Corona Living, Part 1

I don’t know if I am going to continue writing about this, but I have decided to go ahead and call this “part 1” of my experience with the Coronavirus, and the COOVID-19 epidemic. For some context, I’m in Dallas, Texas.

Well, here we are.

As of last night, it appears the US has surpassed the number of cases/death that China has had.  The real numbers are anyone’s guess, as 100% o the population has not been tested.  In my mind, that tells me that the mortality rate is much lower than the actual numbers, as the mortality rate is put against confirmed cases. That doesn’t seem to be a point anyone really cares about, though, and the fact is, the virus is uncharacteristically contagious.

Oddly, just before the virus “hit the US,” I had a flurry of clients with the flu, I had a very mild sickness myself, as did the rest of my family, and a friend in New Orleans indicated to us that the flu has swept through the locals weeks before.  Now everyone I stinking – has the virus been here longer than we thought?

Life here is challenging to manage, but we still have our jobs right now. I have a couple of projects that have seemed to slow down, but those under construction are moving ahead as fast as they can, as workers want to get paid.  In Dallas County (and in much of the country), commercial construction is considered essential.  As funny as that sounds, the reality is, most of these workers are not close to each other, typically have to wear gloves, need eye protection, and in many circumstances, masks.  The working environment is much different than that of an office. 

So, they are working as hard as they can, because no one knows if construction will be halted.  Design projects are moving ahead, and most city offices are open for business, except, of course, Addison, where my biggest one is currently going through the entitlement process.  The city has halted all non-essential discussions, and zoning is one of them.  This is disappointing, to say the least.  Looking ahead, the pipeline looks promising, but – one never knows.

My wife’s business is doing fine but is going ahead and pulling most people’s vacation out of their compensation package.  This move seems a little odd to me, but its better than cutting salaries, which has happened to a family member of mine.

And, at least, we all have our jobs.  A lot of people are suffering, and all I have to complain about is some uncertainty in the months and years ahead and working conditions.

My son’s Montessori school has closed down, as it follows DISD’s policies.  So that means more than likely the rest of the school year.  Now we have two people trying to work in the house while managing a three-year-old.  He loves to sing – loudly- while he works, plays, etc.  And he wants to go on walks. All of the time.

I do think he and I are bonding even more.  This reminds me of the times we spent together at the beginning of his life when I tried to manage working while raising a 0-18-month-old. The closeness, frustration, tiredness – it’s all there, and it reminds me of those days.  Last night, I passed out on the beds with all of the lights on at 9PM.  The nights before, I also fell asleep that early, waking up at around 6 or 7.  I’m waking up… not well-rested, but with that feeling after waking up the morning after riding the Hotter than Hell 100.  Right now, I’m up before everyone else, and writing this, just enjoying the silence.

Things are worse for a lot of people.  Here is to hoping the summer months will quell this, and it goes the way of the past coronaviruses.  All we can do right now is the best that we can.

As a not fun addition, here is an interactive map from Johns Hopkins: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

Here is the map as of this writing:

Modern Dad, Part 3 – Months 6-12, Part 1 – Who needs sleep

Months 6-12 are another blur.  I’ve decided to take this time and just group together the posts by subjects instead of trying to order them chronologically.

My original plan was to hang on to him for six months.  They blew by.  I was not sure if I was ready for him to go to daycare, and I wasn’t entirely convinced I was ready either.

However, my hours were lacking.  A lot.  Moreover, I was finally starting a new project that would take up a lot of time.  The fact of the matter was – there was no time in the day anymore.  He was still on two naps a day, but that started to be the only time I could actually work.

So, I decided to start early.  Very early.  I’ve always worked out of Starbucks – when I started doing construction administration work (at around 23 years old), I learned that parking my laptop at a Starbucks was much more efficient than driving all the way back to my office, then going somewhere else.  Also, many good weekends were spent at Starbucks, designing projects early in my career.

However, this was different.  Because I was one of those guys waiting in the car at 4:59, watching for the guy to come over and unlock the door.

It’s 5:03, dude, I have work to do.

It was a great time.  I had not had the opportunity to work without interruption for three hours straight in more than a half of a year, and it felt like old times.  I was able to work on some pretty great stuff during this time, and I was focused and, since some of it is either built or under construction, I can say I performed pretty well on it.  My work hours turned into 5-8, 10-12, and 2-4 while trying to handle lighter work during the day.

