All day long I was blowing my nose, a series of increasingly ridiculous trumpeting noises and an ever-worsening amount of snot, until at twenty past six I slunk home, too tired (after a 3:30 reveille from La Serpiente) to be able to do any more. Arriving home before 6:45 was good, because I got to attend dinner with my children, and in turn that seemed to lead to La Serpiente not wigging out at me, and then going to bed efficiently.
Well, efficiently sounds soulless. It helped that we located her book of poems (hidden in almost plain sight in her bookshelf) after it had eluded us for three days. I read her two stories, four poems and put out the light, and she flopped and turned twice, then went to sleep.
Scarcely believing this, I went out and sat in the living room for half an hour, before going for a run. I bought my own copy of Build Your Running Body after being so impressed by the copy from the library, and today was Monday, and that meant it was time for a slow tempo run: two fifteen minute bursts at marathon pace, with a three minute jog in between. That was the enjoyable part of the run. The less enjoyable part was having to run down to the highway to find enough distance for it; at least at 9 at night the roads are fairly quiet, rather than having to slog along next to endless streams of traffic.
I came home just before La Serpiente woke up and gave a howl of unhappiness. Earlier today my wife had told her that if she wakes in the night, she should go into the spare room and get me, rather than into the main bedroom to wake her mother and her sister. La Serpiente had walked in, and had the nasty shock of her father being in absentia. Hence the howl. I ran up to her and guided her back to bed, and after three flops on the mattress and finally getting Uncle Henk, her beloved bear, in a headlock, she went straight back to sleep without a complaint. That left me free to enjoy quality time with my wife.
Well, that left me free to spend another hour or so battering through work that I hadn’t managed to attack today, and which I won’t be able to touch tomorrow because of the mound of meetings ahead of me. I really must stop letting people put meetings in my diary when I have to get things done that aren’t on their schedule. Right now nobody seems considerate enough to check whether they’ve double booked me or not – it was bad enough when I didn’t have an hour to myself in the day, but now it seems people expect me to be in two separate meetings for half of every hour as well. When will they learn?