Time off (for good behavior?)

So it's been two weeks since I posted.  It's not that I'm not doing anything notable, more that I'm doing too much to have time to make note of it.  Having spent the week of Valentines day on a whirlwind work-related tour of Europe (London, Oslo and Hamburg-all in 6 days!) I returned to a very full email in box and a lot of in person work that needed to be done in the day I was in the office before I took off the end of the week for a short family vacation.  Add to that the necessary shopping for the vacation, food for three days, snow gear for me, some place to pack our luggage and food when the station wagon is fully loaded with adults, children and dogs and I was more or less running non-stop right up to the last moment. Phew.  I'm tired just typing that.
Well it all came together and on Wednesday, despite the severe weather warnings, last minute rental of an All-wheel drive vehicle and a meltdown over the possibility that all of this planning would be undone if the roads required tire chains since the rental car contract absolutely did not allow them, we made our way to the little "chalet" we'd rented near Stevens Pass.
Mr. Dog had worked late into the night (actually very early morning!) on Tuesday, so we decided to make a more relaxed morning of it and head out a bit later than originally planned.  We took our time with breakfast and packing, only to be reminded that Wednesday is the day when the housekeepers come.  Oops!  We managed to get out of the house with only a minimal overlap, hopefully not too irritating to them as I had to keep rushing across their work to get this or that thing that needed to be put into the car.  Finally we left the house and headed off to the snow.
By the time we arrived at the cabin it was time for lunch.  The boys happily settled in while I made a cold-weather friendly meal of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.  After eating they had a good old fashioned snowball fight with Mr. Dog.  They even got to build a snowman, though sadly abandoned without a face it ended up looking a bit more like a snow-turd. Ah the family memories, right?
Although we brought our laptops, we hardly opened them.  Turns out they aren't that interesting or useful when there is no wifi.  Heck, we hardly had cell signal.  For me, the disconnectedness was probably the most unusual part of the vacation. 
It isn't often that I don't have my computer on my lap.  When I don't it's pretty common for me to have my iPhone in hand happily tapping away on the little screen.  I find it difficult to ignore the siren song of the internet.  I enjoy it, and then there's my work that doesn't rest even when I sleep.  In an international company there is always someone working and emails that I can, if I choose to, take time to answer.
Yes, here is the part where you can scold me for always making the choice to respond.  I have a hard time not doing it, and when I don't it seems like controversy pops up and I'm the only one who doesn't step up to offer a solution.  This is something I need to get more comfortable with as I take on more and more responsibility.  It is hard to be "on" all of the time if you never give yourself a chance to really be "off".  And for the past three days, save a few hours while the boys were skiing and I got a 3G signal to my phone at the bar of the ski lodge, I was forced to be off.  Deliciously, completely unavoidably off.
In my downtime, I got to watch the boys take ski lessons, snuggled with our kids and did some fantastic nothing.  I'm going to have to try to do that a bit more often.

I have a bridge to show you

Big Dog was born in San Francisco, my favorite city in the world. We left when he was quite small, but because I have a special connection with San Francisco I try to foster a connection for him as well. One thing that has captured his imagination is the Golden Gate Bridge. I have drawn this for him many times, and now that he's older he incorporates it into his own drawings as well. He's seen photos and talks about going to the bridge whenever we talk about San Francisco. Last week we took him to San Francisco for the first time since he was a toddler. His one request was to see the Golden Gate Bridge.

As we drove in the city on our way to the freeway, Big Dog spied the Bay Bridge. "Look! The Golden Gate Bridge!" he announced.
"No, that's the Bay Bridge. We'll go to the Golden Gate soon, I promise," I corrected.
At this point, completely unknowable to me the bridge moved from reality to fantasy. For some reason, it ceased to exist as part of the real world.

At breakfast the day we were planning to see the Golden Gate, we told him of the day's agenda. "The Golden Gate Bridge isn't real," he responded with absolute certainty in his voice.
"I promise you it does," I said, "You'll see soon."
"No. It doesn't," he replied again. We continued to try to argue the existence with our stubborn boy, but to no avail. I finally relented, I figured he'd see for himself in a bit and that would be the end of that.

Boy was I wrong. As we drove down Lombard approaching the bridge, it was shrouded in fog. Not surprising for San Francisco, but kind of disappointing since I wanted to show my boys the full glory of the bridge backed with the blue sky. But as we drove up, I pointed out the bridge, I told Big Dog, "Look! The Golden Gate Bridge!"
"No, that's the Bay Bridge," he replied, completely non-plussed.
"No, the Bay Bridge is the other bridge."
"No. You're wrong." This kid gets his stubborn streak from someone, so I knew this wasn't going to be easy. As we neared the bridge, I pointed out signs. He ignored them. I reminded him of the bridge's unique color. He shrugged it off. Everything I tried fell flat.
Finally, after driving across my favorite bridge, we pulled to the vista point in Marin. We took in the view overlooking San Francisco. I called him to my side and pointed to the bridge in the distance. "See Big Dog, that is the Bay Bridge."
"No, that's the Golden Gate."
Infuriating. Stubborn. Just like his mama.

He later relented and admitted we'd been on the Golden Gate, but not before raising my blood pressure to a presumably unsafe level.

Wordless Wednesday: Weekend Adventures

Who am I and what am I doing here?

I'm back at work today after a week and a day off. I can't believe it was only a week. Seriously. I had a nice visit with my parents, got traumatized by bats at the zoo, got all jazzed about the idea of keeping urban chickens, made a new commitment to myself to start getting back into shape (a shape other than "pear" that is), decided we needed to transform the area in the yard the dogs have destroyed into a vegetable garden, started building raised beds and went on a grocery shopping rampage. Mr. Dog got the next section of the foundation poured and got an engineer to ok the removal of the cribbing from under the house!

Now I'm sitting here in my office after my first few phone meetings and it's like I'm an impostor. What do I do here? What do I need to do today? No idea. It's like someone bulk erased my brain. It may be partly assisted by the fact it is gorgeous out today and I rode my bike to work. Tried an alternate route to avoid high traffic roads and discovered it is possible to make a ride that's really all down hill into a ride that is almost all uphill. Brutal, my legs are still shaking as a result, but I feel good to have been out doing something active.

Now, to work. Sigh.