The last two days have not exactly gone as planned.

After traveling for work last week, a trip that included me spilling something on my laptop and completely frying it in a moment of true brilliance (shine bright like a diamond…), I not only anticipated this week starting out with laser-like focus, but I really needed it to.   Traveling for work is inevitably a series of meetings and workshops where we plan out the upcoming work that needs to be done.  Design sessions, iteration planning, roadmap refinement.  One of my all time favorite words is apt to describe it: metawork. The work about the work, if you will.

At the end of the trip, we break from the huddle and disperse about the field to start running our carefully planned plays.  Me with my in-elegant loaner laptop tucked under one arm, head hung appropriately in shame as my fellow business travelers laughed and pointed from behind the screens of their Macbooks and ultra lights.  Yes, that’s me.  Carrying a large brick through the airport.  You should see the hand-crank generator I need to actually run this thing, too.  And stop judging me for ordering alcohol on my 8am flight home.  It was champagne, which everyone knows is an acceptable breakfast cocktail.  Judgy McJudgerson.

But I digress.

The Monday after a travel week has a trifecta of challenges in normal circumstances.  First, while I was out of pocket working to establish alignment with stakeholders, all of the normal work I do everyday is typically not getting done.  So there’s a pile of unanswered emails and meeting notes to review, and everyone I talk to has a bit of an attitude about having to wait for my response to things.  “Oh,” their voices say, “something else was more important than me?  I’ll show YOU who has more important things to do.”  It’s exhausting.  And silly.  Which makes it more exhausting.

Second, all of the plans we made during the trip have to be executed.  There’s a thin window of acceptable time to start turning those plans into actions before people start conveniently misremembering the role they were supposed to play (aka the work expected of them).  If you aren’t implementing the plan, you’re sabotaging it before it’s ever really started.  So doubling down the minute you get back is really the best way to solidify what was achieved.

Third, my family and my household have been waiting for my return.  My family needs and deserves my attention — especially as the girls get older.  They feel it when mom is gone, and I need to work extra hard to make them feel special when I get home.  My husband, who is the true superhero in the story, not only missed having me around for adult company, but desperately needs a break from his temporary role as single parent.  And the household… well, groceries aren’t going to buy themselves.    Which is odd, really, since the wine seems to somehow DRINK itself…

Anyway, this week’s return had an extra challenge that has been trying my patience for the last several months: snow.   I used to delight in snowfall, and if I’m honest with myself, in my heart of hearts I really still do.  But more than delight I feel a sinking feeling when I see the weather forecasts these days.   Snow means I won’t have childcare, which puts a red exclamation mark around the fact that I work from home for a company that is based in California.  And while they may have the occasional earthquake or mudslide, they generally aren’t worried about snow.

When your city is hit with a snowstorm, everything pretty much grinds to a halt.  No one has childcare.  No one goes to work.  Everyone accepts the child screaming in the background of your conference call because their child is screaming too.  Exceptions and allowances are made, and life goes on.  What’s difficult is when your city is hit with a snowstorm but YOU are the only one affected by these inconveniences.

So to sum up, the last two days were a juggling act between work and kids, with neither getting the attention they deserve.  David and I played the usual round of “conference call, conference call, who’s got the conference call?”  and shuffled them back and forth as best we could.  And in the midst of this incredibly frustrating experience — incredibly. frustrating. — I realized something.  As I stood at the sink, washing the eight thousandth sippy cup of the day, trying to remember what time my next call was supposed to start, I realized something.

I have a choice.  I don’t have a choice about the circumstances, but I have a choice how I feel about them.  I’m choosing to feel frustrated.  I’m choosing to be annoyed.  And those choices are not changing the circumstances at all.  If anything, it’s making things worse.  I’m letting that lingering anxiety and sense of panic at not getting everything done eat away at me until I’m really just making myself miserable.

Whenever we have a holiday or a snow day, or really any time we have a weekday with the kids, we tell them it’s a “Bonus day.”  An extra day with mom and dad is, to the kids, a Bonus Day.   And honestly, that’s the right way to think about it for me, too (which I wasn’t doing).  They are only going to be little once.  Once.  For a fleeting handful of time.  And any extra time, no matter the reason, that I get to spend with them should be the real cause for delight.   So what if all the tasks didn’t get done.  So what if tomorrow is harder because of it.  None of that will matter in the end.

Watching my daughter’s face as she watched popcorn pop for the first time can never be taken away from me.  So thank you, God, for the snow.  And for making the last two days not go exactly as planned.