The stages of working from home

I've had a remote work position for the last year and a half. I had never planned on working from home, but the position seemed to make sense for me career wise and happened to be in another state. Rather than uproot my entire family to take the position, working remotely allowed me to take the position and keep my family where they were. I think sometimes people confuse what it is I do, with some flexible working arrangement because I work from my house. However, I have a full time job, with big (sometimes) responsibilities, and a lot of work to do each and every day. The misunderstanding is more my issue than anyone else's though, so I'll leave that alone. I travel to my company's headquarters roughly one week a month, and those trips help me to feel more connected to the people I talk to on the phone when I'm home. They also remind me that working from my home is both good and bad. It took me several months to adjust to the routine of working from home, I think I went through stages of acceptance in order to come to the steady state I enjoy today.

Stage One: Oh This is Awesome
Duration: 1 week
At first I had many thoughts about working from home: I have no commute, I don't have to get dressed up, I can work in my sweaty running clothes if I want to, life is wonderful.

Stage Two: This Sucks
Duration: 3 months
After a short honeymoon period, the reality of what it meant to commute 10 feet from my kitchen into our home office started to set in. My main contact with people I wasn't related to started to be over the phone. I had lost the daily office niceties of passing colleagues in the hall, and eating lunch with other people. Gone were beer Fridays, corporate meetings I attended in person, and random quarterly celebrations with free food. Gone was not having to set up meetings with your closest colleagues because you sat across from each other and could have quick brainstorming sessions using the white board in your cubicle. Gone was wasting time rehashing random things that happened over the weekend or who you liked best on The Voice. Gone was the social life that surrounds working in an office. During this stage I often fantasized about how long I would have to keep this job so it didn't look like I was jumping before giving it a chance. I didn't know people at the corporate headquarters well enough to actually feel like I was in the loop with what was happening when I wasn't physically there.

Stage Three: This is okay
Duration: 3 months
After deciding that I hated working from home, but also deciding that I wanted to put more effort into being successful in my job I mostly made peace with the situation. I went through a phase of putting effort into dressing up each day, even if I was just going to sit in my home office all day. It made me feel more like I was at work, and that was something that helped to give my days more structure. I also started to have an understanding of what it was I was going to do in my job - this more than anything else likely saved my ability to work from home. My position had been more or less created for me, but it wasn't firmly bounded. I had to do a lot of searching to figure out where I could add the most value, and then poke that understanding with how others viewed my role. There was a good deal of trial and error - still is, but eventually I found my way.

Stage Four: I would hate working in an office again
Duration: 1 year and going
After making peace with remote working, I found that I loved it. Well I loved it until summer came and my oldest child who is too old for daycare started being home with me, but that is another story. I stopped dressing like I was going into an office - though to be fair at best from home I dressed as though it was always casual Friday. I save my former work outfits for when I travel to the company headquarters. The bad part about this is that my former heel loving self is now very fond of flip flops and casual boots. I find that my feet don't love to wear heels when I travel now because I'm not used to wearing them - unless you count my wedge Teva flip flops (they don't count). I've also found ways to be as productive as possible from home, and thankfully from places that have free wifi when I just need a change of scenery. I've found that my favorite way to make phone calls is with the simple headphones and in-line microphone on my iPhone ear buds attached to my work iPhone. I learned that I needed to turn off the audible alert for new email messages on that phone because those alerts were audible to the rest of the people on my many calls too. I also learned how to walk away from the home office at 5 pm, which is actually pretty easy since my Eastern time zone coworkers are all long done with working by then. There are still days where I wish I had the distraction of a coworker downstairs to complain about something to, but then I call one of my colleagues and can do the same thing.

When I think about the next step in my career path, I think it is highly likely that it will be another remote working opportunity. I want to take on a greater degree of responsibility in my chosen field, and it is highly unlikely that I will find something in my current metro area. I'm glad I have made peace with working from home, even if sometimes I do still miss the comfort of office life. I think for me going to an office was a false veil of productivity - where from home you really have yourself and the work with no easy distractions at every corner. That was painful at first, but now it is freeing and a little painful if I'm completely honest.

A trip to London

I traveled to London for work this week. I've been to London before, always for work, and this time was no different. However this time around I left home Sunday night and got in decently early Monday morning. I also didn't absolutely need to work until Wednesday morning. This meant that I had a couple of days to adjust and sightsee prior to the real work commitments. After making it to my hotel I found one of my favorite colleagues and forced him to go on a walking tour of London with me. Well I didn't really force him, and what I thought was going to be a quick walk and then lunch turned into 3+ hours of walking.

The Tower of London

Tower Bridge

The Shard

Tower of London from across the Thames

The Tower of London

St. Paul's Cathedral

It was a great tour of parts of London I hadn't seen before. After we made it back to our hotel we caught up with 2 other colleagues who had flown in a little later than I did. We then went on another 2-3 hour walking tour of London. I was unprepared for the length of that journey, and my boots with 3 inch heels started to make my feet long for a pair of running shoes. We walked a third time that day as we looked for a place to eat. I finally changed into some flat boots for that walk though, and my feet thanked me tremendously.

