Surely you've heard of the butterfly effect...
It's the scientific theory that a single occurrence, no matter how small, can change the universe forever.
There was the ad some years back, a butterfly flapping it's wings sets off a chain of events that eventually results in a hurricane a continent and a ocean away.
I've been pondering this fact in my own life for more than a few days now.
Maybe it's because I'm a person who still believes in the magic of ordinary days or because I tend to look at the micro way more than the macro.
But something quite macro has just occurred in my life. Remember Non-Company-I-Work-For-But-Am-Not-Really-One-of-Them, well four (4) days ago, I became One-of-Them! My boss, the indomitable O'Malley managed the previously unthinkable task of turning a little under the radar contractor into a bona fide employee.
At first , inside me were emotions rivalling the Main Street Electrical Light Parade and Fourth of July Fireworks, but as it really began to sink in, and I remembered where I had started from, a strange mix of pensive solemnity and gratitude sobered me.
A little over two years ago, I began my assignment at Non-Company, as an angry, un-employed temp, so broke that I wore my sister in law's cast-off Ann Taylor two-piece to the interview and was sharing the use of a decrepit Toyota Corolla with my father. I hadn't had a car to myself since the George Bush Administration and I was worried that I wouldn't get the job, and worried that if I did, how I was going to manage to get there. The day before I'd interviewed for a high-paying job with a Financial Planning Firm that I really wanted, which would have solved all my problems and I was casual and offhand in the interview with Non-Company. I'd put everything into the interview with the Financial Planners the day before. I was devastated and angry when told they'd selected another candidate, literally 20 minutes after I got off the phone with the FP firm, Non-Company called and said they wanted me. I called my Mom and like the ungrateful brat that I was, whined and cried telling her that I was going to 'have to take' the job with Non-Company.
So where does the butterfly effect come in...
The car. My 1997 Mazda Miata.
My sister in law counseled my parents strongly against 'helping' me get a car. But they saw differently. I guess they still saw something in me, something worthy. Goodness knows, at the time I didn't.
I still have that Miata and I don't think any other vehicle will ever mean as much to me. So much changed with that car. In short my whole life. For some reason, the moment I began driving that vehicle, I let go of the past, I let go of the anger. I quit having panic attacks. For once I was living within my means, being the person that I was, no longer trying to cling to someone else's identity, to their values.
I was able to get to my job, do well, leave at the end of a day and not have to wait for my Dad to come get me in the ramshackle old Toyota. I can't even articulate the relief from stress and worry about transportation. My Dad freed from having to rush across town to pick me up, was able to get to his job and do well.
Some days ago, I found one of my prayer lists from approximately two (2) years ago and some bank statements. As I read this list and looked at the statements, I was so overcome by what I saw that I wept, for God has so specifically met exactly every need I laid out and looking at the statements, I saw tangibly how His hand was upon me. I was able to see that in times of want, and in times of plenty, He really has been right there with me all the time. When you are in your thirties and down to your last $100.00, you need to KNOW that He is with you.
So many times, I tried to leave Non-Company. I sent out resumes by the dozen. I interviewed. But it seemed like God closed every door. Every time I tried to leave, something or someone would stop me. And it looks like He was right. I think He was smiling at me on Wednesday, when I began my first official day, 'See, I always know best...'
The car led to the job, the job led me to humble myself and work hard, working hard led to notice from O'Malley and O'Malley led me to bona fide employee.
You just never know what effect a seemingly small thing you do for someone else will have on their life. Don't miss the opportunity..
The Butterfly Effect....
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Friday, November 29, 2013
Advice To My Niece On Her Eighteenth Birthday
I know a little bit about regret...
After all yesterday was Thanksgiving. As I reached for the antacids, I re-lived every mouthful of the damage I'd wrought to my digestive system while overindulging at a champagne buffet. I have no excuses to offer other than the fact that just about everything tastes better when accompanied by the fruity effervescence that is champagne. So...I...ate...well...everything...
