Lunch date

Another work week begins, on my wedding anniversary no less, which makes me wonder if I should have just burned through my last remaining floating holiday and consigned the unappealing prospect of having to work on Columbus Day to my future self. Not that anything at work is wrong, really, it’s just still slow and quiet. And likely getting slower and quieter as people ramp up their own summer vacation plans (especially during weeks like this one and next which can bleed red-white-and-blue into or out of the Fourth of July long weekend.)

I suppose another minor justification for heading into the office today was that it created on opportunity on this final day of my wife’s maternity leave for her to come down to Crystal City for lunch. Of course that also involved bringing both of our children, but (further minor justification) she at least had some help from my mother, who is in town for the week to help with the back-to-work transition.

A whole-family visit to the office should have been an easy way to score some peripheral goodwill brownie points with my government boss, since she loves children and babies and had been saying basically since I got back from paternity leave that the baby should feel free to make an appearance any time. But, alas, when my wife called me to say they had arrived at a nearby parking garage, my boss was in a closed-door meeting, and so I went out to lunch and then returned to the office with mom, wife and kids in tow only to find that the closed-door meeting was still going on. And while I was introducing the fam to a few co-owrkers, I managed to ascertain that said closed-door meeting involved my boss’s boss, so I certainly wasn’t about to interrupt that. Ah well.

Did I mention that back before the little girl was born my government boss held an informal gathering at her house over a weekend for the team and their families, and I never RSVP’ed and ended up just blowing it off because my wife had to work anyway and getting the little guy out of the house to an unknown environment seemed like more trouble than it was worth … and then it turned out the gathering was also going to be a very small surprise baby shower for me and my wife? That happened. I mention it now because I guess I’ll have to hope my boss throws another one of those casual soirees, this time on a weekend when my wife is off and we don’t have plans, so I can show off my pride-and-joy family then.