Powered by criminally high amounts of early morning coffee.

That sounds like a slog, but it was so much better than what I had been doing, as the level of stress my mind went through was exhausting while I was trying to handle both tasks.  When my back is turned, my mind is humming with possibilities of what might go wrong, monitoring his location in the room, thinking of whatever potential hazards might be in there, listening constantly.  All that while trying to do any work became a heavy load on my mind and body.  Being able to focus on work, then turn around and focus on my son, made my life much more comfortable.

Someone asked me if I was coming in early to work on imaginary stuff. Well, hopefully not (still working on this one over a year later).

It worked pretty well, but in doing any sort of math, it definitely cut down on my sleep.  I was still going to bed at around 11-12.  I had read somewhere that 5 hours was a minimum to get your body working, and I tried to hold to that.  He still wasn’t sleeping all the way through the night, and so that 5 hours was not uninterrupted.  Some mornings were wrecked entirely from a bad night.

I got to know everyone at that Starbucks pretty well.  Someone got promoted.  Another got pregnant.  Someone new started.  Now, more than a year later, people still recognize me in that Starbucks, even if I may go once every quarter or so.

Eventually, this fell apart.  Getting up that early woke up my wife, then she had trouble getting back to sleep.  And, during this time, my son was growing by leaps and bounds, so he needed more attention when he did get up, and she began to struggle with that, asking me to come home earlier.  This schedule served its purpose for a while, but it was unsustainable with a growing child – and with such a lack of sleep.

Modern Dad, Part 2 – Months 3-6: Calm before the storm

This is the age where things started to ramp up a little bit.  Day sleeping got pulled down to two somewhat predictable times.  The night was still horrible, waking up 2-3 times a night to feed.  Since my wife was breastfeeding and working, we think that he would load up more in the evenings and took less in the bottle.  We were still 100% natural milk at this point, with me taking a chemistry set wherever I went, maintaining temperature, the right amount of milk for the trip, and everything else.

4 moth check up, right before heading to an AIA meeting.

He was starting to get a personality, which was fun.  He loved the camera, and I took a lot of photos at this point.  The sleep deprivation was deep though, and this is another period I don’t really remember.  In this phase and moving forward, I stopped having social meetings and started backing out of AIA obligations  I was on the steering committee of the ULI leadership program in my chapter, and I was able to handle most of that with conference calls.  He still did go to meetings with me, but they were short and had very little client interaction.

So, we stuck with each other.  His napping schedule still allowed me some focused time, and much of the time, he was still enough that I could do light work while he was awake.  He had a fantastic talent, though, of never letting me finish a task (he still does this). Right before I finished a call, an email, or working out, there would be a cry.  A cry that could not be ignored!

Before child, I was into CrossFit.  This became completely unfeasible.  At perhaps around the 2-month mark, I started using the rower at the house somewhat regularly.  I bought it for my wife initially, but it became a lifesaver for me.  At this age, he started liking the bumbo, and I could actually sit him in front of me while I worked out.  Again, he would… almost sit through a whole workout (which was typically a 20-minute sprint, I should give him credit!).  At about minute 18 or so… that’s when he couldn’t stand it anymore.  Rowing while he slept was not an option – my shepherd mix barking madly at the mailman, the lawn guys buzzing away, the phone ringing, my phone calls – he would sleep through that, no problem.  The glide of the rower?  Hellz no.

The shower sound had a similar effect on him.  To make it worse, he hated – HATED – baths at this age.  So the sound of the shower had some sort of trauma effect on him, and it was guaranteed to bring him out of deep sleep.  So, sadly during this time… I started living in a cave.  A cave where I did not shower regularly.  Work time was getting squeezed more.

But, we had more good bonding.  We made a decision of no screens, so the TV was moved out of the living room and even though it was moved to the bedroom, it has only turned on twice since (as of this writing two years later).  So, all of our time together was together.  So that part was fun.  However, work was hurting.  Starting to REALLY hurt.  So, as 6 months came around, on the one hand, I was not ready to let go of him… On the other hand, something had to change.

