Another One of Those Days

Have you ever had a day when...

a fervent desire to be a stay-at-home mom was your first full thought as you pictured the day ahead?

you leave work early to complete pick-ups from the daycare and the high school in order to bring Teen to her early admissions orientation, only to be forced into the hall because Baby insists on banging her cups together and happily hollering loudly to the room at large?

you are driving home, yearning for nothing more than simply taking off your shoes and you remember the fridge is practically bare - necessitating one more errand before you will reach the harbor of home?

you check your phone and see Boy called and upon returning his call you are forced to cajole him into cleaning the mess the dog left, hoping against hope that he will actually do so before you arrive with a trunk full of groceries?

you arrive home 12 hours after leaving it, to an unloaded dishwasher, causing the cluttered counter as you try to locate areas for all those bags of groceries that now need to be put away?

you realize that not only has Boy cleaned-up the dog mess, he has also made dinner for Youngest, and is now emptying the dishwasher of his own volition, and you realize just how responsible he has become in the last year?

even through your exhausted state, as you watch Youngest reorganize the craft closet simply because it was messy, it dawns on you just how lucky you are to have this messy, errand-causing, amazing, caring thing we simply call family?

Dad Does What?

As a child I had a vague idea of what my father did for a living. He worked in the John Hancock building, he had seats at the White Sox games, and sometimes he took us to the circus to sit in "work" seats. I remember him pointing to the tarp used to cover the field during a rain delay at a Sox game and explaining that the phrase, "Near North covers the infield" was his work. Somehow, I had learned it was insurance.

But, knowing these things lent no real concept to what it was he did all day. As a 5th grader struggling through long division, I sat in his office, read his door plaque and it hit me. I looked to my dad and asked, "Since you're the division manager, can you help me with my math?" Yes, I was clueless as to why he broke into gales of laughter...

That brings me to the present. Kids today tend to have a better idea of what it is their parents do all day. Just the other day Youngest was telling me, "boys want to grow-up and do a job like Dad's."

"Really?" I inquired, "Why, what does Dad do at work?"

Youngest: "He goes into his office at work. The ladies all work, but he stays in his office and sometimes he goes out and talks to them."

Me: "Oh yeah? And what does he do in his office?"

Youngest: "He has a whole bunch of paper in there. Sometimes he writes on it."

Me: "So writing on paper is his job?"

Youngest: "Well, he doesn't work with the ladies and he has a whole bunch of paper. Oh and he sits at his desk too. There's a computer there, right in front of him. So, I guess he does the computer too."

There you have it, management summed up in a neat little kindergarten package.

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