The One Thing No One Knows About You

I was in Connecticut this past week for work, and knew going into the trip there was going to be opportunity to meet new people in group settings. I like to mentally prepare for these things, which means coming up with stuff like, "What is one thing no one else knows about you?"

I have an AMAZING topic. I love to share it, and tell the story. No one, in any setting where I've said my one thing (so people now know, but I still use it) has ever experienced the same thing. I may have oversold this, but I'm cool with that.

The one thing people offer up about me when it's more trivia-based, and I don't choose the topic, is "Who lives on a cattle farm?" That happened this trip, below is a transcript of the actual conversation, and it's usually the same thing whenever the topic comes up:

Trivia Question: "Who lives on a cattle farm?"
Person 1: "Someone in this room lives on a cattle farm?"
Person 2: "It's Katie"
Person 1, 3, 4, etc: "Bwa ha ha ha ha! It's Katie! Can you imagine if that were actually true? Bwa ha ha ha ha!!!!"
Me: "No, really, I live on a cattle farm."
Room: Silence. Staring as people look at how I'm dressed (amazing), my handbag and accessories (also amazing). Guys...People...do you know what farmers look like? Like regular people. We're crazy like that.

If this is your idea of what a Farm Couple looks like, you may need to expand your horizons.

Ok, so what's the one thing about me that I like to use?

Wait for it...

I fell in quick-sand hiking through a Cloud Forest in Ecuador.

This statement usually leads to the Longest Story Ever (as I've been told) because you don't just say that and walk away. People want to know how that happened, and how I lived to tell the tale. Then all the other random stuff that happened in Ecuador. Like the crazy people on the plane down there. Not being able to breathe due to altitude sickness on the top of Mt. Cayambe. Almost dying on the Road to NoNo on a Pre-Incan trail. Staying overnight in a plantation. Meeting a real-life medicine woman and having roasted guinea pig with her family. Trying on indigenous clothing. Almost getting mugged in downtown Quito because of my atrocious sense of direction. The creepy serial-killer looking guy who was at the "Internet cafe" every day looking at porn. How horribly, miserably sick I got.

See? That's my short story, there's no detail in it, and it's still long.

I've decided to try something, which is to write down my Ecuadorian Adventures and post them in my blog. Mainly because it's a good story. And maybe if I do it this way, I can give people the highlights and then send them here for the rest. So if anyone is interested in reading about my Ecuadorian Adventures, I'll be breaking them into several parts and posting them out here as I finish.

Ecuador Cloud Forest. This was after I fell in the quick sand.

To the best Dad

My parents like to take all of their grand-kids and have sleepovers at their house once a week. THEY LIKE TO, People. As in, I get phone calls asking what's wrong with me, and why I don't want my kids to have fun if there's a week we can't make it happen. On our end, this is amazing, as we get to go out and have dinner and stuff...or sometimes we just lay on the couch and watch TV. WHATEVER WE WANT ON TV. Although it usually takes a while to find what we want to watch, because there is so much Sesame Street on our Netflix queue. And Daniel the Tiger, and Wild Kratts, and Jake & the Neverland Pirates...you get the picture.

But that's not why I have the best dad. I mean, that's a pretty great reason (and my mom should be included in there too, although she doesn't usually make the phone calls asking what's wrong with me) but really the whole overnight-one-day-a-week thing has only been going on for about 4 years. I have at least...um...ok, I'm not going to to into how many other years I need to account for. I'll summarize them for you:

He rocked a 1980's mustache like it's no one's business

Movie night, 1980's style

He always kept a very close eye on us growing up

You: "Katie, you look so young!" Me: "Thanks!"

He climbed the highest mountain with us...or the top of Mayan ruins

Top of the Mayan Ruins

He shows us every day how important it is to take care of yourself. He started doing triathlons in his 50's. He does an annual JDRF bike ride. My parents have boxes of racquetball trophies in their house. And this year we did a family 5K.

Dad doing a Tri

He made sure we each grew up with a strong work ethic, and all of us started working part-time jobs as soon as we were old enough.

He made going on vacation a priority. Some of our best family memories are during vacations.

