Bad for blog stats, good for the psyche….
I’m gonna be off the air for a few days, into next week as I got vacation type things to do and an awesome 13 year old to go spend time with.
In the immortal words of David Soul, don’t give up on us, baby.
Back soon, I promise.
Who doesn’t love Hutch?
Image found here.
Amidst one of the craziest couple weeks on record at any job I’ve ever held, I do have a wonderfully bright spot ahead. I get two days off for vacation this week, both Thursday and Friday.
But that’s not the bright spot.
I’m taking those two days off because my wonderful, adorable, amazing eldest goddaughter is making her first solo voyage on an airplane to come see her Nina Karen.
Now that’s a bright spot!!!
This is big doings for both teen and adult. Her Uncle Good Man and I are so excited to have her in our home and to show her around the Bay Area. There are lots of things to do here and we’re planning big fun.
I did have pause last night as The Good Man and I had a little supper. We were discussing plans for the visit and I reminded him that we have to be the grownups.
“Why?” was his response, so beautifully typical of my spouse.
And I laughed and replied, “Because we are responsible for her!”
He shook his head and said “aw, we’ll be all right.” And I’m quite sure we will.
But for as excited as I am to see my girl, I’m also feeling the responsibility for being her Nina, for being a good Nina and for making sure she has an awesome time.
Uncle Good Man says, “She can have cheeseburgers at every meal if she wants!”
Clearly we’re gonna have different approach to this. Then again I’m the one that yells at the cat for drinking out of the toilet and he says “she’s just thirsty!”
*sigh*
May I be a good co-madre to my precious girl. The kind that makes room for both cheeseburgers and safety.
Imagine it if you will, Albuquerque in the 1970’s. Idyllic late summer days of blazing hot temperatures and then around 4pm, the boiling dark clouds move in and the rain comes a’pouring down.
That summer monsoon rain would cool things off, water the plants and change the smell of the air.
I used to love running outside to play in the pouring rain. It was always a warm rain and I’d dance among the raindrops, catch a few on my tongue and generally frolicking about getting soaked from head to toe while searching for rainbows.
Rain storms in New Mexico are a show. Ripping bolts of lightning and crashing booms of thunder. On one such dancing day in the rain when I was a kid, I didn’t realize how close I was to the center of the storm, and as I did my soggy dance, the thunder cracked so loudly that my feet moved from a lively jig to a dead ahead run in one swift movement as terror coursed through my veins.
It looked something like…well…this:
Except I was an eight year old girl. The people in this .gif are grown ass men. Major league ballplayers for the New York Yankees. (there is video out there, the Boston players had a similar reaction).
But I know the feeling. Oh, I get it.
Just as my dad laughed his butt off when I went racing by, terrified and soaking, I am laughing my head off at this .gif (and the video).
Just can’t stop watching it. heh.
.gif found on Cheezburger.com.
So I was rolling home last evening after a really long day of cranky behavior and I was a bit brain dead and just ready to be at my own little home.
I put on the radio to the local news chat station and turned off my brain for the ride.
Somewhere along the way as I was bumpitty bumping along a torn up stretch of road, my brain locked on to a couple words uttered by the news caster.
The words were: loose kangaroo
Huh?
“Oh,” thought my tired brain, “They are probably talking about something that happened in Australia.”
Nope. They were talking about something that happened in Florida.
Doesn’t the weird stuff always happen in Florida? It seems like any of the weirdest of the weird news I read either went down in Thailand or Florida. The humidity must make things odd.
Reader’s Digest version: A loose kangaroo held up traffic on US 301 and the authorities were called. Police and fire chased the animal around for a while and then a former wrestler named Kevin Wehling showed up. He tracked it to a ditch and then grappled with the beast.
Side note: I understand kangaroos are sort of mean. If they get a back claw into you they can open you up pretty good.
But Wehling prevailed and finally subdued the beast. It was then taken to a local kangaroo ranch for safekeeping. Evidently it was not their ‘roo. Evidently it’s normal to have a kangaroo ranch? Evidently it’s normal for many people to own a ‘roo? Evidently a loose kangaroo is to be expected?
Um. Ok.
Just another normal day in the Sunshine State.
What?
Image found here.
…and put on my cranky pants. The extra heavy-duty pants of crank.
Whoooo doggies am I cranky. And what’s worse, I know I’m cranky and can’t seem to step out of it.
I just blasted a coworker who sent a really inane request over to my team. To be fair, it is a REALLY inane request and something needed to be said. However, saying “this request needs additional definition and will be challenging to deliver in the time frame requested” is different from turning on both fire hoses to full blast.
Yeah. I did that. The full blast thing.
I apologized. Yes, I did. I said “I don’t believe this is an appropriate request but I was wrong to blast you for that.”
Being humble makes me feel bad about myself and my actions. It was the right thing to do, but also makes me a bit more cranky. Over the course of my now twenty year career I have been blasted right and left, and usually without remorse.
Leadership up to the CEOs of large companies have had some harsh words that landed on me. This includes one senior level executive who said to me and a peer as we presented a project we had worked on that needed approval: “You two are f—ed, your analysis is f—ed, now get the f— out of my office!”
Not one of my best days at work.
One might say, well, if you have been blasted by successful leaders who did so without remorse, then why do you feel bad about it?
Because I hated being blasted. I hated being treated like something lower than a piece of crud. I thought it was wrong every time it was done to me. It was inappropriate, and it was demoralizing, so why would I perpetuate this behavior?
Some might say that apologizing is a sign of weakness. Maybe. Or maybe it’s a sign of strength to not act like a temper tantrum throwing toddler, or at least owning it and apologizing when one does. Who knows?
But, some might say, some of the great leaders of our modern times including Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison (among many others) are known for their profound temper tantrums. Sure. You don’t hear the stories of the great leaders who acted with grace. That doesn’t sell newspapers.
At this point I should admit that I don’t know the right answer. I only have to live with myself today, tomorrow, years ahead. I have to lie down at night and decide if the way I treated people was the way I wanted to be treated. I have to own who I am and how I act.
I can’t reconcile venting my cranky pants on someone and not owning that and apologizing. There is a difference in being firm and a bit demanding and being a jerk.
May I always work hard so I know where that line lands.
Image found here.