Today was a BAD day, so I need to bitch a little.  Sorry. :)

Today was a work from home day, and on work from home days, Princess K stays home with daddy.  She has been my little office manager for a good portion of her short three years of life.  As the office manager, she makes sure that daddy is doing his job quickly and efficiently.  This entails her sitting on my lap during phone conferences all while asking "who's that daddy?" or "daddy, I have a poppie", or "WAHHHHHHHH!!!!".  She  also makes sure that I take my state mandated breaks by producing poppies for me to clean up on occasion so that I can get away from the computer for a few minutes.  In addition, she tests my mental abilities by laying toys around the house for me to dodge when I need to go and get my programmer power food (Cheeto's and Twinkies).  Overall, she has been one of my better office managers in my long career.

Today, though, she really tested my patience.  She got a verbal warning, and came really close to being written up several times.  The Super Mega corporate office has pretty strict policies and she totally blew a few of them.

First off, page 102, paragraph 7 of the Super Mega Corporate Handbook clearly states that employees are NOT allowed to draw on the carpet with PEN.  I was busily working on some code earlier while Princess K was happily drawing on her TV tray.  She explained to me that she was working on a new org chart, so I assumed she was well taken care of for awhile.  I looked down at her a short while later and I noticed that she was no longer drawing on her TV tray, but was busily painting our carpet with her colorful pens.  I quickly explained to her that we had corporate policies in place FOR A REASON and after a large dose of carpet cleaner (which we buy in BULK here at the Super Mega Household, by the way) things were back to normal again.

Pens were quickly put away at this point and exchanged for crayons and we were back in business.  Unfortunately, I failed to notice that Super Mega Mommy had left out a tube of chap stick which is just an open invitation for trouble around these parts.  Now, at Super Mega Corporate Headquarters we promote lip health just like any good company, but painting the walls with chap stick is STRICTLY prohibited.  After a long talk, we agreed to just a verbal warning and that we had an understanding that we didn't need a written warning at this point in time.

By this time I was pretty well convinced that there weren't going to be any more personnel problems, but I was DEAD WRONG.

Apparently, I didn't put the pens away well enough and they eventually found their way back to Princess K's work space.  She was working on her org chart once again and quickly decided that her brand new pants needed a little decoration on them.  Like most companies, we have a dress code policy in place and the dress code specifically states that employees must wear California Business Casual attire at all times.  Clothes should be well maintained and not have any stains or other markings on them.  When Princess K was a baby, we cut her a little slack because she drooled a lot and stains were just inevitable.  But now that she's upper management, she should maintain herself in a more professional manner.  Pants were quickly sprayed down with Spray and Wash and new pants were put on and we were back in business once again.

By this time, Super Mega Mommy was aware of our bad day through several phone calls and she decided to take us out to dinner to give us a break.  I told the kids it was time to clean up, but apparently they thought I ACTUALLY said to run around like wild animals.  After about half an hour of trying to wrangle the house and the kids into a less messy state and having the kids bounce off of each other, the furniture, and me, Super Mega Mommy got home and loaded us into the Super Mega Mommy Mobile and we headed off to Denny's for a kid friendly evening of fun and food.

I'd like to say it was an uneventful night out at our local Denny's, but the kids continued to pretend they were wild animals and tried their very best to see how much trouble they could get into.  Fortunately for us, Denny's had absolutely no one in it (including the wait staff), so it really wasn't that big of deal.  We got home after awhile and it was officially BED TIME.

So, now I sit here, working on my blog.  Kids are asleep.  Super Mega Mommy is asleep.  I'm watching the Science Channel.  Now I think it's time for a Calgon Moment.