I’ve just started nuking entire two-hour blocks of time out of the day, which is always pre-filled with back-to-back half hour crap meetings, so that I can go out on a bike trail. Most of the time people don’t seem to care, but on occasion when someone asks me why I wasn’t at their precious half-hour crap meeting, I respond that I had some kind of “carers” issue, and if there is anything relevant they need from me to send me an email about it, and I will reply with the info. Amazingly, that seems to effectively address whatever issue the crap half-hour meeting was for.