Day One Hundred Eleven

It is my job to be in meetings. Literally. A glance at my calendar reveals that I'm in an average of 7 hours of meetings per day, and the only reason that average is so low is that there is a weird (and wonderful!) cultural thing at my office that has everyone in silent agreement that we don't do meetings on Fridays. "No Meeting Fridays" are a real thing that happen once per month, but then everybody sort of just applies it to every Friday.

Don't ever stop, co-workers. No Meeting Fridays SHOULD be every single Friday.

Basically, that whole thing means I'm in meetings from 8:00 am until 5:00 pm Monday through Thursday, plus I frequently have meetings with my international team in the evenings. I had calls with people in Oman, China, Singapore, and Australia last week, for example, and there's no good time for any of that except very early or very late. Give me very late EVERY time.

So ... Mila. Mila knows it's my job to be in meetings. I have explained to her that I get paid for meetings and that it's how I pay for her toys and clothes and stuff. She gets it. For real. She checks in on me several times per day, but for the most part she has figured out how to enjoy time with her sister while I'm productive.

Every once in a while, though, Mila decides she MUST be the center of attention. Everyone and their mother is working from home these days, so it's not really odd for a 6-year old to decide they're going to sit in on a meeting about systems integrations or margin expansion or whatever. The kid has listened in on some REAL exciting conversations, let me tell you.

Today, though. Today Mila decided she was bringing the party. I was on a call with my boss's boss, which is another way of saying EVERYONE'S BOSS because he's the President of the company or something like. It was the one half-hour of the entire day that was better off not interrupted and what happened? Besides Mila? Because "Mila" is definitely a verb an adjective and Mila freakin' Mila'd my call with some Mila chaos.

She came flying into my office with a party horn. She was blowing it as loudly as she could while dressed in her pajamas with wild hair flying all over the place. She ended her walking party by yelling, "HAPPY NEW YEAR!" and then ... vanished. She literally partied her way in, threw a party, and then disappeared.

I wasn't muted. My boss's boss heard the whooooooole thing.

At least now there will never be any doubt that my kid is WAY more fun than I am. Ahem.

Comments

[bluzdude]

I see a new meeting strategy developing. Whenever you sense a need for a moment to catch a breath or to undercut rising tensions, just signal in the Mila from the bullpen, for a blast of mirth.