But this is a different kind of regret. The kind that only comes with time and experience. The kind you wish someone had told you about.
My eldest niece turned eighteen today. I know that seems impossible given how young and fabulous I am, but sadly, 'tis true!
I was a bit shocked and taken aback upon realizing this fact because it really does seem, when viewed through my eyes, like yesterday, when I was feeding her strained carrots and she was spitting them back out all over her bib as fast as I could shovel them in her mouth, reading her favorite book, "Mr. Brown Can Moo Can You!", when I first flew to Boston to visit and she realized I was there and hugged me so tight I couldn't breathe.
But time and distance are such formidable foes. We are somewhat strangers these days.
I so desire I could tell her the things I wish I'd known at eighteen.
So here goes....
1. Get the college degree...Get that stupid piece of paper. No matter what it costs, no matter what you have to do to get it. To the world, it matters. How much you've read and how naturally bright you are doesn't really factor in the world's eyes', in HR's eyes. All they see is the piece of paper or the lack of it. To them, you are your resume, your CV. You can talk about Bill Gates all you want. You aren't Bill Gates.
2. Don't miss out on opportunities because you feel that it 'isn't the right time'. If you keep waiting for the right time, you'll end up missing everything.
3. It's not all about money. I left the job that I loved most in the world, the thing that made me the happiest in life, assisting in a veterinary hospital, because another person I respected more than myself convinced me I needed more money and status to be happy. It's the worst decision I ever made. Life is way more than what's in your wallet.
4. Have Faith. I am not exactly trying to proselytize here. But let me say that, in the best of times, in the worst of times, it is my bedrock belief and faith in God that has been the anchor of my life. When things go wrong, and they will, you need something and someone higher to turn to.
5. Believe in Love. No matter what others tell you, no matter how many times they tell you you're too picky, that you're looking for something that doesn't exist, even if it never comes in this life, believe.
It matters.
6. Quit looking to others to make you happy. They never will and frequently it is their opinions that are the chains that most bind you. It's up to you to make your own happiness. Seek happiness. Let go of people who drag you down, who use you for their own ends, even if it's difficult to do, in the end, you'll be better for it.
7. Beware of credit. Learn about money, about saving. Take classes, read about it. Basically, if you can't afford something with the means you have right now, you don't need it. Having a credit card for true emergencies that you pay immediately is one thing, taking 3-4 cards just because you can is foolhardy. Credit agencies love to give 'college kids' cards. But with credit cards, much like gambling, the advantage is always with the house.
8. Make time for family. It's important. Last fall, I put off seeing Uncle Bob when he first got to Florida because I was busy, because 'the time just wasn't right'. I rationalized, he'll be here until the spring, I've plenty of time. Only, I didn't. He was gone before I'd ever had a chance to see him again. With life, you never know if the opportunity to see family that you put off might be the last time you'll ever see them.
9. Forgive Often. Don't hold grudges. They're counter-productive. You put way more time and effort into hating someone than simply accepting them warts and all. And hey, you aren't perfect either!
10. I am not really saying this, but I've heard it oft quoted, and I think it's brilliant. I believe it is ascribed to John Lennon, "Life is what happens while you are out making other plans". Accept this and your life will be a lot easier.
11. Learn to live with a servant's heart. I know I've already said this as part of my 'manifesto' but I really feel it bears repeating. The way you treat the supermarket check out girl is a direct reflection of your character. Care about people. Respect their worth as individuals. It is just as easy to bless as it is to curse.
12. Stuff is just that. Stuff. It weighs you down. Don't accumulate junk you don't need just for the sake of the acquisition.
13. Read. Read everything you can get your hands on. If you are going to accumulate 'stuff', accumulate knowledge, accumulate wisdom. It never goes stale.
14. Practice patience. I know when you are just entering adulthood, it's hard to realize that you aren't always going to feel the way you feel right now, but things do change, you deepen, you mature. If something doesn't feel right, respect that feeling, it's your gut telling you 'no'. Be patient, the right house, the right car, the right job, the right man, they are out there. Don't settle for second best. Believe me that gut feeling, it's almost always right. I can't tell you the number of things I wish I 'd listened to my gut not to buy, not to date, not to do.