Modern Dad, Part 1 – Months 1-3: The Burrito Baby.

Read the Introduction here.

Over the first period of his life, I was convinced babies started off easy, and then get harder and harder as you go.  They develop more, they need more attention.  So, in retrospect, a baby swaddled up into a convenient burrito and put in an infant seat so one could quickly move him around seems pretty convenient.  Of course, at the time, it seemed pretty hard.

At two weeks he went to his first meeting in a board room.

These are days long gone.  He slept.  Hard.  He may have made a few coos.  Everyone thought it was so cute.  And… It was.

As these few months went on, he became the unexpected guest at multiple construction sites, AIA meetings, and design meetings.  He was a well behaved baby, and I was convinced that the fact that I took him all over the area, introducing him to different environments, and just being with him, kept him comfortable.

I would even have him wrapped up in my arms while I worked.  This didn’t work out all of the time, but it did.

I was so proud I could “handle” this.

Of course, there was the sleep deprivation.  I remember much of this, but it all still feels like a blur.  I was deep into working on a small interiors finish out, working diligently through a new prototype, which takes a lot of work on the first go around.  Much of this time was spent in the kitchen, with him strapped to me in a chest mounted baby carrier, me in a standing position, working my way through the project in Revit.

In retrospect, this was a sweet time.   We created a bond through this time, and it set a precedent for the months and years (and hopefully more) to come.  No one will ever say this boy was not hugged enough as a child.

Making sure we had everything he needed became a project management exercise all in itself.  I had been carrying around a small messenger bag that just held my laptop and iPad.  I pulled a briefcase out of retirement from the early 2000’s – back when I was working and in school.  This one was used for much fatter laptops, and all of the cables that came with having to charge all of the different things that one had to travel with back then, plus textbooks for school.  I ended up putting an insulating liner in one of the pockets and keeping the milk either warm or cold (depending on when I would feed him and my accessibility to something I could heat with – he was rather particular on temperature).

However, I was standing firm on one thing – I refused to carry around a diaper bag.  In the last year or so they have seemed to get more stylish and professional, but even back two years from now, even the “men’s” bags were just flowery obvious diaper bags that just had camo patterns on them or “ballistic grade nylon.” A well-pocketed briefcase did just fine, thank you very much.

I’ll say that the end of this period was marked in a particular ULI meeting.  He had been to several already but had started to learn what his voice was.  At this meeting, he decided he liked one person’s voice.  And every time that guy spoke, my son would “BLAH BLAH BLAH” over everything he said.

So, that was the end of this phase.

All in all:

• he was quite portable
• agreeable to letting me work (albeit full of interruptions)
• he did sleep a lot, however never through the night.
• The sleep deprivation was awful, though, and my wife was breastfeeding and starting to go back to work.  So, we were both just in survival mode.

Making sure I had everything he needed was a significant project management issue

Modern Dad, Introduction

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had read about trying to make a blog post every day. I’m not making any promises, but its day 2 and I’m ready for something at least, although I’m not sure how far this will go.  I’ve also decided that this blog will end up being a rough draft of anything I end up writing in my company blog, so some of this stuff may end up there.

I’ve attempted to write about this before, but I think I was in the thick of it.  Several times I had started posts just to get interrupted. My son is now two and a half right now, so this is more of a reflection piece.  Even though I thought documenting this during the process would be better, I just didn’t have it in me.

First day.

I decided to take a nontraditional role as a father when my son was born.  I have my own architecture practice, which gave me flexibility.  My wife had a more conventional job – one where she had just been hired (and therefore had minimal maternity benefit).  Healthcare was important, a more stable income was important.  But, we also felt we needed to bond with our child.

I had some baby training.  My sister is a decade younger than I, and it was the late 80’s, where apparently it was still ok to leave your infant with a 10-year-old.  I had always been a little more independent than most anyway and didn’t really think much of it.  But the short of it is – I knew how to take care of a baby.  I had a few small projects going on, nothing which was very stressful, and one project was supposed to begin construction soon, which would give some consistent, although modest, income.

The plan was – I was going to balance taking care of my son for the first six months of his life, balance my job, and everything would be great.  I knew babies.  I could balance the job.  Easy?  Easy.

