So, to elaborate on my rather terse post on Wednesday and my general lack of internet presence:

I work for a small contract firm of about 30 employees.  We provide contract development services to the regulatory and pharmaceutical industry.  As a contract company, the butter on our bread depends on bringing in new business and keeping the work flowing.  We have a government contract for technical writing services that keeps a low, steady cash flow, but my department relies on constantly exploring new prospects. 

Because any ultra-specialized field tends to get inbred after a while, through a series of contacts (and a brilliant display of why “networking” is so crucial), an opportunity to pitch our company to a big-big client kind of dropped out of the sky into our lap.   And I mean BIG-BIG client.  With the intent of developing a long-term outsourcing relationship.  Divine Providence kind of stuff.  Manna.  From. Heaven. 

Back in November we held a teleconference.  It went … okay.  We still continued to work on some short-term bids for another one of their divisions, but we didn’t hold our breath or change our holiday plans.

Then, at the end of December, the Big-Big Client announced their intention to come and visit our offices in less than three weeks.  

Now, to clarify a point here – we RARELY meet with our clients in our office.  We generally, as a contractor, go to our job sites.  What we have here is a nice, comfortable working atmosphere, but it is far from glamorous.  In addition to preparing the meat and potatoes of a sales pitch, we had quite a bit of garnishing to do.

I have spent the last three weeks wrapping up an ongoing drug trial, initiating a new drug trial (still gotta work that payin’ gig), preparing mock protocols, data capture forms and powerpoint presentations of every detail of our business, and balanced that with the mandatory holiday ‘trips to grandma’s house’, New Year’s Parties, and over $100 of office redecoration (out-of-pocket, of course).

Oh, and did I mention clothes?  Because I meet with my clients at trial locations, traditional business attire is not only non-functional, it’s actually a bit ludicrous.  Chinos, workboots and turtlenecks are pretty standard fare.  Anything I had remotely resembling corporate standard is somewhere in a landfill in Louisiana.

Merry Christmas to me.

Wednesday was the big day.  I just needed to get past Wednesday.  A guaranteed 12-hour day, but it was the light at the end of the tunnel.  Kris didn’t need to get to work until late morning, so I didn’t need to worry about dropping off Harry at daycare, and he only had a light day, so he would be able to pick him up.  I could go from Morning Coffee Meeting to After-Pitch Dinner with smooth sailing.

Then I woke to the sound of Harry coughing and whining at 1 AM.  He has a combination of a cold and an allergy to a friend’s cat that had been draining his sinuses and eyes steadily for days.  I got up, wiped his eyes with a warm cloth, laced his orange juice with cough medicine and held him upright until we both fell back to sleep an hour later.  At 6 AM I woke again, this time to he sound of my husband “calling Rhonda” in the bathroom.  He came back to bad a shade greener than usual, and planted himself immobile and moaning in as close to a fetal ball as an almost-seven-foot man in his mid-thirties can manage.

Right.  Slight change of plans.

Sometime between the mascara and the earrings, I changed Harry’s diaper while he was still sleeping and threw clothes on his comatose body.  He woke up fully after I strapped him in the car and I handed him a sippy cup of milk and a breakfast bar with one hand, while I threw my briefcase in the passenger seat with the other, and we were off. 

I am certain any number of NASCAR drivers would have negotiated the rush hour traffic with more finesse, but they aren’t handicapped with a minivan and an open travel mug of coffee.  All things considered, I am rather proud of my time, although I am certain that more than a few of my fellow commuters had some choice words on my behalf.  Even Harry, at the tender age of eighteen months, realized that this was not the time for fussing, and sat wide eyed and quiet while I pulled his coat off, kissed him perfunctorily, waved a vague “see-you-later” in the direction of his teacher and left a slight breeze and a trail of dazed toddlers in my wake to my car and my office, thankfully only four blocks away.

I had ten minutes to touch up the lipstick and mute the cell phone before eight pharmaceutical executives, some coming in on red-eye flights from Europe, walked in the door.  I did my best to lean against the doorframe and act non-chalant, which became slightly more difficult to pull off when I reached in for my PDA phone and realized I still had Harry’s pacifier in my blazer pocket.

And the meeting?  Well, let’s say it went.  I ducked out during coffee breaks to call home and for the regular updates that would tell me if Kris was in a state where he could make the trip to check Harry out of daycare without at least one side-of-the-road purging stop, and tried not to break stride between alternating discussions of vomit, monitoring chain-of-command and subcontractor quality control.  By the time the last of the business-dinner-wine was consumed, I was utterly drained and a walking commercial for the staying power of Dove anti-perspirant.  Only time will tell if it was all worth the stress.

I came home and didn’t even wash the makeup off my face before dropping into bed beside my two sick-exhausted men, big and little, and turned off the bedside light.  The highlight of my day didn’t come until 3 AM the next morning, when my sleepy-eyed son realized I was in the bed next to him, pulled his little dreamy face next to mine and kissed me twice on the lips, making little smacking noises.  And promptly asked me for a drink of milk and a cookie.

You know?  When you get awakened so sweetly, and with such obvious delight, it doesn’t matter how hard of a day you had before.  It doesn’t matter that it is 3 AM.  That boy gets his cookie.