Thirteen things currently spinning through my head

(yes, I’m feeling spinny today)

Alternate title: A day in the life of my brain at work

  1. Should I order more newsletters, or will 18,000 be enough?
  2. Did I catch all the mistakes on the design proof of the brochure, or will someone point out a glaring error the moment 10,000 of them arrive in my office from the printer?
  3. Is there something I committed to doing tonight that I’m forgetting?
  4. What should I take along to read on my trip next week?
  5. When will I find the time to prepare my speaking notes for Monday’s meeting? On the airplane?
  6. I hope the band they hired for the conference I’ll be at next week won’t be the same country gospel one they had at the last conference I attended. (Please don’t hate me if you happen to like country gospel – it’s just not my thing.)
  7. When will I get the first phone call from a disgruntled supporter saying that we shouldn’t have mentioned the connection between fossil fuel consumption and climate change in our newsletter?
  8. Do they REALLY want 29,000 copies of the brochure? Just how many trees did that kill? Can I use recycled paper?
  9. How will I replace one of my key staff members who gave his notice this week? Yikes!
  10. Will we be ready to launch our big new program by early next month? Will I have an aneurysm before then?
  11. After three years of monthly conference calls with my team, WHY haven’t I learned to ask the questions so that I’m not met with stone-cold silence almost every time I ask for feedback on something?
  12. Oooo… the new website is going to look SO lovely! Why didn’t I get this done years ago?
  13. Will the designer hate me when he gets my email for 35 picky little changes to the document?

Thirteen things I’d like to know

1. Do we REALLY have a right to hear Alec Baldwin’s private conversation with his daughter, even if it IS shameful?

2. How do we as parents guard against this kind of icky materialism? What do I do with an eleven year old who BEGS to go to the mall because all of her friends LOVE shopping and most of them have much more money than she does?

3. Is it really necessary for my kids to practice a lock-down at school? Does a handful of shootings in the last few years REALLY warrant that kind of paranoia? Or am I just being a naive parent?

4. How can a person POSSIBLY keep her house clean when it’s Springtime outside?

5. Why is there so much disposable stuff in our culture? What will it take to wake us up and start insisting that manufacturers make stuff to last so our landfill sites don’t choke out the earth?

6. Where can I sign up for the Yann Martel book club? Will Stephen Harper really read those books? Perhaps at least the brilliantly written letters?

7. Is it better to push my girls to continue piano lessons under duress or let them quit when they want to?

8. What’s another word for solidarity that doesn’t have the same political baggage? (This is a serious question – I need it for an ad campaign at work)

9. When will my children realize that begging for things the minute I walk in the door does not usually make me want to grant their requests?

10. Why do I feel like eating ALL the time?

11. Why oh WHY did I let Marcel sign me up as a volunteer soccer coach for the Tiny Tots? Have I lost my mind?

12. When will I get a chance to take another pottery class? Or an art class? Or join a writers’ group again?

13. Why am I blogging when it is beautiful outside and I should be hanging out with my children?

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