It was an action-packed week in the office, including two dinners. In one of them, there were about 35 of us, and we were asked to take turns introducing ourselves and sharing a recent professional challenge and how we overcame it. When it was my time to stand up, I just said:

there aren’t any real professional challenges, but here’s a text message from my wife: “what’s your ETA, the kids are crazy, it’s challenging here!”

She meant to say “it’s fucking challenging”.

Yes, I know, I complain as if we were the only couple in history to have had two toddlers sixteen months apart.

complex systems

Complex systems have second, third, nth order effects, including feedback loops which makes them unpredictable and hard to adjust.

Mother nature is one example of a complex system.

By extension, children are another.

For instance: yesterday, minutes after the cleaning lady had left the house, my daughter threw a good chunk of potting soil on the patio. She was playing gardener.

I didn’t have energy to clean up. Tomorrow, I thought.

Tomorrow (i.e., today) arrived with its own little surprise. My son, who sleeps on our bed, slept longer than usual and this caused him to wet the bed. No big deal, I said, let’s take the sheets to the washing machine. He “helped” by taking the white duvet (not the sheets) downstairs and leaving it on the sofa in the living room. The duvet was clean so I didn’t need to wash it. I just needed to take it back to the bedroom. Later, I thought.

We went out for a local expedition (see below) and returned tired from the hike and the drive. Tired me and my wife, but not them.

They ran to the backyard and began hosing everything. This included the mound of potting soil that I had yet to clean up.

As is normal, a quarrel ensued within 10 minutes, and my daughter came back inside full speed. As she passed through the patio, she stepped on the wet soil. She left her track marks everywhere in the kitchen and, when she entered the living room, what did she see? The white duvet.

A magnetic force compelled her to launch herself in the air and use the duvet as her landing pad.

Professional challenges are easy.

expeditions: San Diego and San Gabriel Mountains

Saturday: drove 160 miles (260 km) each way to San Diego to visit my wife’s grand mother. It’s funny how her daughters and my wife scrutinize and insist in extracting signs of dementia from her conversation, but she seems completely lucid to me. We took her out for brunch at Rancho Bernardo Inn.

Sunday: drove 75 miles (120km) each way to the foot of Mount Baldy to explore the Ice House Canyon Trail. We got there by 9am, which is later than usual for us, but the trail wasn’t crowded and the air remained cool. It was perfect.

It’s amazing how nature calms my kids. They don’t fight, they don’t throw tantrums (well, rarely), they just enjoy themselves and take in the great outdoors. Nature reboots them and reboots their parents too.

running and exercise

Only ran once this week: 3.29 miles but did three strength training sessions. So, four workouts in total.

Hope this upcoming week allows for more exercising.