Roller Coaster Week and MarketWatch plug

Have you ever been thrown out of your routine?

The answer is yes.

Have you ever been thrown out of your routine five days in a row?

The answer is probably yes again...but this occurs in a blue moon, right?

Well, this week was the prime example of my morning daddy routine with the girls gone haywire - for five days in a row. Allow me to share...

• Monday: Labor Day. This should have been a fun day to relax with the family but Raina, my 1st grader, was sick with the flu.
• Tuesday: Raina was still sick and stay home from school, but I did have to get my two-year-old ready for pre-school and take her in. Raina ended up resting and sleeping in the Stage of Life office all day on the couch in my office as she battled her little fever.
• Wednesday: Everyone went to school! It seemed to be a normal day...but then it started raining...hard (leftover effects from Hurricane Lee making its way up through the Mid-Atlantic)...and all three of my girls we're released from school early.
• Thursday: Funny thing about that rain...it didn't stop. Everyone, including my wife, Becky (a high school English teacher), stayed home due to the massive rains and flooding we're seeing here in the Susquehanna River basin region. You know you've got a unique weather emergency when the national Weather Channel's field team shows up to run live reports 20 miles from your office and home. Even Megan, our dutiful Marketing Coordinator who rarely misses a day of work, had to call in and work from home as her road was flooded on both ends.
• Friday: Everyone is back in school today, although my wife's school is on a two-hour delay and now she's bumping into my morning routine (which is a good thing!).

So between a holiday, sickness, rain, and school closings, getting into the Back to School groove this week with my girls has been...well...a little tricky.

But that's okay.

I share all of this only to illustrate the question, is life ever really "normal?"

Yes, we all have routines. Yes, we all have schedules. But this week reminded me that being able to work outside of those agendas is just as important as maintaining them.

Speaking of routines: Today, I packed the following school lunches for my girls:

1. P&J (Jif and grape Smuckers)
2. Martin's Potato Chips
3. Red grapes
4. Dove dark chocolate piece
5. Water
6. Napkin
7. And of course, this wacky hand-drawn school lunch note for Raina (I had to ask our dog, Loki, to "sit and stay" while I sketched him quickly).

As for work, the highlight I'll share is that The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch reported on our survey findings from the teen writing contest we sponsored on bullying.

It's exciting to have a media plug from MarketWatch. Kudos go to my team for pulling the survey together, getting over a 1000 students to take the survey and then collecting scores of personal essays about bullying. Our report found that 91% of teens have been bullied. It's a shame, but hopefully our efforts will a encourage teenagers to change their behavior, and combat bullying or stop bullying if they see it.

The weekend is upon us (although that means little when you're running a growing writing initiative and marketing agency).

See you on Monday!

--Eric

CEO, StageofLife.com and Stage of Life LLC