Guys Night Guys Night!

Sometimes I feel like the first 30 seconds or so of this video....

Guy's Night
You, Me and Dupreeat MOVIECLIPS.com

Not entirely the way it is but getting a night out with the guys is a rare but welcome and neccessary event. Same thing goes for gals night for Stef too ;)
As much time as I love spending with my family there is nothing quite like erasing the work day that just ended with some cold suds, get a little euphoric over some old stories, and talk about dude stuff. An old buddy was in town and the weather was nice so it felt pretty good to be sitting in a cafe in my old neighborhood catching up on stories, the whereabouts of friends and enemies, and getting way to drunk off of four pretty weak beers. The metro ride home sucks but I have to say I had a huge smile on my face when I came home to bath time with Henry and he gave me a smile of greeting that no friend has ever given me.

Time Management

Before Hen came along free time was the norm and abundant as opposed to a luxury. Leave for work whenever I wanted, come home from work whenever I wanted, drinks after work? No problem. Now its more of timing when I leave and come home. Leave for work after I can maybe help Steph get a few extra winks while I soothe Hen back to sleep, come home so I can spend time with them both before he goes to bed, drinks require 2 weeks of prep before I can commit to tacking an extra hour onto my day. That is where the time management comes in and what people with out kids cannont understand. Im a big believer in that a lot of the sucess I have had in friendships and my professional life is from my networking skills and a lot of that is still super important to staying relevant in today's world, but my priorities are obviously ( and my heart too ) are with the family, so drinks arent impossible, they just require the amount of preparation similar to the Normany landing. Also, asking Steph to spend another hour after 8 hours straight with an infant is a major gift to me. What makes this post pertinent is that when I can eek out the time to grab a beer or coffee right after work and just one! is when the people I am meeting dont respect my time like I need them too. Before I could wait you out, talk to the bartender, catch up on emails. Now I get antsy watching the clock so I can get home in time for dinner and bath time. I think this is part of a bigger issue of people these days not respecting time in general, cell phones certainly do not help as people will just send a text three minutes after you were supposed to meet and tell you they are just leaving wherever they are but always seems to equal 30 minutes..... What did people do 20 years ago???? Point is, maybe all people could learn from those of us with kids and show up when you say you will, plan the meet ups, and stick to them. I guarantee effective time management that respects others will get you further in life....and hey....I was single ( and childless ) relatively recently and I know that half the time I was late was because I was taking my sweet time. So, think of your friends with kids....and show up when you say you will because when you don't resepct that you hurt the friendship, relationship, opportunity whatever is it and you are reducing the rare free time we have to nothing. We could have been playing with the little guy who definitely wants to see us!