• Dad rolling down the window as an ostrich was coming right at me in a drive-thru zoo in Florida
• Also in Florida, getting lost on Drug Runner's Road (if that wasn't the official name, it should have been)
• Going to a Chicago Bulls game when Michael Jordan was playing
• Again in Florida (it was a pretty epic vacation) Dad renting a catamaran and splashing the water to make me think a shark was coming at me
• Renting lake cabins so we could all spend a few days hanging out
• Trips to Adventureland
• My first international experience--The Bahamas
• Starting to take trips that included friends--like Mexico and Vegas
• The Omaha Royals game, which I'm not going to discuss to protect the innocent. I just want to taunt them a little by bringing it up

He coached or attended all of our activities. My elementary softball (hence the still-current chant, "Kate, Kate the Rusty Gate). My brother and sister's soccer and softball. My National Honor Society stuff (I may have taken a different path than the athletic route).

Those are all little, day to day things that are part of being a family that sometimes get missed. Family vacations are important. Softball games are important. Doing stuff together is important.

Then there are the big things:

Being there for me after boyfriend break-ups.

Taking care of neighborhood bullies.

Rushing to the hospital when I delivered G five weeks early, and in record time (20 minutes after I got to the hospital, that may be another story though) to make sure we were okay (we were).

Walking me down the aisle, twice...both times to the same guy though. I just really like weddings.

My first day at college.

Every time he steps up to help one of his kids, or their spouses, or his grand-kids...which is all the time.

First day at ISU. I know, I made bangs look good.

Being a Dad is not just doing the Little Things, or being there for the Big Things. It's being there for All The Things. And that, my friends, is why I have the Best Dad. 

Just to make this a little bit longer, and drive home my point a little more, I'm re-posting what my sister posted on his last day of radiation treatment, Feb. 6, 2014:

My dad’s better than your dad, and I can prove it.
To outsiders he is the dashing Store Director whom eats twigs and berries, works out daily, raises endless amounts of money for Juvenile Diabetes, and leaps tall buildings with a single bound. All of which may be true; however, the tall buildings could just be the plastic houses his grand-kids play in. It’s tall to them! He taught me to play soccer, baseball, basketball, football (yes football,), and Nintendo. Every trophy I have is because of something he taught me, including the two trophies for sacking groceries!

However, the things most don’t know about and can’t see make him far better. In college, my ovary exploded and I spent quality time in the ICU. As I laid there, breathing thru the mask and arguing with nurses about what’s really going to help me manage; all I wanted was a dark chocolate iced long john. Dad to the rescue! Within an hour I had one. That long john did what morphine, oxygen masks, and blood transfusions could not. My mom sat there with me laughing as she told me there were no dark chocolate iced long johns. There was only maple, gross! So, my dad scrapped all the icing off the long john and re-iced it in dark chocolate. It’s the little things that make him amazing.

Today, my dad gets his last radiation treatment. So, I wanted to take a moment to express how proud and grateful I am of the man who has been there for me my entire life. Even if he does say that my siblings are higher on the list because I haven’t given him grand-kids yet.

Working from Home, not Working from Home and Hanging Out with my Kids

A few months ago I made the decision to stop my 1.5 hour round trip commute I’d been doing for 12 years and began working from home.

My husband and I put a lot of thought into this before making the move. From a career standpoint, I needed more privacy than the cube-farm could allow, and didn’t have an option for an office. My job also entails a very large number of conference calls and working with people in a variety of different locations, so essentially I was driving into work each day, sitting at my desk on the phone for 8-10 hours, then getting in my car and driving home. I very rarely was able to stop for lunch, had very little human interaction outside of phone calls, and although I had standing weekly appointment to go to Starbucks, it was getting more rare to have that date than not. My company is very supportive of virtual employees, and a number of co-workers, as well as my immediate manager all work from home as well. So while this isn’t always an option, as long as I stay with my current employer working from home shouldn’t have a negative impact on my career growth.

Being an Introvert by nature (I took the Myers Brigg test, so it’s all official and stuff), I’m completely comfortable being by myself for large periods of time. Which is good, because, you know…I live on a farm in the middle of nowhere and it’s more unusual than not for me to see people I’m not somehow related to.

Working from home has taken some getting used to, but luckily I have a number of co-workers who also work from home full time so they could give me some insight. Here are the top questions I get now that I work from home full time:

1. “Oh, you work at home? How do you manage that with kids?”

This is the NUMBER ONE question I get. By the way, my male co-workers with kids don’t get the same question, which absolutely infuriates me, but that may be a topic for another day. Here’s how I handle working at home when I have kids: they go to day care, same as they did before.

I work at home. This means I have an office that I go to every day, I have computer, monitors, phone…pretty much everything I had before in my “regular” office. Only now I have three walls that are whiteboard and my commute is me going from my kitchen to my office, on the other side of the kitchen. However, what this doesn’t mean is that I work at home with my kids also at home.

