Our daughter is an accomplished professional but somewhat scattered and tends to over-schedule, as does my husband. Daughter lives on the West Coast but comes east for meetings.
When she is here, I feel as if everything dissolves into chaos and crises.
This trip was a disaster for her. She had a morning meeting at a Federal agency in suburban Maryland and could have actually just stayed in a hotel right there and turned around and gone back to her home on the west coast. However, she decided to stay one more day and see her brother and nieces who live nearby. First of all, we were not here. Our good car was at the airport. Our old car's battery was dead. So she couldn't get around once she got to our house the second night. Her brother who lives nearby picked her up and she went over there (taking Zoey with her). But first she stayed in DC before going to her meeting. She flew in to an airport that was cheaper but then she wasted time and money getting to DC for her hotel. Then the next day she had to take a variety of public transportation from DC to get to suburban Maryland. Then more public transportation to get here.
It gets worse. This was an important meeting with big guns attending. She was so revved up the day before from the travel with a 3 hour time difference, she couldn't sleep in the hotel. She got 2 hours sleep. She felt she didn't perform well at the meeting and make a statement that the biggys disagreed with. She left the meeting frustrated.
This morning she looked at her return ticket and saw she booked a different airport at a later time to fly home. Then she dissolved , saying she is not organized, can't keep track of time or space, despite multiple efforts. I tried to suggest coping strategies but that made her madder. She said she has done everything she can...has a professional organizer, has a tech organizer, has all kind of books, etc.
All I could say was, you have strengths in different areas. You can't be perfect....etc.
Well, she wasn't happy with whatever I said but she made lemonade out of lemons by calling an old friend and getting together with her in the extra time before she departed.
In the meantime, my day was also crisis management.
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