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Ah…the life of a nonprofit executive. Full of altruistic endeavors and the constant pursuit of righting social wrongs. Right?

Hmmmmmm. Not exactly.

At the moment I am sitting in a lovely airport hotel the night before a three-day meeting. I drove two hours down to the bay area on a Monday afternoon following a very long weekend full of Ava’s birthday party, a 10K walk, a sailboat ride, hosting of family, and perpetual motion.

I am totally exhausted and the LAST thing I wanted to do was get in my car only to sit in a stale hotel room the night before sitting and a first-freezing-cold-then-stiflingly-hot hotel meeting room with 85 other people all of whom will be talking about scintillating details related to federal rules and regulations for community clinics.

Now, my husband is exhausted, too, but he’s at home breaking up fights between the girls, negotiating dinner, and juggling bath time all while trying to watch game five of his beloved Detroit Red Wings. “Enjoy your solitude”, he said. Yes, the bite of sarcasm in Paul’s voice when I called to check in was hard to miss.

My solitude? What is he, crazy?

Well, when I think of my solitude it definitely doesn’t include ANY of the following:

·         Hours of nasty bay area traffic

·         A totally inadequate hotel gift shop stocked with very little chocolate

·         A stinky, dank hotel room with a wifi system that interferes with my remote access, so I can’t effectively tackle any of my work which has been piling up since being out all day Friday at a meeting and most of today for travel

·         A hotel room window facing a noisy construction site

·         A hotel lobby full of intensely perky women attending a large seminar on something called Xtreme Lashes (seriously, here's the website, I actually looked it up xtremelashes.com)

·         No ability to watch anything in my TiVo queue, instead being relegated to either 1) some painful Matt LeBlanc and monkey movie on HBO or 2) perpetual news coverage of the Democratic primary

·        A disgusting, over priced room service dinner ordered out of desperation and exhaustion

·        An uncomfortable bed that will no doubt keep me tossing and turning the entire night

Yeah…I’ll try not to rub it in.

© Amanda Stangis 2008