St. Louis 2016

Last week I traveled to St. Louis for my job. The nice thing about my job is that I don't have to go to every meeting, which would mean traveling 10+ times/year. Patti goes to all of the meetings so I don't have to. The other nice thing about my job is that I sometimes get to go to the meetings, which is mostly nice and a little bit not.

It's always fun to go somewhere new. I am using the term "fun" loosely here since these trips are packed with work related activities so it's not like I go sightseeing. But, sometimes we stay in really nice hotels (once it was the four seasons, this time a Hilton), we always eat delicious food, I get a break from cooking and housecleaning and I get lots of uninterrupted time to work (work=get paid!). It's nice to go to some meetings so I can see my boss who lives in Chicago in person once in awhile and meet the members of our organization so they are more than just names on lists that I am endlessly working through. It's kind of nice to have an excuse to dress professionally for three days in a row. If it wasn't for these meetings every 6 or so months, I would probably forget to buy myself something new (this time it was just new lipstick, but still, it's nice to indulge every now and then).

It's not nice because of how hard it is to organize everyone's schedules while I am gone. That part actually wasn't bad this time. I sent Katie to stay at my mom's the whole time and the other three kids are getting old enough to take care of themselves. Plus, Brian didn't have a crazy schedule while I was gone.

Going to these meetings is anxiety producing. I always vow to lose 10-pounds before the meeting (which almost always results in me gaining 5). It is way outside of my comfort zone to be in a room full of powerful CEOs and other higher ups of healthcare systems, pretending to fit in. I am way more comfortable in a house full of crazy kids. Since Patti and I are there as the meeting planners, everything falls to us if something goes wrong. It could be a problem with the A/V equipment, the temperature in the room, a coffee dispenser malfunction, any one of 100 little things really. Plus, my boss is really a stickler for professionalism and he likes attention to the tiniest details. For example, if there are twelve people in the meeting and someone has to duck out early, I need to make sure to remove the extra chair from the room pronto.

In addition to wearing spanx, nylons, high heels, jewelry and lipstick to look like a professional, and tending to every minor detail to keep things running smoothly, I also need to be super friendly and extroverted. I need to remember everyone's names and be really good at making polite small talk with them. It turns out I am actually really good at having conversations with a room full of strangers. Who knew that was a skill that could come in handy? But, there is always an underlying anxiety about opening my mouth and saying something stupid because that is very easy to do.

Last Tuesday, I arrived at our hotel in St. Louis just as my boss (Roger), my colleague (Patti) and the new tech guy (Andrew) were walking to a nearby Italian place for dinner (my flight arrived later than everyone else). I spent a few minutes freshening up and then hustled over to meet them. I sat through dinner acting all casual even though meeting with Roger face-to-face still makes me nervous even after working together (almost exclusively from afar) for a year and a half. I felt like dinner went well and by 9pm I was in my hotel room making all of my last minute preparations for the next day when I had an overwhelming feeling of "What am I doing here?"

Then I remembered a quote or a meme or something I had read recently that said something to the effect that we should do something that scares us every day (or week, or month? It probably said every day, but that would be too much in my opinion). I calmed down and thought, "It's O.K. to feel scared to do this. It means I am going to learn something new."

The meeting went well the next day. There were 23 attendees plus the 4 of us. Thanks to Patti's awesome meeting planning skills (she has been doing this a long time) and Roger's outstanding leadership skills (he has also been doing this a long time) things went off without a hitch. One of the really clever parts about these meetings is that we meet all day the first day and then we go to dinner that night. After everyone has been having serious discussions all day, the dinner is a time for the attendees to relax and get to know each other on a more personal level. I told Roger I thought it was an ingenious model and he revealed that in the early days, he tried to stick to a strict agenda even during dinner thinking it would maximize everyone's time. But, then he realized the magic of the unstructured dinner.

