Diaries of Real Fire Wives – Day 2 – Reggie

by | Especially For The Fire Wife, Everyday, Real Fire Wife Diaries

I totally forgot to into Reggie yesterday!  Reggie is a fire wife and a working mom in the big world of corporate lawyers.  She travels often and has a wonderful husband who supports her career as much as she supports his.  I love Reggie, such a strong, hard working woman.  Love ya Reggie!  ~Jessie
Reggie Day 2

A day in the life of a full-time working-lawyer- mom married to a fire Captain.  ~ Day 2 ~

Plan for today:

  1. Company Conference
  1. FaceTime with Husband and Son
  1. Company Dinner
  1. Meet up with Sister (hopefully!)

6:00 am – Tuesday

“Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head…”  The Beatles A Day in the Life totally popped in my head this morning as grabbed my steno pad to start the day. I quickly checked my Blackberry and luckily there were no urgent matters to take care of (yet).   After a quick shower, I got dressed in another fabulous professional outfit and put my company game face on.

7:30am

I start out on my quest to find the conference room in this labyrinth of a resort.  I wander around asking directions until I finally found the conference room.  Turns out, all I had to do was walk through the pool outside my room, and it was right on the other side!  Well, at least I got some exercise!

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I wish this was a poolside meeting!

 

8:00am-10:30am

Ready for the conference to begin, with a company coffee cup filled with candy in one hand and my new company portfolio in the other.  Breakfast of champions!  I am sitting front and center in the conference room because I want Big Boss to take note.  Big Boss talks about how awesome we all are. Followed by sessions on a new computer program in development; career development planning, and a new report we can run.  Yes, I know you are all jealous that you are not stuck in a conference room on a sunny Southern California day, too!

10:30-11:00 am

Finally, they give us a break!  We are all greeted by cloudy skies – So, we refresh our coffee cups and grab a snack while we check our Blackberries; followed by our personal phones.  Ok, all is well on the home front (not that Husband would need my help – after all, he is the one that keeps our house ticking)!

11:00am-12:00pm

Back to the conference room we go to listen to a presentation on some new internal procedures.  Corporate America loves procedures … and making new ones to introduce at annual meetings! And – Blackberries …

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Noon – 1:00pm

Lunch time!  Time to check the Blackberry and the personal phone!  With nothing pressing to take care of, I sit with some of my counterparts from other regions to catch up on our family lives.  I, of course, share exciting stories about Husband and about his promotion to Captain and Kid turning 4.  Several colleagues inquire as to whether or not my Sister will join us again tonight.  Apparently, my beautiful Blonde Pilates Instructor/Sommelier/Event Planner sister made quite the impression last night!   The topic soon switches to a bit of mocking of my lack of domesticity to alert the new people of my “1950s-Husband-eque” role within my house.  Lunch passed too quickly and all of a sudden we realized the afternoon session is about to start, so we hopped up to scurry inside.  Oops! I was going to call Husband, but I lost track of time (as usual).  Oh well, I will make sure I FaceTime after the next session.

1:00pm-2:30pm (I mean actually 3:00pm)

This is the session I’ve actually been looking forward to!  One of my outside counsel friends is giving a presentation about certain practical skills.  It was supposed to be mostly scripted demonstrations and less lecturing.  Unfortunately, one of the other attorney-presenters really loves to hear himself talk and because he is droning on and on, he just unilaterally decided to cut the demonstrations that would actually be useful to us.  Seriously, he just said “I think you’d all agree that my [droning on and on] is more useful than the demonstrations.”  Really?  sigh… can it please just be 2:30pm so I can FaceTime with Husband and Kid before they leave for Kid’s evening class? (This two-hour time change is really challenging!) And, now droning lawyer has gone over his time limit…  It’s 3:00pm and they want us to run back to our vastly spread out rooms, change, check our email, and be back for a “team building” Putt Putt tournament in 30 minutes?  Awesome.