The only exception to working at home with kids is if one of them is sick, and then we also do exactly what we did before: juggle who watches the kids and who works, ask Nana if we need to, and supplement with lots of Sesame Street or Daniel the Tiger. I just read an article about watching Sesame Street making your kids smarter, so really I feel like I’m doing them a favor by streaming it. If we need to either my husband or I will take the day off. This is the same process we followed before I worked at home. I like to call it, “our version of parenting sick kids.” I guess the only other exception is when I have to work on weekends, then there's no getting around my kids being home with me.

What happens when my kids are sick at home: my office gets trashed and Sesame Street streams on Netflix for hours.

This is a weekend checkout. Someone woke up early and wanted to help.

2. “That must be nice, you get to drink whenever you want."

So…I mean, technically, I guess? I’ve been asked if I drink Kahlua in my coffee in the morning (No, I drink International Delight Cinnabon creamer). Or if I have a glass of wine starting at 4 (um…no. I usually wait till around 5:30. Ok, it’s really 5.)

I’ve found, and confirmed this with other work-from-home people, that when you work at home full-time you need to have a mechanism to keep work and home separate. This means I don’t drink at work, just like I didn’t when I drove into the office every day. People frown at you when you add Kahlua in your coffee every morning, bottle in hand while you go to a staff meeting. Bottom line: you just don't do it.

3. “So you get to go to work in your pajamas? That must be awesome.”

Hell yeah, it is!

4. “Don’t you miss being around people?”

I’m fortunate enough that I get to travel periodically to either conferences or brick-and-mortar sites that I still get to see the people I work with pretty frequently. I can also make that same drive into the office that I've done the previous 12 years if I need to. Plus I buy groceries and stuff, and there are usually people there.

5. “Aren’t you less productive?”

No. I actually have to stop myself from working too much, because it’s all right here, available 24/7. If I don’t watch the time I’ll find myself working from when everyone leaves in the morning until they get home, which is usually right around 11 hours later.

So far the only complaint I have working from home is that the cafeteria sucks.

Finding The Time

I noticed it’s been a little over a year since I’ve written anything. This is amusing to me, as the piece I had been working on last May was about the time between 5:03 AM and 5:45 AM. What’s that 42 minute time frame, you might ask? It was the time of day I had all to myself. And sometime in the last year I haven’t found the time to write about finding time…

I made the decision to get up at 5:03 because I felt like getting up before 5 AM is nothing short of ridiculous unless you’re getting on an airplane to go somewhere exotic. With a beach. And someone bringing you drinks. While you lie on the beach. Generally speaking, this is not my life. My life is a marriage, managing two small children, two dogs, a full time job, being a friend, sister, daughter, with the occasional exotic vacation thrown in just to keep things interesting.

Crane Beach in Barbados. I've been here. 

Between 5:03 and 5:45 I would feed the dogs, make breakfast…medium egg on one of those thin bread/sandwich things, toasted, with a little bit of salsa and a slice of cheese. ¼ cup of oatmeal mixed with honey and blueberries. My first cup of coffee. I would watch the news and read a book. I didn’t have to talk to anyone. It was quiet. Peaceful.  And for those wondering when I became old and boring and started watching the news, I’m guessing about 11 years ago when I moved out here and no longer had cable so I couldn’t watch HGTV…oh, that doesn’t make me any cooler?

You know what that time was? ME TIME. I used it every day. It was fantastic, and I willingly woke up that early five days a week. So that was the last blog I was working on—making sure to take time for yourself and finding that time each day/week, whatever you need. I needed time each day to myself, with quiet, where I could read a book. I understand this isn’t for everyone—my husband goes for a run. I run so I don’t have to buy bigger clothes. I don’t consider time spent hoping I don’t die as constructive “me time.” But hey, no judgment.

And then something happened—I started working from home full time. Working from home is amazing. I get up over an hour later, the amount of time it takes me to get ready in the morning is sometimes limited to washing my face and brushing my teeth, and  I’m saving about 2 hours a day just in drive time. Love it!!

I’m now almost six months into working from home and one thing I haven’t really figured out is a schedule. That “me” time that I had each day? I somehow lost it. Maybe because I’m now home almost all the time, so quiet time in the morning isn’t as meaningful? Now I feel like my “time to recharge” involves me leaving the house and being around adults I’m not related to…usually doing exciting things like buying groceries. The only downside to this is sometimes I word-vomit to complete strangers. It’s awkward.

Actually, is it more awkward to word-vomit to complete strangers, or to slight acquaintances that you have to see every week at your 4 year old’s tumbling class? Not that it’s ever happened…