In this whole parenting thing that I have yet to write about meaningfully, I've been given the great privilege of a whole sixteen weeks of paid parental leave. By normal people standards, this is a bonkers amount. By Bay Area tech job standards, it's somewhere around average (at some point, Netflix was giving out a whole year). I'm now six weeks into that, not including a week of PTO I tacked on right before the wee baby was born. So, it's been seven weeks since I did anything that can be considered paid work.

Initially, it was a weird feeling. I'd had a habit of keeping on top of work Slack on my phone, trying to keep the amount of unreads for the morning down (also, to make it look like I work harder than I actually do :D). That got signed out of in the hospital, so that was a reflex I had to break. The idea of there being no point in looking forward to the weekend because every day was a weekend was also strange. I tried to keep track of days so the weekend felt somewhat special, but that has since dissolved as a notion and I barely know what's up with the calendar anymore.

The contents of a day itself is just keeping on top of house chores and keeping my two loves alive (recovering mommies require work just as much as a baby does; perhaps I'll write about that in a three part series eventually). If I'm holding the baby, he's either being actively fed or I'm just watching bullshit on YouTube or dumping even more hours into Tears of the Kingdom while he sleeps. If I'm not holding the baby, I'm probably catching up on baby related chores, like cleaning bottles, or making sure the formula pitcher is full, or something something the diaper pail. An entertaining habit has come out of people visiting, wherein I will hand off the baby to said visitor and then, instead of socializing, I will immediately begin tending to the dishwasher...

What was I talking about?

Oh, not having work. It'll be interesting to see where this shakes out in another ten weeks when I "return to work" (read: mostly work from home). But, on that note, I did sort of return to work today. I'd logged into my work laptop to get on Slack so I could round up the usual suspects for a work provided meal enjoyed down at the local beer garden. All of this was under the guise of meeting the baby, of course. It was an interesting scenario, because I remember the few times I'd go to my dad's office as a kid was to parade around whatever sibling was new at the time. Now it was my turn. Also strange was roaming the halls of the office with a stroller and a fussy baby, reminding myself that a fussy baby in the office is weird and distracting... for the five other people that were there. Still, it was a good time catching up with coworkers, and the lovely beers and cafe food was delightful. While it may sound like the wee baby was not cooperating, all he wanted was a bottle and a clean diaper. He literally slept the rest of the time like a good visitor. Makes me wonder what other kinds of things he might be a good trooper for.

Making videos for an electronics YouTube channel?