Someone asked me about my work habits, and how I do stuff, so today I was hyper-aware. I sort of had a mental video camera going on. 10pm last night: Bed. Read Banksy book. My girls wake up early. 4am: Lauren crying. Settled her. 5:30am: Natalie crying. Settled her. 5:41am: Settling not going well. Up for the day. Prefer 6am or 6:30am, but ok. Brought Nattie downstairs and put her in her chair. Gave her a squeeze thing of apple sauce. Left Lauren upstairs, which I usually don't do so their sleep lines up. Turned on Netflix and put on the first episode of Orange Is The New Black while feeing Nattie some yogurt. Went downstairs to take the dog out of the crate and send him outside. Walked barefoot outside to close the gate so the dog wouldn't run to the front yard and bark. Nattie was unhappy I left her in her chair. Back upstairs holding dog. Left back door open for a while. Fed dog, let Nattie run around, watched Netflix. After not too long, went to get Lauren. 6:00am: Fed Lauren, let dog go out. Yelled in front yard. Watched Netflix. Elliott up, sent back to bed until 6:30am. 6:30am: Minecraft with Elliott while girls destroyed front room happily. 6:45am: Gave girls to Sarah in bed and prepared for shower. Elliott reminded me that he needed breakfast. Went downstairs to fix him cereal. Back upstairs to take shower. Out of shower but didn't use robe because I think my dog got fleas on it. Padded around in towel, talked to Sarah, played with girls, got dressed. 7:15am: Downstairs with Sarah and girls, met up with Elliott again who was watching iPad. Got ready to go, morning goodbye ritual, outside. 7:22am: No headphones, no smartphone, just walking a mile to the bus 7:45am: Bus driver I don't like because she keeps snarking at me. Didn't chirp hello to her for the first time ever, felt like a jerk. 8:15am: Butt in office. Totally inspired to write three different posts. One on designers as mile markers, another about how hate is lazy, another Banksy inspired. Debated where to post the latest stuff. Remembered side projects, got ready to write where no one will see. Got two cranberry juice cans against my better judgement. Got ready to write. Remembered having the mile marker idea already. Searched gmail. Found email I wrote a friend in the form of a story. Copy pasted the whole thing into surprisebox. Wrote things with pseudonym. Somewhere along the way I did surprisebox things, can't recall when. 8:45am: Emails, scheduling my week, saw disappointing email that shows I became misaligned (again!) with [censored] designers. Wrote email about it. 9:00am: Realized it'd be a lighter day than usual, read stuff and did work until 10am. Queued up some stuff I'd like from my team and partner teams by EOD Tuesday. Planned quick business trip to Boston, maybe. We'll see. 10am: Sat in on Word spec review, only had 30m of 90m to dedicate to it. Read the whole spec, left comments throughout the spec, left before they got to the sections I wanted to address. 10:30am: Meeting I wasn't looking forward to. Tense and uncomfortable at first. Then better, eventually. 11:00-12:00: Leads meeting planning the week. Moving the design team into the official bug/task tracking system that debs use. Said I'm excited to try this method to get us aligned with agile as long as design isn't expected to hit deadlines with the same certainty as devs. Some things take more time. Agreement. 12:00-12:15: Pulled pork sandwich and grits. 12:15-1:00: Worked. Called [censored] design lead to coordinate. He tells me we accidentally aligned. Great. Will meet with him tomorrow when he's back from the bay area. Before we left the call, he let me know that there was a rumor he didn't like the work I was doing. Made it clear he was misquoted. Said when he heard my name he realized everything would be fine. Repeated: thinks I design well. Looks forward to tomorrow. Sounds great, see you tomorrow. Offered to go to his office, he said he'll come to mine. 1:00pm: Showed up for my 1:30pm meeting early and said I'm ready to get going early. Anya was busy readying [censored] and needed the extra time. Went and found [censored] lead designer about the misalignment earlier in the day and passive aggressive email back and forth that emerged and lead to a meeting with the lead designer of [censored]. Great meeting, respect for each others' point of view. Excellent. Parlayed that into the 1:30pm meeting where we're breaking ground on [censored] after 3 months of prep. Invited the lead designer of [censored], the PM I'm working with, Amit from [censored], and another person who couldn't make it. She was disappointed because she wants to get an advanced degree in something UX and has been looking on a meeting to sit in on. Next time then. 2:30pm Caught the second half of a meeting on landscape versus portrait for [censored] in [censored]. Saw a whiteboard covered with stuff, asked "so, any progress?" and everyone laughed. It's a tough issue! Caught a designer on my team's eye, we're on the same page. Stuck around for about 20 minutes, but saw she had it totally covered. Left after wrapping up next steps with everyone. My designer getting frustrated because the answer is obvious to us, but waiting for the PMs to come around to our point of view. Patience. 3:00pm: Alignment exercise with [censored] team. Lots of good progress. Said "we can't fuck our customers" after warning everyone for the impending HR violation. Still feel sort of bad about it. Don't think it went over well. 4:00pm: Hallway chat where I realized the new model I'm designing just won't work for [censored] and actually, that's ok. Lead designer surprised by my POV. Good discussion. 4:15pm: Out the door to the bus. Read Banksy book. Slept on bus, which took a strange route because of traffic on 520. Walked a mile home from Greenlake. 5:30pm: Sarah and Elliott wanted to go to Red Robin for a mommy/Elliott date. Cool. Played with Elliott a bit, hugs and a new picture for our Polaroid project. Then they were gone. Left at home with girls and Charlotte the friend/nanny. Charlotte and I dreamed up combinery combos for 20 minutes while girls vroomed around pushing chairs and scooters. Charlotte left at 6:00, I watched Netflix and played with the girls. 6:20pm: Girls upstairs for playtime and bed prep. 6:30pm: Back downstairs with screaming babies. That's how they go to bed. Dealt with dog dinner. Watched Orange Is The New Black until dog whined to go outside. Took him outside and he barked at everyone. Brought him back inside. Girls calming down. Fed myself dinner. 7:30pm: Sarah and Elliott back. They had fun. Bedtime for Elliott where I told him he could read until midnight in bed (he'll make it 5 minutes). Wrote this. Considering going out to get some frozen yogurt. Or Netflix. Will probably write something new after this. Will try to be in bed by 9:30 or 10:00. Once I take the dog outside and take Elliott to the bathroom one last time before night time. That's the day.