15. It's a cliché' I know, but time really does heal many things. The broken heart, it will heal. The pain, it will go away. The fear, it will recede. What time can do, when you look back, is simply amazing.
So my dear niece. This is what I wanted to tell you today. All the things I so wish someone had told me.
Truthfully, a lot of them, you'll have to figure out on your own, by trial and error, by failure, and unfortunately, yes by pain and suffering from time to time.
As you venture out in the world, I wish you much happiness and success. But most of all I wish you love.
Your Older and Wiser - Aunt Jill
After all yesterday was Thanksgiving. As I reached for the antacids, I re-lived every mouthful of the damage I'd wrought to my digestive system while overindulging at a champagne buffet. I have no excuses to offer other than the fact that just about everything tastes better when accompanied by the fruity effervescence that is champagne. So...I...ate...well...everything...
But this is a different kind of regret. The kind that only comes with time and experience. The kind you wish someone had told you about.
My eldest niece turned eighteen today. I know that seems impossible given how young and fabulous I am, but sadly, 'tis true!
I was a bit shocked and taken aback upon realizing this fact because it really does seem, when viewed through my eyes, like yesterday, when I was feeding her strained carrots and she was spitting them back out all over her bib as fast as I could shovel them in her mouth, reading her favorite book, "Mr. Brown Can Moo Can You!", when I first flew to Boston to visit and she realized I was there and hugged me so tight I couldn't breathe.
But time and distance are such formidable foes. We are somewhat strangers these days.
I so desire I could tell her the things I wish I'd known at eighteen.
So here goes....
1. Get the college degree...Get that stupid piece of paper. No matter what it costs, no matter what you have to do to get it. To the world, it matters. How much you've read and how naturally bright you are doesn't really factor in the world's eyes', in HR's eyes. All they see is the piece of paper or the lack of it. To them, you are your resume, your CV. You can talk about Bill Gates all you want. You aren't Bill Gates.
2. Don't miss out on opportunities because you feel that it 'isn't the right time'. If you keep waiting for the right time, you'll end up missing everything.
3. It's not all about money. I left the job that I loved most in the world, the thing that made me the happiest in life, assisting in a veterinary hospital, because another person I respected more than myself convinced me I needed more money and status to be happy. It's the worst decision I ever made. Life is way more than what's in your wallet.
4. Have Faith. I am not exactly trying to proselytize here. But let me say that, in the best of times, in the worst of times, it is my bedrock belief and faith in God that has been the anchor of my life. When things go wrong, and they will, you need something and someone higher to turn to.
5. Believe in Love. No matter what others tell you, no matter how many times they tell you you're too picky, that you're looking for something that doesn't exist, even if it never comes in this life, believe.
It matters.
6. Quit looking to others to make you happy. They never will and frequently it is their opinions that are the chains that most bind you. It's up to you to make your own happiness. Seek happiness. Let go of people who drag you down, who use you for their own ends, even if it's difficult to do, in the end, you'll be better for it.
7. Beware of credit. Learn about money, about saving. Take classes, read about it. Basically, if you can't afford something with the means you have right now, you don't need it. Having a credit card for true emergencies that you pay immediately is one thing, taking 3-4 cards just because you can is foolhardy. Credit agencies love to give 'college kids' cards. But with credit cards, much like gambling, the advantage is always with the house.
8. Make time for family. It's important. Last fall, I put off seeing Uncle Bob when he first got to Florida because I was busy, because 'the time just wasn't right'. I rationalized, he'll be here until the spring, I've plenty of time. Only, I didn't. He was gone before I'd ever had a chance to see him again. With life, you never know if the opportunity to see family that you put off might be the last time you'll ever see them.
9. Forgive Often. Don't hold grudges. They're counter-productive. You put way more time and effort into hating someone than simply accepting them warts and all. And hey, you aren't perfect either!
