#008 Run Forrest... Run!

Here we are again... 2am and my son has awakened us. My wife's confidence in me is growing, as now she actually asked me to get up and get the baby. This is a much longer way from where we were with Christian and Nathan. You see, I was asked to get Christian when he was a baby... but I was only asked once. I walked into his room, half asleep, picked him up, and then "sleepwalked" back into our room. As I walked into our room, I wavered back and forth and my wife thought for sure that I would drop him. She flew out of bed and picked him out my arms. I fell back into the bed and was into a hard sleep within a few seconds of my head hitting the pillow.

She never asked me to get the baby again. I joke with people that I did that on purpose so I could get some sleep, but was I really joking?

Now do you see why I made the statement about her confidence growing? Of course, it probably doesn't hurt that the crib is currently in our bedroom, so the sleepwalking distance has been dramatically reduced. So, I pick him up, perform the ritualistic changing of the garb, dispose of the remains, and deposit my son next to my resting wife.

And I'm wide awake once again. Time to write.

Run Forrest... Run

I am learning that there is a whole lot to this "Super Husband/Dad" activity. It can be quite demanding. Monday was a great example of that.

On Monday, I awoke to a very bad feeling. I had many symptoms of a possible illness. This had me quite worried, as I do not want to get anyone in my house sick. I went into work, attended some morning meetings, took care of a few things, and headed back home to finish the day telecommuting. In the midst of my telecommuting, I realized that I would have to figure out what to do for dinner.

Last Sunday, the leader of the Small Group my wife and I attend asked me how things were going, and asked how the dinners were going. I told him having dinners provided every night was such an incredible blessing, and we really enjoyed it. He then asked me if we needed to continue receiving dinners next week.

"Need" is such a strong word. My gut reaction was to say "Yes, and for the rest of the year," but I decided that I couldn't be greedy and told him that we were fine. I mean, we shouldn't be too selfish, right? At some point, we need to stand on our own two feet, right?

Why, oh why, would I do something like that?

So now it's Monday. Day one of "dinners created by Roger." By now, all the leftover food from the dinners provided last week was eaten up, so I truly had to figure something out.

I'm not a bad cook when I need to cook. I just don't enjoy cooking. My wife is actually one of those people that truly enjoys cooking. God has gifted her with an ability to create something out of nothing. She is the MacGyver of the kitchen. I recall a time when my friend Jon and his wife Kathy lived with us for a short period of time. Kathy made a comment to me that when she opened our pantry, she never found food. All she found were various items that could "become" food, but no food.

I wholeheartedly agree.

But like I said before, I can cook. I just can't cook like my wife. I have to know what I'm making, and then get all the ingredients for it and make it. I cannot open my pantry and decide to "create" something. It must be something I have created in a past life of a previous dinner.

Monday night was going to be "chicken fried rice" night. What did we have at home to make this? Pretty much nothing, except for the rice. I think it is now time to visit the supermarket. If it were my wife, she would have taken the baking soda, the canola oil, and the penne pasta and made a London broil. Can't be done you say? You haven't seen my wife cook.

Unfortunately, I am cooking.

I take my youngest son Nathan with me. He just got out of school and I didn't want him bothering my wife. We get to the supermarket and I see all this pent up energy exploding all over the aisles. Where these kids get it, I'll never know. As I watch him walking all throughout the store, touching seemingly everything imaginable (did you have to put your finger on every banana?), I think about how nice it would be to have that kind of energy. How cool would that be? Imagine having the energy of a child at the age of an adult.

Wow.

We get the food and head back home. My illness begins to take over, and I start feeling a bit rundown. I try to ignore it, and start chopping up the vegetables, dicing the chicken, and cutting the bacon up into little tiny pieces. Yes, I put bacon in my fried rice. Interesting concept, right? Something my Filipino mother taught me when I was younger. Trust me, it tastes great.

After all this standing and chopping, I am too rundown to continue. I sit down on the couch, and this turns into laying down on the couch, which then turns to me falling asleep. My wife wakes me up about 10 minutes later and asks if she needs to finish dinner.

Of course not! I'm "Super husband/Dad," right? I do my best impression of popping up like a daisy, waver back and forth because I got up too fast, and head to the kitchen. An hour later, I am putting the finishing touches on dinner, and we sit down to eat.

Here's where the "Run Forrest... Run" comes in.

Monday night is a busy night for me. My oldest son has tennis practice from 6-7pm, and I also have a meeting with Thailand from 6 until "sometime." In this meeting, I manage all the data between Thailand and Chandler, and need to make sure both sites have the information they need to conduct it effectively. I also scribe the minutes of the meeting, and use inputs of team members throughout the day to get the metrics of the meeting input into the minutes prior to the start of the meeting. I usually don't get all this information until the end of the working day on Monday, so I will usually start working on this at 5pm while I'm still in the office. The hour prior to the 6pm meeting is normally enough time to finish everything I need to finish in time for the meeting.

It is 5pm now. We haven't started eating dinner yet. Esaiah needs to get to his practice, I need to get to the office, we need to eat dinner. We have one vehicle.

Cue the "Mission Impossible" theme music...

I serve up dinner, and Esaiah and I ingest major amounts of food in record time. I'm sure that will settle well for him just before practice, right? I head toward Esaiah's practice, which just happens to be the opposite direction of my office. The closer I get to this practice, the further I am from getting to the office. I drop him off at 5:35pm and race (keeping within the posted speed limits of course) to work. I get to the office, laptop in tow, and rush down to the video conference room so I can begin the work of setting up the room, downloading all the files, updating the metrics, and getting prepared.

The door to the video conference room is locked.

Argh! This is not a day for this to occur. I turn around and go back to the lobby to inform the guard that I need the door unlocked. Another guard is called, and I wait outside the conference room as patiently as I can for the guard to arrive. Finally, after what seems to be a lifetime of waiting, he arrives.

I say lifetime, but that's not really true. It only seemed like that as I counted the seconds away:

1... where is this guy? I have so much to do and so little time to do it
2... I feel like the white rabbit in "Alice in Wonderland." Gotta go, gotta go...
3... hmm... I never noticed how brown the outside of this door is
4... Yep, the door is still locked. It's locked even after I jiggle the handle
5... Jiggling the handle a third time has not changed my situation
6... Where the heck is the guard? Come one!

Finally, I get inside, turn on the video conference equipment, download the files, and bootup my laptop. I open up the minutes and begin work on transferring the metric data to it.

It is 5:57pm.

Run Forrest... Run!

Now do you get it?

Until next time...