Tuesday was an office day. I caught up on email, and tried to finish a business case that had become urgent over the course of the week. I even had a sad desk lunch in the office - although if you notice the sad desk lunch I often eat when I'm working from home you can see that the London version of a sad desk lunch is a huge improvement over what I come up with myself (I'll let you guess which is which).

Tuesday afternoon my UK based colleague took us to The Savoy for Afternoon Tea. This was a nice surprise, and an experience I'm sure I wouldn't have ever thought to have on my own. We had lots of tea, towers of finger sandwiches and scones, fancy pastries, and cakes. My lesson learned from the experience was that the scones were the best part of the whole tea, and I shouldn't have saved room for the pastries or cakes.

I felt badly at the conclusion of the tea for forcing my colleagues to go back to the London office with me so I could work on my business case more. I managed to get enough done after an hour or so though that I finally gave up on it and we all headed out of the office and back to the hotel. The next couple of days in London revolved around the purpose for my trip - a client forum. The forum was good overall. I think my presentation was well received, and I know I got a lot of great feedback from individual clients over the course of the two days. Then it was time to go home. While this isn't how I would structure a vacation to London, it was nice to fit in a few fun things in between the work.

Tempted to grow

This week was strange. The kids and I had Monday off so it was a short work week for me. It was made even shorter by a quick work trip to Toronto Tuesday/Wednesday. Obviously the week wasn't actually shorter, but working while traveling doesn't feel quite the same as working from home does. While in Toronto some work news surfaced that at least temporarily rocked my world. The person who recruited me into my current role is no longer there. I won't say more than that, but it was most definitely a shock. My first reaction was to speculate about how this change would affect my work. I think it will affect me, but it is too soon to know exactly how that will be. I've decided that my best plan for the moment is to continue my current efforts until my work is no longer needed there. There are several possibilities for me there, but I don't think my future projections will help me cope with today if I dwell on them. The reality is that there is very little I can do to influence my future there if I don't focus on the job I currently have.

I started reading a new (to me) book this week called "Seat of the Soul," by Gary Zukav. Oprah mentions this book in her Super Soul Sunday shows fairly often, and I watched an older re-aired Master Class on OWN that was about Oprah herself where she mentioned it again. I finally gave in and bought the book to read for myself. My first observation is that I am probably not completely ready to read this book. It is remarkably hard to follow as he circles around the concept of our soul and our personality and how the two work together but also apart. I feel as though there is truth in his words, but I need to read them more slowly to allow myself to fully absorb the meaning. Or perhaps I will finish the book, but then come back and read it again at another time. Either way, there are a few tidbits that I've taken from the book already.

The first tidbit is that temptation is your soul's way of allowing you to test yourself without involving others. Temptation gives us an opportunity to grow stronger. I know that when I resolve daily to eat less junk food, to eat more consciously, and not eat to numb my feelings I am always tempted to throw that away. I had seen temptation as weakness, but the book shifted my perspective about it. If temptation is actually strength what does that mean for me? I should expect temptation, and I should be happy for it. When I resolve that I am going to yell less, my kids do things that make me want to yell even more - and again I felt that I was weak in not being able to respond more constructively. Now I see that every opportunity where I would normally comfort eat, or yell to try to solve a conflict with my kids is an opportunity for me to grow - for my personality to better align with my soul if you will. I recognize that this is out there, so it isn't as though I am suggesting that all of you go read this book or believe the same things I do about the messages. For me though, that may have been the lesson I needed to learn this week.

I think back to the person I was just a couple of years ago, and that person would not have been ready to read that temptation was a good thing. She would not have been willing to move beyond the "why me" aspect of a big job change so quickly either. I know I still have a long journey of growth ahead of me, but it is good to recognize how far I've come. As I go forward into a new week I am choosing to be grateful for any and all temptations that try to take me off of my resolved path. I will know that it is my soul's work (or God's work if you are so inclined) to help me grow and make me stronger against those temptations when they continue to arise.

Lake Ontario Sunrise

A token January post

There are no excuses, I've just been absent. Work is busier than ever before blah blah blah blah blah. I will spare you the details. My Mom informed me that there was no new content here, which I knew but it served as a reminder that I should try to revive this poor neglected blog. I have thoughts of just completely giving up on it. I get a fair amount of hits when I am active here, but I'm not sure that is enough for me to keep writing here. I had lots of ideas for posts in the beginning, but now nothing comes to me, or rather things come to me but I find that I just don't expend the energy to post them.

I actually had grand ideas of starting a second blog devoted to the working/traveling Mom, but I seriously don't know how I would manage another blog since I can't manage this one. I'm on night number four of this business trip. It has been long. I miss the kids. I miss T. I miss my own home and my routines. The positive thought for tonight is that I get to go home tomorrow. I'll get to see the kids in person rather than through the grainy webcam Skype call. That thought gets me through, makes me smile, and makes me push through the trip. I think I need to travel again this month, but it will be a much shorter trip. There is a light at the end of the tunnel though. I think I will find a way off of the traveling road eventually, but I'm not there yet.

