Marla the Blogger

I'm proud to say that I do a pretty good job of keeping my home life and my work life separated. In this day of everyone being connected and available 24/7, I leave the office on time and only check email or do work in the evenings or on weekends in special circumstances. The one time, though, that I can't keep the two worlds from colliding is when I have to travel for business. I used to be fortunate and only had to take one or two business trips a year, but since we moved to Boston, I've had to travel for work much more frequently.

I've never been a fan of traveling for work, even before I was married and had a child. It seems that you either get to go somewhere fun, but have absolutely no time to enjoy it (I once spent several days at a meeting at a spa in Sonoma and neither got to use the spa facilities nor visit any of the wine country), or you go somewhere you've already been a million times and/or don't care to travel (sorry, Orlando). Plus, traveling for work cuts into my personal life. And, to make matters worse, I have a terrible travel jinx when traveling alone. It's so bad, it's legendary at work and my co-workers joke about how I should drive everywhere instead.

I recently had to travel for work and this last trip was no exception to my streak of back travel luck and I had problems with my connecting flight out of DC. Did you know that airplanes have windshield wipers? Guess I never really thought about it, but apparently they do. And apparently if these windshield wipers aren't working and they can't fix them and it's, say, 11:00 pm, they'll just cancel your flight. And of course, the next flight out won't be until tomorrow morning. Yes, this happened to me and instead of getting home late on a Friday night, I didn't get home until late Saturday morning.  Talk about cutting into my personal time.

Obviously I was disappointed; I REALLY wanted to get home and see my husband and son. And after doing the single dad routine for a few days while I was out of town, my husband REALLY wanted me to get home, too. But we both tried to make the best of it. I treated myself to a nice dinner and a drink at the hotel restaurant, and my husband took our son to the children's museum Saturday morning. There are lots of things that happen in life that we have no control over. You can either choose to get angry and let it ruin your mood, or you can just roll with it and try to make the best of it. I can't do much about work cutting into my personal time when I travel, and I certainly can't do anything about my bad travel luck, but I'm not going to let it upset me and try to make up for it when I can. Because it took so long to get home from my trip, I took some comp time the next week and left work early on my son's birthday to spend extra time with him. And I talked to my boss and I'll only be taking direct flights from now on!

A few weeks ago I ran a 5K race. I've never run very long distances (10K is the longest race I've ever run) but I used to run short distances of 3 - 5 miles on a regular basis. However, since my son was born, I've gone from running about 3 times a week to running 3 times a month, if I'm lucky. Needless to say, when I run, I'm a lot slower than I used to be because I do it so infrequently. I was so slow in this recent race that my husband, who started after me and was pushing our almost 30 lb son in his jogging stroller, still beat me by more than 10 minutes.

Of course, I shouldn't be comparing my time to my husband's, with or without the jogging stroller, because he runs a lot more than I do.  He runs marathons, usually one in the spring and one in the fall, and has been running for about nine years. He started running because his father suffered a serious heart attack and my husband became concerned about his own health and was looking for a cheap way to work out. He found he didn't get bored with running if he was training for something, so he started running short races. Over the years he started running longer and longer races and eventually made his way up to marathons.

When some people hear that my husband has a race coming up, they'll sometimes ask him, "do you think you'll win?" or "have you ever won a race?" As fast as my husband is, especially compared to me, he'll probably never win a race. He probably won't even ever win his age division (although he jokes if he can keep up his current pace, he'll be able to win his age group by the time he's 70). What some people don't realize is that for him running and racing isn't about winning.  First, it's about getting exercise; second, it's about trying to improve on your own personal best time; and third, it's about having fun. And even though he'd like to run faster and rank higher in the results, he doesn't spend a lot of time worrying or thinking about how other people rate. He's mostly concerned with doing his best and trying to improve in comparison to his own past results.

When I was lamenting about my poor finishing time after the recent race I did, my husband reminded me that at least I had gotten out and tried.  I got some exercise and had fun both running the race and at the post-race festivities. And, truthfully, my time wasn't the worst I'd ever done. It was still faster than some of the very first races I did, back when I started running several years ago. I think people frequently compare themselves to others and feel they come up short.  I know I do this sometimes and am trying to be better about just being happy with what I can do and what I have. The thing is, there will always be someone that's faster, smarter, better at something, etc. than you are. If you constantly compare yourself to others, you're bound to be disappointed. It's more important to find your own motivation for trying to do your best, and not beat yourself up if you're not as good at something as someone else.  So, I'm going to keep running and participating in races when I can, but I'm going to try to remember that just getting to the finish line is more important than how many other people get there before me.   

Earlier this week, my son was sick. It's not unusual for him to get sick since he goes to daycare (or "the germ factory" as I like to call it) and for the most part, it's typically just a bad cold and nothing worse. This time was no exception. He woke up really early, had a cough and constant runny nose and in general seemed a little cranky. As much as I'd love to keep him home every time he didn't feel 100%, it's just not possible. If he has any serious symptoms (fever, vomiting, etc.) or is really lethargic, then of course I keep him home. But generally if it's just a cold, I still send him to daycare.

This time, however, I decided we should play hooky. I knew I had a light day at work with no meetings and thought he would appreciate not going to school if he was feeling under the weather. It was already warm and sunny in the morning and the forecast was calling for a really nice day. And I could also make sure he got a good, long nap in the afternoon. So after we dropped my husband off at the subway station, we went by my office to pick up my laptop and headed back home.

We didn't do anything spectacular with our day off and I kept it low-key since he wasn't feeling great, but it was still a lot of fun. As a working mom, I'm often envious of the time my stay-at-home mom friends get to spend with their kids, so it was great for my son and I to have a laid back day to spend together. We sat on the couch and read his favorite books together, over and over again. We ran a quick errand and I specifically picked the store that has the "race car" carts that he loves so he could "drive" and we did some extra laps around the parking lot when we were done shopping. I made his favorite food for lunch (cheese pizza and strawberries) and he had a nice, long nap and woke up happy. I was even able to get a little work done while he napped so I wouldn't be so far behind when I went back to work the next day. And he felt good enough after his nap for us to play for a short time at the park.

Even though we didn't do much with our day off, it was just refreshing to take one off spontaneously. When my son was tired and cranky in the morning and I asked him "would you rather stay home with mommy today?" his face lit up and I knew it would be an enjoyable day for both of us. The next day, he was excited to go back to "school" and see all his friends and I could tell he was feeling much better. I'm really glad we took time out of our usual day-to-day routine to play hooky and enjoy some extra time together. Especially since now I think I'm getting his cold. And I think I'm going to schedule another day off like this for us another time when he's feeling better so we can enjoy it even more.