Sales Conference

My wife left at 7 am this morning for Florida. It’s her company’s annual sales conference, where she and her co-workers, bosses, and subordinates get to frolic in an air conditioned resort for four whole days of meetings, symposiums, ceremonies, and break-out sessions. The only thing that enables her to keep her sanity are the cocktails and dancing in the evenings.

Anyway, we’re excited because she’s in the running for Account Executive of the Year. This prestigious award is a very big deal in her company, and we’re all very proud of her here at home. Keep your fingers crossed for us. If she wins, she gets use of the company villa in Puerto Rico, and we get to go for a week and invite up to ten other people. It would be our first vacation since … well, since we were at Puerto Rico in 2007 when her best friend won the award.

So I’m watching the two little ones for the next 86 hours. 79 hours, as I write this. Yes, I’m counting down. Don’t get me wrong, I love my children and I enjoy them immensely. But here’s the primary piece of wisdom I’ve learned over the past six years as a father and one I never tire mentioning to my longsuffering wife: One child easy, two children not so much. Especially now that Patch is interacting on a much more assertive level with her big sister. That’s mentally, verbally, and, uh, physically assertive.

We have baths, church and a trip to the grocery store already under our belts. The girls are going to watch Megamind camping out on the living room floor with some popcorn while I bang away at the laptop in the dining room later this afternoon. Then they’ll play outside in the backyard while I make dinner. Then it’s bedtime promptly at 8. And I have three or four hours to kill. Maybe I’ll watch a DVD or something. Maybe read. Maybe write.

Then the next three days are just like any other Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, except that the wife won’t be around to help. I need her most during the morning rush to get Little One off to school and that 90-minute period between dinner and bedtime, what with baths and jammas and stories and all. But I’m getting very used to all this stay-at-home parenting, for better or worse.

I have noticed that the job market, at least where I’m concerned, is picking up. I now have two or three things a week going, whether its suitable job applications or call backs. This is opposed to two or three things every two or three months six months ago and more. We’re very optimistic I’ll be working soon, which is a good thing for all of us, my sanity especially. Hopefully, God willing, we’ll have to hire a babysitter or fly in a grandparent for next year’s sales conference.

Lots of good stuff on the horizon, here at the Hopper. Stay tuned!