Johnnie Back To Routine

I was more relieved than anything to do Wednesday routine today. Get up early, Johnnie already awake and no doubt excited to get back to it. Get him showered and dressed, drive thru at McDonalds, get him going with breakfast and then get his lunch ready. I was happy driving him to school, walking him to the gate, catching up with Brooklyn and Bailey and letting them know Johnnie is back. I knew when I got back I would have a ton of meetings waiting for me. As in Back-to-back-to-back meetings but that was OK. Even that seemed more routine-like than coming up with stuff to do for Johnnie. It's always about making sure he's not in front of the TV more than a couple of hours at a time, if that. In the meantime, I have that High-Impact Leadership thing going on at 9, the Town Hall Roadshow prep <man, is it next week already??> and then my Data Team Meeting right after the other. Did I say I needed today as a rest day? Fat chance. Actually the HIMP meeting was interesting because it got deeply personal. We were supposed to talk about - to whatever comfort level we had - how are growing up environment was in terms of talking about difficult issues. That was a simple answer for me. We didn't talk about difficult issues. We just didn't. Everything felt swept under the rug. Everything felt like it was up to the adults to talk about it. Money wasn't talked about, how our day at school was not talked about. It was like, my mom and my dad went to work, we went to school, they came home around 6-ish. My dad would cook most of the time and then... blank. I don't remember. We watched TV I think. And when I was old enough to work, I took a job at 16 and don't remember spending much time around the dinner table. That and generally feeling a lack of attention from being the middle child, and that's how I got to be who I am I guess. I am definitely not treating this as something of a coincidence. Somehow, my other-than-conscious needs this to be brought to my attention. At some level, the central theme for the meeting was how we handle conflict now. I would say not until I became a dad myself did I really even care. Now I see things from the lens of bringing up Johnnie and I definitely want to create safe space for him so we CAN have a discussion. I don't want to shield him from the world, I want him well-equipped to handle whatever comes his way. And so we DO have to have those discussions. Stuff me and my parents never had.  All the while forgiving them AND forgiving myself for that past. It's ok. I don't need their validation anymore. I only need to validate myself. Pretty deep for a Leadership meeting huh?! And then some bit of drama for the Data Team Meeting where Shilpa was expressing a lot of frustration about James again not being responsive at all. I've given up on that guy. In my mind, let's just do what we do and forget about him. Better that way I think. I know I know. I should just fire his ass. But part of the legacy I inherited didn't I? Finally lunch time came and I was finally able to kick my feet up and pretend that I'm relaxing and enjoying the sun outside. Before I knew it, it was already time to pick up Johnnie...

So today being Wednesday I still agreed to bring Johnnie to Lisa's office and do his Spanish class there. The last time she saw him was almost a week ago Thursday. A week ago we did the Spanish class and then dinner at Panda Express and Sea Salt. Tonight we won't be doing that. I snuck in some Panda Express already for his lunch and he did eat it. We did do the class though and Johnnie continued to do just fine. Afterwards, it was Johnnie who suggested that we go to Oops for dinner. Why not? We only fought about it the last time we ate here LOL LOL! This time no such friction. Just a regular family dinner the 3 of us have that is now seemingly the routine for Wednesday nights. Used to be it was Japanese food when we went to Cornerstone a couple of years ago. Seems so long ago now. It was perfectly benign. You could almost say it was boringly pleasant LOL. Lisa of course missed Johnnie as I would have and kept on hugging him and kissing him. But I could tell Johnnie wanted to go with dad, he wasn't done with his time with me and took full advantage with MORE Pokemon and Dragon Riders videos. I was pretty caught up with steps at this point so there wasn't much left to do except chill. And later on when Johnnie fell asleep, watch MAYANS on FX. A good Wednesday it turned out to be. And now we squarely look ahead to Johnnie's Spring Show on Friday...