To Work or Not To Work....

How do you draw the line between your work time and your personal time in a virtual workplace? Expectations are that you’ll do your job whenever you’re asked to do it.  That could mean long hours or even working on vacation.

Yep.  I said it.  I worked on my vacation.  It was unavoidable.  I had to present to leadership about a topic that I own; it was bad timing on my part honestly.  We’d planned this vacation well before I switched jobs and I guess the assumption was that I could take the time off with no worries.  Any other week and I probably could have, but not the week we chose. 

So in the middle of my glorious getaway – prized time with the family – I had to find a way to dial into a conference call and miracle of miracles, find wireless so I could get onto my laptop to present my slides.  That was a lot of fun.  By the way, on Cape Cod in the off season, free wireless is very difficult to come by.  In fact, B drove around one afternoon with his laptop just looking wireless so he could upload his homework!

It’s amazing how attached we’ve become to being connected.  I can remember a time when if someone from work needed you after you were gone for the day they had to wait until you came in the next day!  Gasp!  You didn’t have a laptop and goodness knows there were no cellphones.  There was definitely a separation of work and home – but you did spend more hours in the office.

So where’s the win?  Either you have a laptop and you can work from home when you need to, which slowly becomes more and more hours or you work only at the office and come home later in the evening.  Then I miss putting little man to bed or doing dinner with B.  That’s not good. 

I do enjoy working from home – it sure is nice to do laundry and multi task while I’m on conference calls – but I miss the camaraderie of my co-workers and the teamwork that is so important to my job when I’m not in the office.

So I guess the answer is to balance both options.  Work from home when I need to be there and go into the office the rest of the time.  They gave me a laptop and Blackberry for a reason and I guess working a day or so on vacation is the reason.   At least I got lobster on vacation. 

Happy Thursday Ya’ll!

Cold Baby Toes!

Blake dipped his toes into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time while we were at the Cape; it was so much fun!  While we were at the Cape, we drove out to Provincetown which is at the extreme tip of Cape Cod.  Near there is Race Point Beach.  It’s a gorgeous, peaceful beach that is part of the Cape Cod National Seashore. 

There are tons of huge dunes and since it’s on the Atlantic side, the water is really cold!  We’d been there years ago on our one year anniversary and decided to head over to see things – the weather was spectacular!

We went on Blake’s 7mos birthday and decided it would be great take our traditional monthly shots out on the beach.  He wasn’t too keen on the idea, but he’s such a sweet baby, he just went along with the fun…until Daddy dipped his tiny feet into the water!  OH he screamed!  Just for a minute – but he was SO not happy with his Daddy.  I of course had nothing to do with it J but just took pictures. 

In hind sight, we probably should have taken the photos earlier in the day, but decided to head into Ptown for lunch first.  Overall, Blake did really well, and we have some wonderful pictures to document his big day! 

I miss it already….

Happy Monday Ya’ll!

Time to Update the Bucket List!

Life changes when we aren’t looking doesn’t it? I get that a lot of changes happen while we’re looking, but then there are some that you just realize all of the sudden – like when did I get white hair above my forehead?  I’ve been ‘going gray’ for 30 years.  No joke.  But lately I’ve been seeing more and more white hair between my coloring sessions and I don’t think I like it.  I guess around my face is the final frontier for losing my brown.

Interesting.  It’s probably been there a while and I just didn’t notice it, but it’s still a shock.  I’m wearing glasses too, well, readers just to clarify.  But I’m still wearing glasses.  Wow.  Old is just staring at me with new interest. 

Have you heard of the term perceptual blindness?  It’s also known as inattentional blindness.  It is categorized as a psychological lack of attention.  Basically, you’re so focused on something specific; there might be something obvious right in front of you that you miss!  I guess in my case, I was staring at my brown spots and missed the gray hairs? J 

I am fascinated by this concept.  It comes into play when you talk on your cell phone and drive -or those days when you drive on ‘autopilot’ and don’t remember the ride.   I think that I’ve been on autopilot for too long.  I’ve been looking right at life and just haven’t been seeing it. 

The time has come to be more aware and actually live life.  We spent so much time waiting and dreaming of having a family, that now that we have one, we need to enjoy it!  I made a comment the other day that came out of nowhere – which most of my comments do might I add – but I think I surprised the person I was speaking with.  I said that I could die tomorrow and be content with my life.  And I mean that.  My whole life there was a part missing and now that it’s completed through little man, I’m at peace.  Pretty cool. 

But what a shocking waste of a great life!  So I’m focused on living again and am doing my best to not ignore what’s in front of me.  I need to SEE more and look less.  I need to come up with some new bucket list items and goals and get on with enjoying little man and B every single day.  Maybe I’ll stop dying my hair so I don’t have to stare at the white hairs….who knows.   Either way, God gave us an awesome gift and it’s now time to enjoy it!  We all deserve that.    Happiness reigns!

Happy Thursday Ya’ll.

Road trip!

I have been fully converted - I am now a road tripper!  We drove from NC to PA to MA and then back through NY to NC a few weeks back and can I just tell you what a gorgeous ride it was?  Of course, that was my view from the back seat with little man, but boy oh boy was it pretty.   I have always been a ‘just get there’ person and never really appreciated the trip itself. 

I guess I can attribute the reluctance to drive to too many road trips as a kid in the good ‘ole yellow paneled station wagon.   At the time it’s what people did (yay ‘70s!), but I did spend many, many hours stuck in my tiny corner of the bench seat with no seat belts to help contain my brothers.   We had ‘lines’ on the seat that defined our areas.  God help you if you went over your line.  I cannot imagine how my parents retained their sanity on those trips.  But I digress…

We originally began our plan simply motivated by the sheer volume of stuff that a 6 month old requires to exist for 10 days– and honestly we were driven out of fear of hauling all of that on to a crowded airplane with absolutely no status to let us board early! 

So we were wimps – I’ll cop to that.  I will.  But the bottom line was, by driving we were able to see people and things we haven’t seen in years!  I saw my Godmother!  Yay!  I loved our visit – even if it was just a blitz.  We stayed with friends and family on the way up and back – which was so nice and again something we’re very unaccustomed to…we typically stay at a Hampton Inn.  It was so sweet to wake up and spend quality time visiting with everyone and little man in his PJs – he’s so much fun in the morning!

B & B @ a Rest Stop in PA
Stretching their legs!

We got to really enjoy the ride too because little man was actually a good traveler.  He really did sleep much better than expected and I think really adapted well to being strapped in to his car seat for long periods of time.  We tried to break things up when we could and get out and stretch our legs.  But in reality, I know the drive was hard on B.  He drove the entire thing – from start to finish.  Ouch. 

Of course he had the option to share the drive, but stayed up front in the ‘grown-up seats’ while little man and I stayed in the middle row – his choice.  Does he need a massage to work out the kinks, probably?   But in reality, I think driving was the right choice.  Breaking it up into three days instead of two was nicer too – but that all depends how much time we have to get away.

Going forward I think I would do it again – I didn’t realize how homesick I was for up north – driving through the mountains and seeing the gorgeous scenery certainly made me want to head to Amish country again….who knows.  Maybe I’ll convince B to go on another road trip to Maryland….would be good to see the old stomping grounds again.

Happy Monday Ya’ll!