Knock Before You Walk

So far it's been a very productive conference.  The thing about surrounding yourself with brilliant, dedicated, and innovative people is that you realize how much more you can and should be doing...and I'm looking around and realizing that it's gonna take a lot more to get my program where I want it.  SO much work to do!  But it's energizing and exciting to think about the possibilities.

I got walked in on by the cleaning lady this morning.  Interesting that she did the knalk - this is when someone knocks AS they walk into a room.  Which kinda defeats the whole purpose of knocking, don't you think? 

Unfortunately, I was not dressed.  Fortunately I was hid behind a wall.  It could have been disastrous.

I had another knalk experience that almost ended as badly, if not worse.  It was several years ago, when M was a baby, and I was breastfeeding.  Which meant, for this working Mom, periodically connecting myself to an apparatus and milking myself throughout the day. Every bit as humiliating as it sounds. 

And the machine, a fancy double pumper, made this horrible whoooosh, whooosh, whooosh sound which I was sure could be heard from outside my office.  Which only increased the humiliation. 

So I had the awkward conversation with my male, childless supervisor.  Now, we happen to be dear friends, so it wasn't a typical supervisor/employee conversation. It went something like this: "I'm breastfeed-" at which point he held up his hand for me to quit talking and pretended to retch.  "No, listen, I just want you to know that I'm going to be pumping whi-" Again interrupted by an even more dramatic gesture of him pretending to fall out of his seat while retching. "So when my door is closed and my blinds are shut that means that - " This time he covered his face with his hands and just said "Out. Out Amber Lou. Out."

And so we had reached an understanding.

I pumped so long that I actually discovered there was a lot that I could do while I was pumping.  I used to prop the bottles against the desk so my hands would be free so I could type or answer emails - it was a very effective use of my time.  Who says you can't be all things to all people all the time?

So one day I'm on the computer, working away, hooked up to my milk machine and my office phone rings.  It was my supervisor.  My hand was on the phone, I was about to pick up before I remembered what I was doing.  And that the whooosh, whooosh, whooosh would surely give me away.

Then he called right back. That was his code for I Need You Right Now, No Matter What.  And knowing how impatient he is I knew what his next step would be - to come to my office.  And he was a knalker.  Used to drive me crazy.

About 10 seconds later I hear a knock, hear the handle, hear a key, and the handle starts to turns.  And I panic and yell, about as loud as I could,  "No!".  It had the potential to be one of the most mortifying experiences of my life.  And probably one of the most traumatic for him... poor guy couldn't look me in the eye for the rest of the day.

When I didn't answer the phone he assumed I was out of the office at lunch.

And of course, because it ended the way it ended - with nothing happening - I thought it was extremely funny and took full advantage of every opportunity to give him a hard time about it. 

So please, remember: knock, pause, then enter.  Or bad, very bad, things could happen.