One of the things I remember about the early part of this was going to the grocery store with him at odd times of the day.  People would walk up to me and say, “aww, I miss this age.”  I would smile a tired smile and think, “no, you don’t – nature makes you forget this time.  Because if you remember it like I am seeing it, we would cease to survive as a species.”

And so, with a few timeslots here and there, I am going to try to record my experience accurately.  I hope I can keep this up.

Follow ups:

Modern Dad Part 1 – Months 1-3

If you’ve got a lot of dirt to move around, you can count on scraper.

It’s been a long time since I have posted on this blog.  I’ve been struggling with posting on my company blog, and end up coming up with nothing.

I ended up looking at this article on Medium discussing how you can write a blog post every day.  The secret is no big secret: do not worry about length, do not worry about quality, just… do it.  So I am going to give that a shot.  And most all of my posts will end up here, on this personal blog that no one reads.

So today, I’m just sharing what is on my mind.  Truck Tunes.

This is a series of songs on YouTube that does a great job in helping children identify different heavy machinery on a construction site.  To be honest, some of them I am not familiar with, as I am not typically party to road building or deforestation.

However, the flip side of this is – it gets in your head.  And plays in your head over and over again until you want to scream.  That is what it’s going on in MY head at 9:34 on a Tuesday evening.

 

This group of songs was introduced to us by a couple at the park, which is very close to our house.  Now, even though we try to be very limited with screen time with your son, it is a circa 40-minute video that plays perhaps three times a week (and that’s virtually all, but some days I still think its too much).

So.  Yes.

The scraper.  The Feller buncher.  The grader.  The Fork Lift Boogie.

That’s my life right now.  Enjoy.

I win!

He’s been getting up at about 1:30 or so. Not because he wants to eat, but because his teeth hurt. It was no different last night, except that when I picked him up… he drifted off as usual… then awoke again in pain.

I got up and rocked him softly. Eventually he fell back asleep.

I win!

Do I? It’s like 2 AM and I’ve been doing this every night.

Wins are totally different now.ill take this one with a tiny sleeping head on my shoulder.

I knew what this would be. Hard.

I knew what I had set out do do would be hard. I didn’t know it would be this hard.
I’m pretty sure everyone has told me parenting would be harder than I thought. It’s only been nearly four months, and I am exhausted. However, i am taking a bit of a different approach.

Timing rarely works out. I thought I might get married sooner, I thought I would have a large project underway by now on the development side of my business, I thought a building I designed would have started construction almost two and a half years ago (AIT broke ground two weeks ago). However, starting my company and having the freedom to be around my son at this age worked out perfectly well.

I’m his full time keeper, and that is by choice. I got so watch him find his feet for the first time, how he continues, to figure out how his arms work, how he is developing all around. And a lot of it is hilarious.

I know at some point I won’t be able to handle all of it – once he becomes mobile there is no way I can fit my billable hours into the day. I’ll phase in some help when I need it, but for now, he stays with me. I work some from home, bring him up to the office (age has his own mini-me chair), and carry him with me to all of my meetings. The days are carefully timed so I feed him before my outings (so he’s more apt to sleep) – on the flip side I set those times so that it works with his food schedule. It’s just like managing another project on your schedule, except this one has more frequent and urgent needs than the others – and he overrides all priorities.

But , so far, it works. When my wife comes home I make dinner and get a few more hours in. I add hours in here and there on the weekends (although she doesn’t really appreciate that). Oh yeah – and I moved my office, so there are boxes everywhere in both places I spend the bulk of my time. It’s definitely burning the candle at both ends, and I know it won’t last forever. But at least right now, the timing has worked out correctly. 

Photo of the Week 3

So now, for the Photo of the Week, we’ll be following photochallenge.org ‘s prompts of the photo of the week.  This week was numbers, and I took it quite literally:

 

As usual I had a bunch of other good pictures this week while trying to uncover some numbers.

Photo of the Week 2

Photo of the week two and I’m late.  A couple of us went to Klyde Warren a few days ago and decided to shoot in black and white.  My newer Nikon has a monochrome setting, but apparently if you shoot in RAW, all that means is that the preview in the camera is black and white.  Anyway my photo of the week was of my shooting partner, as she was taking her own picture:

 

I got a handful of nice pictures from the day, so this has actually been good in getting the camera out.