A Household Archeology Dig

Do you ever watch those shows on HGTV or the TLC that have to do with professional organizers coming into a person’s house and getting them organized? Though I didn’t have a professional organizer come into my house I really felt like that was happening to me today. Today while on countless conference calls I cleaned and organized my desk. Let’s just put it this way – it was a big task! For the longest time I have been working at my kitchen table instead of my office. I moved to the kitchen table about 3 years ago for a variety of different reasons. First it allowed me to be closer to where Zack was playing and hanging out. Second, for a while I was kind of gun shy of my office as it was there that I found out Patty had leukemia. So I kind of tended to stay away from it for the first year after her diagnosis. The problem is I love my office. It is a great space. I had the office built for me when we finished the basement before we moved into this house. When we purchase our house, the basement wasn’t finished. It was just a big open space that the prior occupants had used as a workshop. I was able to get my office finished the way I wanted and make it a very nice space within which to work. Some might laugh but it is painted a light rose color so that it is very soothing on my eyes. I have all kinds of artifacts I have have collected during my travels around the world on display in my office.  It is a place in which I feel very comfortable.  But unfortunately, I have let it get very messy over the last couple of years.  So there is a significant effort to be made to get it all organized and back into shape.  Cleaning the desk off is the first step in this process.

On days that our cleaning ladies come I usually try and work from my office because I don’t want to hear the vacuum cleaners and such. Normally our cleaning ladies come on Wednesday, but with the holiday later this week they were re-arranging their schedule and came to our house today. So I went down into my office early this morning as soon as I got back from dropping Zack off at WCCK. With the exception of one hour from 11AM to Noon, I was on conference calls the entire day! (I have a project in Glasgow, Scotland that goes live tomorrow. We had numerous operational readiness reviews and communication updates – so it was an insane day!) As a result, my schedule gave me plenty of time to use the speaker phone and clean and organize while I talked. I can’t believe all the things that I found as I sorted through the piles of papers, books and magazines that were piled 2 – 3 feet high on my desk. It was like an archeology dig as I went deeper and deeper. I guess the good thing is I obviously didn’t miss much of what was at the bottom so it made it very easy to get rid of stuff.

I now have a huge pile of stuff for recycling next Monday and a huge pile of garbage to also go out on Monday.  The desk is utterly clean, organized and ready for me to begin using it everyday.

Besides cleaning my office, the day has been very busy with work.  Most of my efforts of the last 3 - 4 months will come to a culmination tomorrow with the project go-live in Glasgow.  Everything is ready to go and our team will take operational responsibility for a large chunk of my clients business.  We had numerous discussions with senior executives from both IBM and client today to ensure we were operationally ready.  Given the time differential between Europe and here, I am will not be getting much sleep tonight as I will be checking in with the team in Glasgow.  If there are issues I want to know about them as soon as possible.

Tomorrow will also be a tough day in the fact besides all that I have going on with work, I also need to get Nancy to the hospital for her bone marrow biopsy.  Having had one of these before, I do know what she will go through.  I am just hoping her age doesn't make a huge difference and she does fine with the procedure.  Unfortunately we won't find out the results of the biopsy until sometime next week.  I am sure that will make for a long weekend for Nancy.

Zack and I are now hanging out in the family room - Zack is reading and I am sitting here with my Mac on my lap writing.  As per usual we are having a good evening together.

We hope everyone had a great day!

Thanks and peace to all! - J.