'Take Your Wife To Work' Day

While on our recent ski trip, our friend, Paul, mentioned that he is preparing to climb Mt. Rainer. Part of his training is climbing the 50 flights of stairs in their company’s downtown high-rise. Since I’m often complaining that running on the flat surfaces of Houston leaves my butt looking like its taking a nap, I thought this was a great idea for a workout. When Jonathan had to make a quick run to his office this weekend, I decided to tag along and do some stair-climbing.

While we did accomplish climbing up and down 50 flights of stairs (giving my butt a much needed espresso shot), I didn’t realize that by going to Jon’s office I was signing up for a flashback of my 8th grade “take your daughter to work day”.

Now when I say that I married someone just like my father, it’s a bit spooky. While their personalities are quite different, they are both complete dorks when it comes to engineering. They work for the same company and even began in the same position.

Growing up, it was good to see my father truly enjoy his work. He so desperately wanted me to follow in his footsteps and would often take me to his office to show me geological charts and explain engineering techniques. While I could see his fascination with it and I definitely liked the idea of a steady, comfortable salary, math was never one of my favorite subjects which made engineering low on my list of dream jobs.

Seeing Jonathan in his natural habitat, I saw that same enthusiasm as he gave me the tour of his floor and showed me the graphs for his projects. He was like an excited kid on show and tell day. While I am so proud of both my dad and my husband, it’s hard to follow their conversations sometimes. I’ve learned that Jonathan doesn’t expect me to comprehend, but instead just wants me to listen to him talking about work. I really try to act interested, but as in childhood, I was definitely more captivated by the fancy coffee machines and vending machine options in the office than I was with the geological charts.

I think the greatest gift I could have ever given my dad was marrying an engineer. They are truly a match made in in-law heaven.

And it turned out well for me, because feigning interest was definitely worth the stair-workout. My legs shook for the remainder of the day and my calves haven’t been this sore since the long gone days of soccer tournaments. I just need to decide if toned legs are worth the hour long lecture that’s bound to accompany any trip to Jonathan’s office. The goal is to eventually get so toned that he’s too busy staring at my legs to talk about work. If that's the case, I better get to climbin’.