Anabelle and Daddy Ad-veeeeen-tures! Yeah! *Jazz Hands* Day 2 -July 20

Training, Plans and Autoreplies

Not counting the day before Rosa’s flight, this started three weeks in a row I would be in the office for only two days. While the concept of hyperextended weekends looked fantastically relaxing on paper, pulling a hat trick of packing a week’s worth of work into half the time was no such thing.

The first business day of this cycle was marked by excessive amounts of running about and screaming, while making a near continuous stream of phone calls in between to insure all project type hatches were securely battened.

Anabelle had a fun day with her cousins and Grandma running about in the sprinklers, and washing the car.  I’m pretty sure there was an equal amount of running about in the hose during the washing, but the car got clean while the kids cooled off, and that’s what’s important.

During the days at Grandma’s there were some opportunities to the local lake.  None of the kids really got excited about it.  It’s probably for the same reason I piled up some wood for the fire pit in the backyard, and then never made a fire to sit by and read at night.

While New Jersey versions of Up the Lake activities are fine as “along with” activities, as replacements they would have been depressing.

The possibility of the aforementioned plague that hit Anabelle, me, and some others appearing after a Memorial Day swim amped up our allergies to well beyond “nose blowing tree” levels of blindness and after effects may have also contributed to the reluctance.

During their fun, I set up everything for the next few weeks, insuring I covered resource needs and switched schedules as needed.

Bleah.

It’s hardly fair that when my levels of stress would make the health benefits of scoring a publishing contract unmeasureable, I have absolutely zero time to pursue one.

At the end of the work day, I drove over to Grandma’s to pick up Anabelle. First I had dinner there.

Tacos again!!!  YAY!!!

My new vegetable tolerant metabolism is easily thrilled by healthily prepared Mexican food.

I took Anabelle to her late dance class, and got some reading done during warm ups.  I’ll watch her dance any time, but how much stretching can one man witness?

Afterwards, I took her back to Grandma’s, and hung around till the kids settled into bed. 
Given their general levels of goofiness added to being together at Grandma’s and the excitement of summer in general, that took a while.

Then I was able to head home to exercise, and start to organize the place.

Being home alone while my wife was travelling required nearly as many organizational skills as the mini work weeks did.

Figuring out what had to be done, when things needed to be maintained, and most importantly, deciding what cleaning could be put aside until the last possible minute before she got home took a great amount of brain power.

Since I didn’t remember opening any last year – and forgot we were both away then, meaning the mail was on hold – deciding to let the mail  all pile up unopened on the dining room table was a major faux pas in hindsight.

With the key structure of both my home and work lives planned out, I stole a couple of hours of sleep.

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