A traveling Mom

It is my last night away from home this week. I miss my own bed, my kids, my husband, and just being able to change into comfy yoga pants upon finishing my work day.

Sometimes I let myself slip into the mode of a non traveling working Mom, but then I am jolted back to reality with a 3 night (really 4 nights away from the kids) trip. It is on these trips, these lonely nights in hotel rooms, that I start to consider looking for another job. Certainly there are good things about my job, but how do I get past the fact that the travel is ever present? It is like a threat that is constantly hanging over my head. I live in fear of the next project that will take me away from my children for several nights in many different stretches. It is part of my job. It is part of my life, but it is a part of my life that can sometimes take long vacations. When I'm on vacation from traveling I become the normal working Mom who just has to juggle the normal working mom stuff, and I really like my life. I like working. I like being with my kids in the morning and the evening (well sometimes those mornings can still be a bit hectic and drive me a little crazy). Then a trip appears on my calendar, and the dread sets in.

My husband is fabulous, he never complains about my travel, or the fact that he has to shoulder all of the childcare while I am gone. Sometimes I wish he would complain just a little bit though. I wish he didn't make it so easy for me to travel. I don't prep things for him. I don't make a list of things that need to be done, I don't set out clothing for the kids. I know he can handle it, and that the kids will be fed and happy (though they might not get vegetables with dinner). I just take care of me, and go. I call each night to check in with him and talk to the kids, sometimes we Skype with the webcams, sometimes we just talk. I can see them at home just having a normal evening, a normal evening that I want to be part of. I'm not missing any milestones. I'm not scarring my children for life. I am just missing the day-to-day. You simply cannot connect with a four year old and a two year old over the phone the same way you can in person. Even with the benefit of the webcam it isn't the same. I am not there. I cannot kiss their heads, smooth The Boy's soft soft hair with my hand, cuddle with The Girl, rock her before bed, pretend to sit on her when she scurries into her bedroom and climbs up into the rocking chair in the dark all the while giggling and waiting for me to say "where is she? Why is this seat so lumpy? Oh there she is!", come back into The Boy's room to give him one more big squish. I miss the normal stuff.

I know I am not the only traveling Mom out there. I'd like to be a beacon of hope to other traveling Moms, or at least get to the point that the prospect of travel doesn't fill me with dread. I don't know how to get there though. Is it possible to travel for work frequently without letting it get you down? How do all of those traveling Dad's cope? Is it just too different to compare?

Some breathing room

I got home from an overnight business trip just after the kids were in bed last night. T had just come downstairs when I walked in the door. He indicated that the kids knew I was home, because as he was rocking The Girl she said “Mommy’s Home!” when she heard the door open. He told her that maybe I would come up and check on her before she fell asleep. I made my way upstairs to unpack, and as soon as I flicked on the bedroom light, I heard a chorus of “Mommy” from the kids’ respective bedrooms. I finished unpacking and went into The Boy’s room first, knowing that he would be the easier to deal with. I gave him a hug and a kiss told him that I’d missed him, and said goodnight. He actually let me leave his room with no calls for one more cuddle. I went into The Girl’s room next, and she popped up and demanded to be rocked, which of course I agreed to. As I sat in the glider rocking her, The Boy appeared in her room and told me that he needed me to tell him a story. I told him that he’d already read stories with T and that he needed to go to sleep, but he persisted. He didn’t want to read a book; he wanted me to tell him a story about Him and his sister. I agreed, and quickly made up a story about the two of them, and their wild adventures. At the conclusion of the story I put The Girl down in her crib, and walked The Boy back to his bedroom, and they both went to sleep.

I went back downstairs after they were in bed, and chatted with T for a few minutes. We caught up on the kids, work, and household stuff I’d missed. It felt so good to be home. Most of my major work deadlines of late have been met, and for the first time in a long time I didn’t feel like I should be doing something more productive with my time. It felt great for about 2 hours. Now I’m bored.

No, but I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night

I'm not ignoring my blog, just traveling for work again. I don't even have the energy to complain about it. Come to think of it, why in the hell am I still up at 10:30 PM when a full night of non nearly-two-year-old-sleep-disruption is on tap? I always seem to stay up later when I travel. The 9 PM cutoff time doesn't apply when I travel, and neither does the no morning internet policy. I mean I have no trouble getting to the client site on time when I only have to dress and feed myself, and don't have to drop off children at daycare. I can even manage to blow dry my hair when I stay in a hotel, crazy but true.

Speaking of hotels though, I do have one gripe. We are staying at a hotel that was carefully selected by our client. I'm assuming the $69 per night rate was the main draw, since this client is paying directly for our travel costs. I suppose it could just be a random selection though, we should really investigate. The hotel is kind of dumpy, there are ants in my room, the hotel screams "I was built in the 70's so live with it," and well it is a Holiday Inn (not a Holiday Inn Express, because clearly if I had stayed there I'd be able to perform miraculous feats). The most horrible thing about the hotel though is the lack of Comedy Central. Seriously do you think they get a big discount for providing just a smattering of basic cable channels, with HBO thrown in for good measure? Last time I checked Comedy Central was a mainstay of basic cable. What am I supposed to do without my John Stewart fix each night? We really need to look into that slingbox thing so I can watch our DVR'd stuff remotely...

