Back to Work

This time of year is the busiest time for me at work since it is the time that I buy all of the frontlist titles for the fall season (aka, the fourth quarter - where we make our profit). The list that each publisher puts out is huge and preparing for appointments takes forever. There is the holiday catalog to think about, displays to plan and, on top of everything else, we do our store wide inventory in the middle of all this mess. So, despite the fact that I’m still pretty sleep-deprived I have had to start working the past few weeks so that I don’t fall so far behind that I can’t catch up. I’ve been working from home when I can but this week I had to go into the store to get on a conference call. So, Oliver and I packed up and headed into my office. This summer I will be bringing Oliver in when I go into the store so this was a nice little trial run to see how things would go.

Brian came with us and watched Oliver while I took the call but then he headed off to take his Spanish final and Oliver and I stayed so that I could do a little more work. We were there for a little over five hours and I got some (not a lot, but some) work done. I kept having to take breaks to feed or change Oliver so it wasn’t the level of productivity I was used to. It will definitely take some adjustment for me to figure out how this whole working/mothering thing is going to work out. I realized that there are certain baby items I need to procure for my office (a changing pad, a diaper genie, etc.) to make us as comfy as possible. Once we get those creature comforts it will be much easier to care for him at the store. And luckily, I have great coworkers who are always willing to hold/watch Oliver if I need to take a call or meeting. And my mom will come up this summer to watch Oliver so I can get more work done. It will be an interesting summer work-wise but I’m sure it will all work out. I’m pretty anxious to get back to work since while this is the busiest time of the year, it is also the most exciting and rewarding for me (plus, a little more adult human contact would be nice).