3:00pm

Finally, we are released from the neverending legal story…  I run back to my room to change into “casual” attire for this silly Putt Putt tournament.  I check my Blackberry, and of course, there is something that needs to be taken care of immediately (because I’m in a hurry).  So, I quickly log-in take care of the pressing matter and dash out the door to meet up for the Putt Putt tournament.

3:30pm

I get back to the conference room just as the rules of the “tournament” are being explained.  Great, the one time they are actually on-time!  Ok, so I guess teambuilding will include FaceTime with my fire family!  As we are walking to the Putt Putt course, I try to discretely “sneak” a FaceTime call.  It was like I sent out a signal for everyone to crowd around and photobomb our call.  Husband is taking Kid to his evening class tonight and then he’s back on shift in the morning, so there’s no turning back – the call must go on with colleagues and all!  Kid is eating dinner complete with food on his face.  Kid tells me about his day at pre-school and all his friends he will see tonight.   Kid keeps getting distracted by all the people jumping into view and shouting things at him… Well, this FaceTime call is not going so well.  I remind Kid that I will be home tomorrow (Yeah!), but after he’s asleep so I will not see him until the next morning.  More commotion ensues, so we just say our good-byes… oh well.

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5:30pm

I am a terrible golfer and this Putt Putt tournament is on real grass with no windmills or castles or anything fun.  It was basically a putting tournament… Maybe that’s common knowledge to real golfers, but I was disappointed that I didn’t get to bounce the ball off of various obstacles.  I did get a Birdie on one hole though!  After we finish “teambuilding,” a group of us are debating whether or not to change.  Someone says something about it only creating more laundry to do when we get home.  A couple of my colleagues nod and then my Boss says, “well, not for everyone. Reggie’s husband is the husband that all other husbands should aspire to be.  He does everything – He cooks, cleans, laundry, finances, childcare… everything!”  I interject, well – not, everything – I do have to put my clean clothes away (after he’s laundered and ironed them).  It really is fun being a corporate America lawyer married to a fireman!  Everyone actually enjoys stories about my family, because we aren’t the same old same old white collar family!

6:30pm-9:30pm

Enjoyed a lovely dinner with my co-workers and met the head of our new Latin America division.  Just as we were finishing up dinner, in walks my Sister.  Yeah!  (My sister is #2 and I’m #3 of 8 kids, so we’ve always been super close!)  She and I were talking to one of my counterparts in our Atlanta office.  I was actually introducing her because his family had owned a well-known car dealership in Chicago that she would undoubtedly recognize by his last name. As were talking, we found out his Grandfather was a long-time Fire Chief in our area, and his brother-in-law is actually the Deputy Fire Chief in my town! Total small world connection!

9:30-pm Tuesday -12:30am Wednesday

Sister joins my colleagues and I for an after dinner drink.  We chatted with the “old boys club” about the worst construction jobs we’ve had to complete.  I’m pretty sure the engineer getting shot at on a construction job in the projects won the title for the worst.  As riveting as the conversation was, I couldn’t pay too close attention because an evil bird was totally stalking me all night and I feared an attack at any moment.  Rather than subject myself to the fear any longer, I started a campaign to go out for In-and-Out Burgers.

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[Text Wrapping Break]

12:30am Wednesday

I win! Sister agrees to take me out for a late night snack at In-And –Out Burgers and we convinced one of our accountants and one of my counterparts to come too!  Big Boss was tempted, but we couldn’t convince him!  We enjoyed some pretty darn good cheeseburgers – “animal style” of course.

2:00am Wednesday

This resort is a total maze! We are lost on the grounds and it took us 20 minutes driving around to figure out where all our respective rooms are.  Finally to my room, I bid a tearful farewell to Sister because I won’t see her before my afternoon flight.  So glad I got to spend time with her – but, man I am going to be tired!

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Jessie -

Just a small town girl married to a firefighter since 2008, but she's so much more than a Fire Wife. She's been a member of the FirefighterWife family since 2012 and knows marriage takes a lot of work, even when it's in the best seasons.

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