The month long cold

If you know me from another online environment, or in the world of actual human contact you know that I am sick. I have been suffering with a cold for the past almost 4 weeks now. I had a few days where I thought I was recovered, only to have the cough return with a vengence. My last post referred to some pain under my left rib cage, which after a little more googling I decided was due to the intense coughing I have been doing for weeks. It makes sense, because I have really been miserable which almost everyone I come in contact with can attest to. I'm sure the passengers I fly next to are oh so grateful that I am adding to the toxic sludge air that is the inside cabin of the airplane, but what can I do?

Monday morning I decided to go to the doctor to see if I could get a real cough medicine perscription, and had secret hopes that the doctor would tell me that I couldn't fly with my current illness. Sadly, I left the office with zero of the things I'd hoped for. I should be thankful that I am healthy despite the presence of an ear infection (seriously other than some strange ear popping that is hard to resolve and makes me nearly deaf in that ear I had no idea). I know the general advice is not to let little kids fly with ear infections because it can be excrutiating, but the doctor I saw passed that off as a non-issue for me. Ugh. She did say I could use it as excuse to stay home if I wanted to, but in my book that is basically like calling into work when you aren't really sick (although in this case I suppose I am sick). If I didn't have to use my "vacation" time to stay home sick I might have considered staying home. So yes, you guessed it I am typing away in my hotel room right now. I'm now taking a cocktail of Amoxicillin, Mucinex DM, and Advil all at varying intervals to handle my symptoms. It is a good thing I got a flu shot this year because if I were to get the flu on top of this I think I would be screwed.

Home at last

I thought I owed my blog a post from home, a truely rare occurance. Yesterday was fabulous, we wrapped up work at the client site ultra early which allowed us an ultra early flight back home. I managed to be at daycare just as The Boy woke up from his nap. He practically leaped up into my arms, and we just cuddled for a few minutes until we heard The Girl shouting from the other room. We made our way home, DH called to say he was going out for a drink and we shouldn't wait for him with dinner so we didn't. We watched Disney's Cars and played with all of The Boy's car paraphanalia at the same time. I made a wonderful dinner of corn dogs, oven fries, and baked beans. DH came home, I gave the kids baths, put The Boy to bed, and then sat in The Girl's room for approximately 1.5 hours trying to get her to fall asleep before giving up and making DH do it. I suck. He does it for 3 nights straight and I can't even handle one night. Oh well.

Slim Fast and Beef Jerky

I don’t like to eat out alone.

There I’ve said it. I feel self conscious when I sit in a restaurant all by myself. It doesn’t feel normal for me to just sit quietly while I wait for my food. When I do decide to eat out alone (while traveling) I make sure to bring a book with me so I don’t feel so lost. Tonight I was faced with the prospect of walking from my hotel to a nearby restaurant solo, or driving to a take-out type place to bring some food back to the hotel. I ended up opting for the take out. My excuse was that I needed some cough drops to cope with the horrible cough I am stuck with from my most recent nasty cold, but eating in my hotel room just seemed more appealing. I also opted for take out last night, so I have now had Qdoba and Quiznos as my fine dining experiences for the week. I decided I needed more Q’s in my diet. I am not really complaining, I get a daily per diem, so I am much better off financially if I do eat take-out since I don’t have to tip and the food is just generally cheaper. However, it makes for some long lonely evenings sitting in my hotel room.

I have been in this pattern for the last few trips, which seem to have occurred every other week through this fall. I am not even traveling alone, one of my colleagues has been accompanying me on all of these trips. He brings his own food with him from home though, and just eats alone in his hotel room (I presume). He is really making out with the per diem. I’m not sure what food he brings from home, for a while there was talk of Slim Fast shakes and beef jerky, which frankly makes my stomach turn. Is this how you would choose to eat if you were traveling for work? I didn’t think so. Perhaps he needs the extra “income.” Whenever there is talk about extending trips he seems willing, whereas I come up with many reasons why it can’t work with my schedule. Of course this could just be my lack of a work ethic, or more truthfully my extreme dislike of business travel in general and my desire to be home with my children and husband when at all possible.

Even though my kids can make dinner stressful, eating dinner with them every night is one of the highlights of every day. Sitting in my hotel room eating alone is peaceful, but it doesn’t even come close to comparing to a dinner at home (even a dinner I had to cook). I can hear The Boy saying “How was your day?” and “my day was good” as I type. Those two phrases which he now commonly utters make all of the “I don’t like this” and “there is sauce on my noodles” stuff fade away in the background…for the most part. I bet my DH doesn’t have the same perspective I do since he is the one having to make the kids Dinosaur chicken nuggets tonight.

Another night on the road...

