Another Day

Today was typical in the world of Brett Sonnenschein, Superdad and frequent contributor to The Bugle. I was supposed to leave work at 5 to pick up the kids but I asked The Wife to stand by in case my High-Profile Work Project (HPWP) needed assistance. The HPWP was going well but then stalled on someone's desk leaving me in the dreaded realm of uncertainty. The hours ticked away as I wondered what to do. I am scheduled to leave at 5 but this is a high-profile project (we're printing 8.9 million of them) and I really should see it through. I could get someone to cover but it would look bad. What to do?

At some point I started getting calls from a delivery man trying to deliver The Wife's Valentine's Day flowers which is weird since Valentine's Day was last week. That got settled.

So after a few hours of non-response I pull the trigger and ask The Wife to do the pickup. She says, "No Problem." Shortly thereafter the HPWP lands on my desk. I am told it is clean, utterly, totally clean and only needs a PDF. No need to look at it. So I call The Wife back and tell her I can do the pickup after all. She is sweet and doesn't laugh at me. But then I get a call that there are changes on the HPWP which I have to quickly make before 5:00. I curse myself for not looking at the routers. Twenty years of working and I still assume other people know what they're doing (which I certainly don't). So, I make the changes, send the new PDF (to far fewer people, of course) and still can leave at 5.

But first I blog about it.

I don't know if any of this sounds so bad but there's just this level of stress that hangs over all this that is exhausting.