, hoping to lure her into actually consuming something, and civilly.

At those times, during Round 2, when she starts sending things flying again, I can only say that both Mark and I nearly combust with aggravation. It’s one part “she did it again,” with one part “she’s still not eaten enough,” and one large part “we clearly have no idea how to handle this situation.”

We’re rational people. We know there must be some course of action out there to manage this issue better. We have a strong suspicion it involves ending the meal then and there even though as an Italian American the thought of that pains me almost as much as The Tossing itself.

And for the life of us we’re unable to find our toddler Owner’s Manual to read up on the prescribed course of action. In the midst of the squash-tossing mayhem we both vow to get some book, or look online, or ask some friend, but once you’re in the trenches and you’re enemy is firing, it’s hard to effectively strategize from a defensive position.

And when it’s not happening, we tend to be off thinking about other things. Like how damn wonderful and perfect and adorable and smart she is. In those moments, the food fights seem to evaporate from our psyches. We live in the moment, in contented denial that nothing could ever be wrong. (Fast forward 15 years to the call from the mall store, “Our Kate? Shoplifting? Never!”)

Ah well. Perhaps we need to take it on with baby steps. For starters, I’m going to start wearing a shower cap at Kate’s mealtimes. It may not get to the root of the problem, but it seems like a workable solution for keeping my hair free of clumps of mac and cheese.

The Rain Cometh, But Will It Goeth Too?

My God, I’ve got mushrooms growing on my mushrooms. It’s only been raining for less than a week, but you’d think I’d moved to Seattle. Somehow rainy season with a toddler is a whole new ball of wax.

Pre-Kate, Mark and I would loll around reading or watching movies. Or even–gasp!–going out to matinees. But since we are blessed with our little blonde peanut relaxing during her waking hours just ain’t an option. And vegging out in front of the tube with her is something I can’t even tolerate the thought of.

So there’s lots of cabin fever indoor play, along with some dripping wet jaunts to the grocery store or out to lunch just so we can see some people other than ourselves.

Mercifully there was a break in it all this morning and we were able to go and worship at the farmers’ market. Nothing like a Blue Bottle latte, a hand-out of free pumpkin bread and your pick of local organic matter to set one straight on a Sunday morning.

Later today we’ll venture to SF to see Dad one last time before he leaves Ellen’s for a Palm Dessert visit with Judy. He spent three nights with us in Oaktown, in which time we had some nice meals in, had some nice meals out, and spent lots of time marveling at Kate’s beauty, vocabulary, and charm.

And once she’d be asleep for the night, Dad would say, “I’m telling you guys she is something! What a communicator! And she is just beautiful–just beautiful!” And Mark and I would agree in a kind of tell-me-somethin’-I-don’t-know kinda way, but still love more than anything to hear it all coming from someone else’s mouth.

So after he leaves tomorrow morning, another session of the Mutual Adoration for Kate Society will come to a close. And Mark and I will need to continue to convene privately until another grandparent crosses our paths.

Meantime, I’m going to go online and look into some vacation options while Little Miss naps. The plan is to be somewhere fabulous when I greet my next decade of life. Somewhere where it will hopefully not be raining.

Macro Management 101

It’s so damn boring to bemoan the plight of the working mother. Despite its triteness, I can’t help but feel a bit of the “not doing either job well enough” thing.

Though, when I really think about it, I am doing right by Kate. It’s just my job seems to be able to fill up whatever space it is given, like some B-movie blob invasion. And the fact is, I’m allowing it to take up more space than I probably should.

Which brings me back to the other age-old question: “Is there really such thing as a part-time job?” Or, as I prefer to ponder: “Is there really such thing as a part-time job that doesn’t require a hairnet?” Sure, there are plenty of part-time jobs out there, I just don’t want to be on my feet all day wearing a name tag and earning minimum wage to fill one of them.

The thing is, I’m pretty lucky to have this job. It’s a great company, great position, and given my level of responsibility, pretty cool that I’m able to do it (allegedly) part-time. I just need to exercise a bit more restraint around not working when I’m not supposed to not be working. But the Email Temptress is just to strong a siren for a communication junky like myself. And add to that my control freakishness, and God help those poor employees if I don’t have a hawkish eye on them at all times.

So, the alternative is to let go a bit. But when I consider that option, I tend to envision letting go altogether–just stepping aside while briskly slapping my hands together, and watching from the sidelines what happens when I don’t interject myself into all the scenarios I’m certain will result in angry clients and confused aimless employees without my guidance.

Maybe Letting Go won’t be half as bad as I think it will be. Or maybe it will be catastrophic, but fun to watch. Maybe my boss won’t even mind, and will say, “That sure was a good show, Kristen! I can see why you wanted to test the laws of entropy!” Or maybe—most likely—the results will be uneven and I’ll realize there are places where I can ease off and others where I need to wrestle with the details like some leather-faced Floridian alligator wrangler.

For some reason I’m struggling with figuring out how to let go a bit–even though I know that I need to in order to make this job a marathon, and not collapse in three more months after a sprint. (It seems so cool to try to use sports analogies. How’d I do?) There’s got to be some workable middle ground between Madame Micro Manager and All Hell Breaking Loose. And for starters I think part of that middle ground should include me not working on my days off.

What’s funny is, I wonder whether all that it is that I think I’m doing to get things on the right path are even the right things to do. I’m not sure why I’m so convinced much of the time that my ideas are better. Today for instance, I had this moment while walking into the bathroom (my two minutes of reflection all day until now) in which I wondered whether the client will even be happy with the proposal we are pulling together, or if I am on crack.

But that was weird. Mostly I’m convinced that I’m at least making a smart decision based on some past experience. Have I been raised to embrace an unhealthy and unrealistic self esteem? Am I not a team player? Or maybe have I just been around the block at this point in my career and I do know a thing or two? Whatever it is, I just hope I’m not obnoxious.

Maybe I need to make a concerted effort to go with another person’s idea at work even when I’m fearful it’s not the best approach. Maybe I need to let go of the “how will this reflect on me” stress and just let some of the chips fall where they proverbially may.

All this said, I need to go print out some documents and outline how I think we need to handle a proposal we’re putting together tomorrow. Of course, I’ll be wide open to hearing how the other folks I’m working with want to tackle it, but I want to have my ideas on paper just in case…

Okay, so I need to work more on letting others fly (or flop). But I do intend to take both Thursday and Friday off this week while my Dad is in town, and only check email once those days.

I will control the blob, some day. I know I will!