Honor and Ears

Burrr, it is cold! I am turning into such a wuss with the cold, it is sad.

So today’s topic is “honor”. What does it take for you to tell someone you are “honored” to do something for them? Honor is, IMO, a huge and heavy word. I remember first thinking about this in grad school when I was assembling my committee. I had a few of the people I asked respond to me saying that they were honored to sit on my committee. My initial thought was that it was weird, *I* am the one who is honored to have them sit on my committee, not the other way around. Sitting on a committee is a tedious job.

This came to mind yesterday again. I have come up with, what I think, is a great proposal idea. It stemmed out of a brainstorming session I had with my good project members a few months ago. I had hedged onto an idea with one of my CWs and we bounced the thought back and forth a few times in the meeting, then it slid out of lack of interest from the other team members in favor of a different approach. Well I think I found a wonderfully appropriate avenue for this idea and the call for proposals *just* came out. I e-mailed CW and asked if he agreed about pursuing this avenue and if so, would he consider working with me on it. Writing a proposal is a commitment that you are not reimbursed for (until the later stages if your proposal makes it that far). So it is a favor to ask someone to do for you. And for me, being relatively new here (at least compared to my CW who has been here 15 years), writing for a call that is not one of our main clients, this will be a big challenge. I need someone more experienced to help me here.

CW wrote back to me yesterday about what a wonderful idea it is and that he would be “honored” to work with me on this. Why does this sound so weird to me? Once again, it is ME that is honored that he would accept to help me with this. Is it an issue of self confidence? Why do I feel so weird about hearing someone say this?

We took Leif to an ENT doc this morning to talk about tubes for his ears. He does fall into that “tubes recommended” category by number of ear infections. Fortunately he doesn’t have fluid behind his ear routinely, or get really sick with an ear infection. So for those reasons he is on the lower end of being recommended. It isn’t a must, but he will probably benefit from them. If it wasn’t that he is just not responding well to everyday antibiotics, or that I worry about him being speech delayed, I might opt out. But it is probably a good thing to do.

Well it is lunchtime and I am hungry. So I am going to go fetch food. Likely a run to Safeway where I can pick up a few groceries (snack for Leif’s class tomorrow), a latte and something from the Deli for lunch. Have a great day!