Business Travel Mom

A good friend of mine passed along a link to this article about Moms who travel for business. At first I was eager to read it because I am very interested to see how other traveling Moms cope. However, the spin of the article seems to be that by and large these Moms like being away because it gives them a break from the day-to-day grind of being a working Mom. I am in no way judging the Moms who say that, because I’d be lying if I said it isn’t somewhat relaxing to come back to an empty hotel room and have an entire evening to yourself. The problem comes in when you are gone for 3-5 nights at a time. Unlike one of the Moms quoted in the article, my DH does not have a flexible work schedule that allows him to accompany me on business trips so the kids can come along. Nor do I have a nanny that could do the same. I’m actually curious to know if the Moms who bring their kids with them while traveling expense (to their employers) the cost of bringing children with, or just eat the expense. The 3 extra plane tickets, not to mention meals while traveling would eat a big hole in our budget. I also feel that DH and the kids would be horribly bored in the towns I end up traveling to. Most of the towns are very small; they are towns where big companies like to locate because labor costs are lower. They are not towns you would immediately recognize the names of. While I would love to finish a day of working and come back to my kids, I don’t think it is fair to expect my family to uproot just to relieve some of my guilt for needing to travel to do my job.

I guess the women in the article are more cheerful than I am. It seems that they are all looking at the bright side of business travel, while I tend to focus on the rest of the crap that comes along for the ride. Maybe I should use my business trips to get facials, manicures, and pedicures. Perhaps that would be more fun than organizing all of our digital photos as I sit in a hotel room. I tend to feel like I need to be somewhat of a martyr when I travel for business though. It is as if I am not allowed to be happy when I am away from my kids, simply because I should be home with them instead. This idea comes only from me, but it definitely is what I do. I think I still need to watch how much “fun” I communicate to those left back home, I really don’t think that they would appreciate me being happy to be away.

I think I’ve figured out why traveling Moms are in the minority, it is because our partners are not too keen on being the parent who is home alone for days on end. My DH is fantastic about my travel, nicer about it then I would be if our roles were reversed. I do know that it becomes draining even for him when I am gone for more than 2 nights though. Two high maintenance children keep you busy, and you get very little downtime until after they go to bed. When I offered to cut my last business trip short because of The Girl’s bout of croup, he immediately accepted my offer. There was some talk about being able to handle it, but I knew he didn’t want to have to deal with it alone. I also felt it was unfair for him to have to miss two days of work, just because my work had me out of town. I did come home a day early, and I don’t think there was any detrimental harm done to the project as a result. The Girl really did need her Mommy, and frankly I was irritated to not be the one caring for her. Some things, no matter how anti-feminist it makes me sound, just belong to me, and one of those is caring for sick children. Unless of course there is barf involved, that is a job that my DH can keep.

Silver sickness

I’m gone and my baby girl is sick again. Have I mentioned before how much I hate traveling? I feel so helpless and useless stuck in a hotel room as my DH is the one to take The Girl to urgent care, and the one who has to take a day off work tomorrow (two days if I can’t manage to get home tomorrow rather than Friday). I want to be the one home with her. My poor little girl has croup. If I thought Mommy guilt was horrible when the kids are healthy, mommy guilt is 100 times worse when they are sick. Business travel sucks. If you ever come across another traveling Mom’s blog, please send me the link. It would be really nice to read how others handle this crap.

I got my Silver Elite package in the mail the other day. I remember the first time I made Silver Elite, back before I had kids. I was practically giddy when the package arrived. I was so happy about the prospect of first class upgrades, and intrigued by the “status” it implied. Now I see it for what it is worth, not much. 25,000 miles of my butt on an airplane this year, I haven’t yet worked backwards to figure out how many nights those miles had me away from my family, and I don’t think it would be productive or healthy for me to do so. I had hoped that I would never make any sort of airline status again in my life when I left my previous traveling job. Now I wonder how I let myself get back here again. Maybe the status will help me get a flight back home tomorrow without penalties for changes, there has to be a silver lining somewhere doesn’t there? Well, I already called and no, my status doesn't help one bit. Now to decide if $162 to change my ticket is worth it or not.

The Tables have Turned

I am the traveling spouse, not my DH, but this week my friends, the roles have shifted. DH is in China, much farther away than my trips ever take me. So far the week has been okay. I have a new perspective for how much DH does to help with the house and the kids though. I honestly think all single parents deserve a big round of applause, because to do this constantly would wear me down. I’ve actually been fairly impressed with myself, as I haven’t been resorting to more television watching time than normal (for the kids). I even distracted the kids when we got home yesterday long enough to make dinner without using the TV as a babysitter. Granted, they just had Easy Mac and peas, but at least their tummies were full. I have had to resort to letting the kids watch morning TV in my bed while I showered on a couple of occasions though. This morning The Girl woke up (she was in my bed after waking up crying in her crib at maybe 1 am, the path of least resistance – read sleep – includes just bringing her back into my bed and snuggling her until she falls asleep again) when I tried to get out of bed to head to the shower. I turned on Disney channel and she was mostly content with one of my not so favorite shows (still tolerable): Higglytown Heroes (someday I will write a blog post about the alternate “heroes” that DH and I have come up with, but not today). I can see her on our bed through the shower door in the master bathroom, so I knew she was fine. I can’t imagine what I would have done in the days before cable TV. I suppose we would have to make better use of some sort of playpen structure on occasions like this.

