Lil' S1 goes to a year-round school, so he has breaks at weird times. For example, for spring break he get two weeks off instead of one. It's slightly annoying for us, but not too bad, because there is an entire cottage industry in the DC area of day camps and such for kids to attend when their schools are on break. The first week we sent him to Alliance Française, a French school, near S's office. It was S's idea. I was fine with it because she said that she would take him to school in the morning. (It would add about an hour to my commute.) But, of course, whenever your spouse says to you, "Don't worry, it won't affect you," you should be worried because everything affects you somehow -- that's what being in a family means. In this case, S double-booked a meeting at the same time as Lil' S1's drop-off, and it was an important one with her boss and her boss's boss and her boss's boss's boss, etc. It was one of those things where, she would only be five minutes late to the meeting, but the thought of being late at all was stressing her out. So, I hesitantly chimed in, "I could take him, I guess, if I really need to," hoping she would respond, "No, it's right next to my office. It would double your commute. That doesn't make any sense. I'll figure something out." Instead she said, "Yeah, that's probably best. Thanks." *Sigh*...
The school is only about three miles from our house, but it's three miles through thick DC rush-hour traffic the exact opposite way as my office. Then I had to park, and everything in that area is zoned for embassies, so I had to find a side-street and walk, which added another tens minutes to the trip. I didn't have anything pressing at work, so it wasn't that big a deal, though. Plus, I got to tell everybody at work that I was late because I couldn't find parking at my son's French school because there was only embassy parking on the street. I felt like a real member of the DC Elite.
I don't think anybody cares when I arrive at (or leave) work anyway. I never put in eight hours at the office anymore. I arrive between 9:30 am and 10:00 am every morning (because I have to drop both kids off in the morning), and I leave at 4:45 pm, so that I can make my Krav Maga class at 5:00 pm. If you do the math, that's only seven hours, and that's including my lunch break. I also work from home two days a week, and I work longer hours from home (no commute), but I doubt I work enough to offset my short days in the office to achieve the traditional 40 hour work week. But I don't care (I'm about that ROWE, boss), and my company apparently doesn't care, as they just gave me a big raise, so... I'll just consider myself fortunate that I have job like this. Of course, I had a big hand in it -- I went to school for many years to learn valuable skills that relatively few people have -- but a lot of it is just luck too.
Working remotely is a huge plus about my job. For the second week of Lil' S1's spring break, we went to their grandparents' house in Columbia, SC, and I worked from there. It's nice, actually. They have a little office I can use. I can take a break and jog around the little man-made lakes by their house, and the kids are occupied by the in-laws and their friends. (They're close with a younger couple who have an 11-year-old and a five-year-old. So, the older kid can basically be the babysitter of the other three, and then you just need one adult on the premise in case of an emergency.)
Also, I can do things like, what we did on Thursday, and drive up to Charlotte at lunchtime, and then work a few more hours in a hotel, and then enjoy a nice kid-free evening with my wife. It was great, actually. We get to do this only once or twice a year. This time we had a bunch of credit card points, so we did it up and got a chichi hotel in downtown Charlotte, and it was excellent. I realized I'm a huge sucker for decor. I'm willing to pay a lot more to be in a place that feels cool (for one night, anyway, without kids). We went to dinner at a nearby tapas restaurant, which was delicious. Then we went back to the hotel (if you're gonna pay for it, you might as well use it), and watched Get Out on demand. It's a fantastic movie -- the perfect horror film, in that it creeps you out from the get-go, but you don't really know what's going on for most the film, and then everything ties together beautifully at the end. I was thinking about it half the night, partly because it gave me the willies, partly because I was remembering early scenes with knowledge I didn't have at the time, going, "Oh... now I get what was going on there!" Even without falling asleep right away, it was still an early night for me. I think I was asleep by 11:30 pm, which is before I usually fall asleep.
We had to get up early the next day to get back to Columbia. We both had work to do. I had to call into a meeting that lasted so long, my phone battery died while I was on it. (We were already done with "my part" of it, so it wasn't a big deal.) For long stretches of it, I put the phone on mute and did calisthenics during it, and then I ate lunch -- another advantage of working remotely.
The next morning we woke up super early -- before 6:00 am -- to hit the road back to DC. S is very anal about driving as much as we can while the kids sleep. It makes sense Lil' S2 gets carsick easily, so we don't like him to watch iPad in the car much, so there is nothing for him to do but sleep or annoy us. Still, getting up so early and driving is a recipe for fights, as everybody is extra irritable and we are already doing something that can be highly irritating (driving with kids) and Lil' S2 is at an age where he can be nearly unbearable. He just spins off the rails from the slightest things and then it's almost impossible to calm him down. It's really awful, actually. Then to make matters worse, it poured rain the entire drive back.
But we made it, with only a few meltdowns, and I'm back in DC enjoying my buffer day. The kids are at a friend's house, but they will be back soon, so I should wrap this up.
Until next time...
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