We had quite the diverse group of people sitting at my table. One guy worked for United for so many years that he has lifetime flying privileges. He lives in an upscale neighborhood outside of Chicago and flies to Seattle every Monday morning to work at a healthcare system and flies back home every Friday. By the way, this new group deals in cybersecurity -- it's kind of a new issue for healthcare systems in the past 5 years or so. So, almost everyone has a different background from before they came into Catholic healthcare.

The guy to my left retired from the military after spending 11 out of his 20 years with them deployed at sea. He and the airline guy have visited more than 50 countries each! I found that very interesting. Retired military guy lives on Whidbey Island -- an enchanted place that Patti and I visited together several years ago. He only has to go into his office two days a week, but it is a two hour drive each way!

Anyways, the evening was filled with interesting conversations about these things, and a lot of tech speak in between that honestly didn't make any sense to me so I just smiled and nodded at those parts.

By the time dinner was over, Tuesday and Wednesday had gone well. Thursday was a breeze. The second day of the meeting usually is. The meeting ends at noon so the time passes quickly. We all had late flights out, so Patti, Roger, Andrew and I decided to grab lunch at P.F. Chang's before heading to the airport. I really do feel blessed to have this job even if it scares me sometimes.

Probably the most awkward moment of the trip was when I changed out of my spanx and nylons and high heels in the airport bathroom with the auto toilet flushing 100x so I could wear something more comfortable on the long flight home.

I forgot to mention that when I got to the SLC airport at the start of the trip, I stopped in the restroom (I had taken the frontrunner to the airport which was awesome!) and there was a young girl who looked about 20 who was on her phone, pressing her face against the wall sobbing. I asked her if I could help her, because my own teenagers aren't so far from 20 and I would hate to think of them sobbing in an airport bathroom alone. She assured me she was fine. And, sure enough, a few minutes later I saw her going through security looking radiant like she had never been crying at all. It reminded me that we are all fighting a battle even if things look fine on the outside and it is important to be kind to each other (isn't that a meme also?).

My mom gave me a book to read on the trip called 600 Hours of Edward about a man in his late 30s who has mild autism and OCD. It is written from his perspective which was entertaining and enlightening. It is so interesting to think of the world from someone else's perspective like that. Sometimes, when Edward was so baffled by a human interaction (because he took everything literally) or so thrown off when every routine in his life didn't go as planned, I got a little lump in my throat thinking of my own guy who reacts to the world that way.

The travel time (with transfers -- it's hard to find non-stop flights between SLC and St. Louis) was so long that I finished the book and I had to read some humorous writings by Tina Fey on the way home.

I got home late on Thursday and woke up Friday to take Katie on a field trip to one of those farms that transforms into a place for family fun at this time of year with giant slides and corn mazes. We took a hayride out to a field where we selected the most perfect pumpkins and accidentally disturbed a nest of baby mice (Katie's favorite part!). We had a great time and picked up Sophie from school (she gets out early on Fridays) then we all went to lunch at a little Mexican place called "Rosas."

Brian left Friday night to take the boys (with a brother-in-law and boy cousins) mountain biking in Moab for the weekend. Katie and I ran errands Saturday morning while Sophie rehearsed for A Fairly Potter Christmas Carol. That night, I took both girls to see Sophie's friend perform at DaVinci in Sleepy Hollow. The performance was well done and spooky and even Katie really liked it. All of us (two of Sophie's friends too) went out to ice-cream afterward and I felt like a real mom of teenagers. It is a fun mom stage to be in and I am sure it passes quickly just like the rest.

Now, it is a new week and I feel like I am still catching up from being absent from my life last week. I haven't worked out in six weeks because things became crazy busy the moment school was back in session and I haven't made the time or established a new routine or something. When I see people post hiking photos on social media I feel so jealous and it is silly because I have two great trailheads just a stone's throw in either direction from my front door. So, yesterday at 6pm when I felt like lying down and watching Netflix to calm down for a few minutes, I took Katie's hand instead and we had a delightful walk in the mountains. It started with me huffing and puffing feeling barely able to walk up 27th Street to the trailhead and ended with me feeling awesome and even doing some light voluntary jogging (downhill mind you). It is a wonderful time of year and I hope we do it again before the cold weather comes.