The rest of the morning at home went relatively smoothly, aside from The Boy not wanting to wake up, and loudly protesting about the fact that I pulled him out of bed, took off his PJs and plopped him on the toilet so he could pee. Oh well, at least he accomplished what I needed him to. I managed to coax him back to happy ever so gently, and I think he ended up forgiving me for the original offense. He watched Little Einstein’s, I took The Girl downstairs, made my lunch while eating a bowl of cereal, gave The Girl a piece of string cheese and a sippy of milk (protein right?), took the garbage can out to the curb, and somehow managed to coax The Boy downstairs to get his shoes and jacket on so we could leave. I even got to work and plopped onto an 8 am conference call just 2 or 3 minutes late. I think that went better than it sometimes does when DH is home. Is it sad though, that sitting down at my desk at work with a cup of coffee has me more relaxed than I was at home all morning?

Last night away (for now)

I have nothing left to say. I am so ready to go home I don’t think I can even whine about it anymore. Okay, that isn’t true. The Boy is sick tonight. DH told me that shortly after our evening Skype video call, The Boy told DH that he needed to take a nap. This of course is unheard of from The Boy. His temp at the time was 103 F. DH gave him some Motrin and put him to bed. Checked on him an hour later, woke him up to put him in his pjs, and his temp was 100. He went right back to sleep. DH had warned me that The Boy was sick before I saw him on the webcam, but he was just so lethargic, it made me incredibly sad. I just wanted to scoop him up and cuddle him. I hate not being there for my kids. There really is no amount of professional satisfaction that is worth this.

I talked to my Mom today to make sure she made it back home safely. We started talking about my frustration with work lately, and she started telling me about how she felt when she traveled for work when my brother and I were young. She didn’t travel much, but even the small amount she did really left an impression on her. She hated being away from her kids. I worry that this is the crap I will obsess about when my kids are grown. I know I am not going to dream about the projects I completed, but I will think back about how my children were at the ages of 3 and 1. I want to remember it, and I fear that if I am gone, I will miss too much to remember.

It sounds crazy, but I have been thinking more and more about the idea of trying to get an education degree. I think I would like to teach math. I haven’t talked to DH about it yet. I know he will think it is a crazy idea. I don’t really want to go back to school, and it really is nothing more than a pipe dream. Teaching secondary Math would likely be a big huge pay cut, and maybe I am not even really suited for something like that. It is still fun to consider it.

I’m sure my departure from this lonely hotel room will mean that my blog will be abandoned for at least the next few days. I will try to write more often though. I get to go home tomorrow!!!!!

Three down, Two to go

Well, since I posted my countdown ramblings the last two nights I feel obliged to continue the saga (so as to not let my two readers down). It turns out that I have nothing even remotely witty to write about, so I will just share a typical day of this traveling consultant with you (with client references and specific information about what I do removed):

Wake up at 5:45 am to the sound of my cell phone’s alarm clock.
Turn off cell phone alarm, which I have to get out of bed to do (why is it that hotels never have available outlets right next to the bed so I can leave my phone plugged in all night?)
Turn on the tv and watch local news until I can force myself up and into the shower
Shower
Get dressed
Put on make up, put gel in my hair, brush hair (I am very low maintenance these days)
Turn on laptop, check email, check at least one of my online forums
Turn off laptop, pack up and get ready to leave hotel for the day
Head to the hotel restaurant for breakfast
Eat breakfast with my colleague
Travel to client site
Work all day at client site
Return to hotel
Change into running clothes
Go for a run
Return to hotel
Take a shower
Get dressed again (no make up or hair fixing at this point)
Turn on laptop, check email, return emails if necessary, check forums
Get dinner, walk from hotel, or drive for take-out
Return to hotel
Watch tv, surf internet, etc.
Skype video call with the kids and DH
Miss kids terribly, wish I could be home with them
Remind myself about how many days I have left before I can go home
Repeat

One or two days of that can be a nice break in my hectic life, but repeatedly it just drains me. I would much rather deal with the chaos at home than live in a hotel for days on end. Whine/over, three days down and just two more to go.

Two down three to go

My self-appointed task for this week is now to find Halloween costumes for the kids. The Boy has been saying for almost a month that he wants to be Buzz Lightyear for Halloween, and I gladly stole the idea from a friend to make The Girl be Jessie from Toy Story 2. I briefly tried to convince The Boy to be Woody, but it was no use, He. Is. Going. To. Be. BUZZZZZ! I found a Buzz costume at Target last Friday, and even bought it, but when I got it home I decided it was too cheap. I ended up ordering the Buzz Costume from the Disney Store online instead. Now I have to find a Jessie costume for The Girl. Disney does have a Jessie costume on their website, but the smallest size is the equivalent of 2T and I’m sure it would be too big for my little peanut. I noticed that Old Navy has some decent looking cowboyish costumes, but on my last visit to an Old Navy back home they didn’t have the right size for The Girl. They don’t have the right size online either. In my infinite wisdom I decided to seek out an Old Navy where I am this week, so I did just that. Unfortunately they didn’t have any cowboy costumes. They did have some cute baby cowboy boots though.

