Bring Johnnie To the Office Day

So it did catch me by surprise that today Johnnie's school is closed for Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish religion. A day of atonement. I was surprised when I found out. This past weekend. So really I've had 3 days to figure out what to do with him. I could call in sick or take PTO. OR I could take him to work with me. I chose to bring him to the FRB with me. I figured I had some meeting for a couple of hours, I could simply get him to watch something on his iPad for that long. So I let him sleep late last night and let him sleep in this morning. And we didn't even go to McDonald's for breakfast. instead, I gave him milk and cereal and sourdough toast. That would be the kind of breakfast Lisa would give him. And made myself the usual eggs and pineapple smoothie. And then off we went. It wasn't like Johnnie hadn't been to the FRB with me of late. In fact, he was just there the week before school started in mid-August with that playdate with Brooklyn. No such playdate today. But fortunately there were plenty of things for him to do simply by bringing his computer. Just like his old man. And so while I was off to a charitable giving training meeting upstairs (2nd day in a row I'm in a meeting on the 5th floor at the FRB), I had Johnnie doing Prodigy. Fortunately, the first people we did encounter was Eloisa and then Barbara. And they didn't say anything about Johnnie being there. In fact, it felt very much ok. I had to explain of course that I sort of messed up (ok I lied) and forgot about the holiday. Then again it didn't seem to matter. In fact, here was Faith trying to give him food. And of course the Filipino folks all thought he was so cute. Johnnie sort of just took it all in stride. Anyway I participated full out at the meeting, using the 5-minute break in between to check on Johnnie. When the meeting got done, off we went to lunch at 7th and Fig. yeah, it was a bit of a walk on a hot day. But the pizza was worth it, even if the service really wasn't.  Pizza studio was one of my go-to pizza places even before the pandemic. Today they were out of pineapple though. How can you run out of anything just as the lunch rush was starting? Still I replaced my pineapple with cherry tomatoes and all was good. When we came back I had one more meeting to do. It was the Penelope Implementation meeting. And I had NOT prepared one bit for it. Leave it to me though to pull stuff out of my ass yet again and actually got positive movement with Erica the primary user. As in I had her actually tryiing the system and creating events by herself. The reason they had not implemented was that she simply didn't have any confidence at all. They had gone over all the steps, but it didn't take because Erica simply hadn't had any reps. Just like sports, that is easy to fix. Just get some reps in. And so we're simply going to practice and practice and practice for the next couple of weeks. Starting today. And we got farther along in this one day I felt than they had in almost a year! So Johnnie and I finally took off for home close to 3 PM. It was the latest I had ever stayed on a Wednesday at the FRB since the pandemic. Today I gave Johnnie the choice of doing his Spanish class at my apartment or Lisa's office. But then I told him that either way we still had to bring his mom dinner. SO he chose to do the class at my apartment. And then after the class we picked up dinner from Panda Express to bring to Lisa. I figured she had had an interview anyway and wouldn't be ready to be with us. Of course she wouldn't be. She still had lots of administrative stuff to do. But she did manage to knock off earlier than usual and actually sat and had dinner around 6 PM. Which meant that Johnnie and I got back home before 7 PM. Johnnie elected not to go to the hot tub tonight. We simply went to Ralphs to get some chocolate donuts to add to his party gift bags. It's a big day tomorrow. It's his birthday. Gotta go to bed early. But reflecting on today, Johnnie and I got to spend a rare day together for the entire day. And although we didn't do anything overtly fun like go to the zoo or something like that, I think Johnnie simply appreciated that I brought him to my office.  And although I couldn't be with him the entire time, he had plenty to keep him occupied. He found an old doodle I had kept for many years about him. I think I drew it while bored at a meeting at least 4 years ago. It was before the pandemic. He actually augmented it and made it colorful and made it HIS artwork. It looked so cool I had to bring it home and hang it on the wall. So yes we had a good day together. And now we move on to his birthday festivities for real.