My MIL offered to help us make cow print chaps if we can’t find anything suitable, but I have visions of The Girl’s costume being a huge fiasco with lots of last minute running around involved. Oh well, it isn’t like I have anything better to do right? We planned the next few workshops with our client this afternoon, and I thankfully managed to avoid planning one that would have me away on Halloween itself. I do think I will have to miss the annual daycare Halloween party though (if it happens the week before Halloween). I’m sad about this, but I managed to get 1.5 weeks of workshops condensed to 4 days so I do feel good about that.

I can’t believe it is only Tuesday. It feels like I have been on this trip for a week already. The worst part is that we are only working half day sessions with the client, then using the afternoons to catch up on documentation and other miscellaneous tasks. If we were busy all day I think I would feel better about the length of this trip. I really think we could have squeezed all we need to accomplish into 3 days, which would have had me home two nights sooner. Okay, I should stop wallowing again, perhaps a Skype call with the kids will make me feel better? Two down, three to go.

One down four to go

I am traveling for work yet again. This trip has me away from home for five nights. If I didn’t enjoy what I do so much I think it would drive me crazy, because even though I do like what I do I don’t like being away from my family. It helps that my DH doesn’t complain about me being away, and having to step-up and take care of the kids solo. What doesn’t help is the fact that my Mom came to visit last week, and she is still at my house until Wednesday. When she was contemplating a trip I told her to just buy the tickets and I would work around her dates, unfortunately a new project kicked off and I was asked to be on it. I had been very low on work for most of the summer, so I was definitely due for a new project. I just wish I didn’t have to leave during her once a year visit. Thankfully DH took a few days off of work so my Mom could spend a few more days with the kids (the real reason for the visit).

Tonight I am just hanging out in my hotel room, watching some television and surfing the internet at the same time. I picked up a burrito at a fast food place, and then got some milk, a two liter of Diet Root Beer, and some animal crackers to round out my evening. I am really living the high life now. Business travel is not exactly exotic. I spend each night thinking about how many more nights I need to pass before I get to leave. Certainly there are some perks to being kid-free for a few nights, like having time to post here for one. I would trade the perks for being able to give my kids kisses good night in person every time though. Oh well, at this point whining isn’t helping my mood or the situation, so I should stop wallowing. Perhaps I should find something more productive to occupy my “free-time” with. Maybe I could start scrapbooking, but then I would have to haul all of that stuff with me, and I’m guessing I wouldn’t enjoy that. Maybe I could load all of my digital photos onto my laptop hard drive so I could categorize them and apply labels so it will be easy to find pictures of The Girl when she was 2 months old on a whim, or pictures of The Boy and The Girl together last Halloween. Granted we do have the pictures sorted by date already, but the finer categories seems like a good idea, maybe I could even order prints from our digital photos for the first time since The Boy was over one year old (yes we are bad parents, with absolutely no printed snapshots of our youngest child). Yes, I will definitely do that, of course it needs to wait until my next trip. Someone needs to hold me to that.

DH is getting ready to make a trip to the Far East next month. I guess I will have a new perspective for what it is like to be alone with our kids for an entire week. I don’t think I will get the same level of sympathy everyone I meet while I travel seems to confer to my DH though. For some reason it is a huge enigma to others that a man can handle tending for his children for a week. When clients find out I have children, they inevitably ask “what do you do with your kids when you are away?” I typically mention that my DH takes care of them, and try to change the subject. It seems like a very odd question to ask someone. It is as if they assume I must have a full time nanny in order to be able to travel. I don’t think anyone would ask a male consultant what he does with his kids while he travels, they would just assume that his wife takes care of things while he is away. Why do they ask me? It just seems weird. Yes, I am the only female consultant in my very small company, but I am not the only woman with kids who has to travel for work. I suppose the super-woman would want to keep traveling to prove something to the rest of the world, but really I don’t want to be that woman. I want to be a good Mom, and I hope that by traveling when I need to, I am not damaging my children in some way. I don’t think that I am. Anyway, it is one down and four more to go until I can go home and squeeze my kids tight again.

International differences

Life has been busy lately, or at least it has felt that way to me. I'm actually on an international trip for work as I type, and happen to have just a few minutes before meeting some colleagues for dinner. I miss the kids terribly, but because I've been fairly busy on this trip I haven't quite reached the point of "if I don't go home this instant I will surely die from not seeing my children for so many days." Anyway, since I am in Europe for the first time in my life I thought I would explore the obvious differences I have noticed in my few days here.

1. The first thing I noticed was in getting off of the airplane when I arrived in Stockholm, people don't practice the, what I thought was universal, "let the people in front of your row out of the plane before you barrel through to get off the plane." I was a little ticked to not be able to get out of the plane when it was my turn per se, and couldn't believe that the people in the rows in front of me were allowing people from the back of the plane to get off before them. I have traveled extensively by airplane in the US, and this practice is not even questioned there. I also experienced a similar thing when trying to get off of the express train from the airport into the city, I was basically dumbfounded. My colleague thinks this might just be a big city thing, but since I have been to plenty of big cities in the US I don't think it is.

2. People assume I can speak Swedish, but are very polite when they realize I can't and quickly/easily switch to English. I am very thankful for this, and I think more than makes up for people wanting to get the hell off of the airplane.

3. It is very common for people to drink beer on their lunch breaks here. I am told it is a weak beer (perhaps what we would call 3-2 beer, but I'm not sure), but I was absolutely shocked to see my Swedish colleagues drinking beer at lunch (and more shocked that it was just included with the special they ordered). This just doesn't happen in the US, although I'm sure many people would like it to.

4. The hotel rooms don't have sheets on the beds. Instead they have thin comforters with duvet covers on them. This wouldn't even bother me except for the fact that I am so very used to cranking up the cold air in hotel rooms to help me sleep better, and here there is no A/C in the rooms. I wake up all hot and sweaty because of the comforter (if there were sheets I would just use a sheet as I just HAVE to have some sort of cover when I sleep), open the window, then stay awake because of street noise.

5. I have no concept for how much money I am spending when I use Swedish currency, this despite having converted some money and knowing that conversion rate.

6. In many ways the climate/scenery here feels like I could be in Northern Minnesota and not in Sweden at all. The trees are the same, the ducks are the same, and the weather is similar. If not for the fabulous old buildings I might even be fooled.

I'm sure there are more, but those are all I can think off right now.

Feeling sorry for myself

I should rename my blog to something more appropriate, like "complains about everything" or "whines incessantly," yes I am about to whine and complain again. Not only am I horrible about updating this blog, but when I do post it is just to vent/complain/etc. If you are still reading I'd be surprised.

I'm on a business trip right now, and thankfully I get to go back home tomorrow evening. I've been gone since Tuesday evening, but haven't seen my kids since I dropped them off at daycare Tuesday morning. My kids are fine, home with their Dad, and in a lot of ways my travel of late has been great for DH to figure things out with the kids without my help. It has also been good for Toddler and Infant (who recently had a birthday so she will now be referred to as Toddler 2) to learn to rely on Daddy rather than me all of the time. Of course I am insanely jealous of the fact that I am the one traveling. I'm sure I would complain if I were home alone with the kids and DH were traveling, but DH says nothing. Honestly I think he is worried I will quit my job if he presses the issue too much, and he likes the money I earn far too much to let me do that (at least without another job lined up).

Two weeks in a row with 3 nights away from home in each week is just brutal on me though. I feel so disconnected from my family, and I get so worn out having to be "on" while traveling with coworkers. Breakfast together, working together all day, lunch, dinner, and even a run with my boss last night. It is just too much. I almost said no when my boss asked if he could go for a run with me, the only me time I had in store for the day, but figured it was just plain rude for me to do so. Thankfully tonight he didn't want to run, so I skipped out on dinner with him in order to run solo, and grab a bite to eat by myself after my run. We are staying in a college town, with a variety of clothing stores just a block down from the hotel, so I ran, ate at Chipotle, and went shopping for a while. It was good, even though I kept passing people with babies which just made me miss my babies all the more. I don't have to travel next week, and am very much looking forward to the three day weekend this weekend. I think I need to be away for 4 nights the week after next though, and it just makes me sad. I don't feel like I can say no, but this travel is killing me.

I feel a little trapped for the time being. I don't want to change jobs until I have been here for at least a year since I have a couple of gaps in my employment history now. I suppose I could have a serious talk with my boss about my dissatisfaction with all of this travel, but he did warn me about travel when I accepted the job. I came into it knowing travel was likely, but since I didn't travel at all for the first 6 months it is just now coming to me how much I hate being away from the kids. I left a previous job partially because of travel, and those trips were almost always no longer than 1 night at a shot. I think I could handle 1 night away trips at this point, but these 3-4 day trips are impossible. My son now says things to me like "but you will go on a trip" when we are discussing daily plans. It breaks my heart. We have webcams for my laptop and for the desktop computer at home, so we have had some video calls this week, but I always end up in tears when we have to hang up. It just isn't the same. Toddler 2 tries to grab the monitor for a while, then she just sits and chews on her hand or a toy. Toddler walks away and begs to watch movies.

I realize I am completely rambling right now, I think I just need to get all of these feelings out of me rather than trying to pretend that I am okay with travel. I am not okay with travel. I need to be home with my kids, for their sake and for mine. I will not travel long term. I will find a new job, or find some way to make this job involve much less travel. I cannot just stay the course, because it is seriously affecting my quality of life.

Ugh, sorry to be such a downer.