10. I am not really saying this, but I've heard it oft quoted, and I think it's brilliant. I believe it is ascribed to John Lennon, "Life is what happens while you are out making other plans". Accept this and your life will be a lot easier.
11. Learn to live with a servant's heart. I know I've already said this as part of my 'manifesto' but I really feel it bears repeating. The way you treat the supermarket check out girl is a direct reflection of your character. Care about people. Respect their worth as individuals. It is just as easy to bless as it is to curse.
12. Stuff is just that. Stuff. It weighs you down. Don't accumulate junk you don't need just for the sake of the acquisition.
13. Read. Read everything you can get your hands on. If you are going to accumulate 'stuff', accumulate knowledge, accumulate wisdom. It never goes stale.
14. Practice patience. I know when you are just entering adulthood, it's hard to realize that you aren't always going to feel the way you feel right now, but things do change, you deepen, you mature. If something doesn't feel right, respect that feeling, it's your gut telling you 'no'. Be patient, the right house, the right car, the right job, the right man, they are out there. Don't settle for second best. Believe me that gut feeling, it's almost always right. I can't tell you the number of things I wish I 'd listened to my gut not to buy, not to date, not to do.
15. It's a cliché' I know, but time really does heal many things. The broken heart, it will heal. The pain, it will go away. The fear, it will recede. What time can do, when you look back, is simply amazing.
So my dear niece. This is what I wanted to tell you today. All the things I so wish someone had told me.
Truthfully, a lot of them, you'll have to figure out on your own, by trial and error, by failure, and unfortunately, yes by pain and suffering from time to time.
As you venture out in the world, I wish you much happiness and success. But most of all I wish you love.
Your Older and Wiser - Aunt Jill
Friday, October 11, 2013
Tootsie Pop Diplomacy
It started with Tootsie Pops....
Well, actually I think it started with a hard candy assortment...
No..the actual fact is, it began on Administrative Professionals' Day, when my team gave me a bouquet which consisted of a ceramic pot stuffed with cellophane and butterscotch candies and a balloon(let) imprinted with "Happy Administrative Assistant Day" which is a lot to put on a balloon if you think about it.
When I finished scarfing down the butterscotches a few weeks later, I emptied the ceramic pot and set it on my file cabinet thinking it might be a good place to put odds and ends or maybe a plant...
My team had other ideas..."You've got to re-fill that you know..." they'd say. Or..."That pot is still empty?!"
So I broke down and on my lunch hour purchased a humble hard candy assortment and dutifully filled the pot. I got a few takers. And on it went for some months, until one day when I got tired of the assortment and on a whim grabbed a bag of Tootsie Pops to supplement the usual offerings of peppermints, butterscotches, lemon drops, cinnamon disks, etc. Using the hard candy as a base, like potting soil, I propped up the lollies in the pot and waited to see what would happen.
What happened changed my life, re-shaped my thinking, and taught me things I never expected.
At first, only a handful of people noticed them. But it was the way they'd notice them...For some reason, when people see Tootsie Pops, they tend to get a wistful grin on their faces, their eyes light up, and maybe because they are considered to be a more premium lollipop, they tend to ask before they take one, "Okay if I have one?"
I would always answer, "Sure, but you don't have to ask?" That's what they are there for!" Then again, the grin...Maybe Tootsies take people back to their childhood? I'm not sure, but I've rarely seen smiles like I see when someone is unwrapping a Tootsie pop.
The circle widened to my supervisor, who famously eschews most things consisting of white flour and sugar, calling doughnuts and cupcakes 'death cakes', while ominously warning, "that stuff'll kill ya!" thus violating the most ubiquitous rule of office life, "If you bring the doughnuts they will come". Yet he has a weakness for blueberry tootsies, and time and again after lunch, I would catch him indulging in a post-prandial snack, up to his eyeballs in paperwork and yakking on the phone with the tell-tale white stick clenched between his teeth.
The other Monday, he sheepishly handed me a bag of Tootsies, saying gruffly, "I was out at Big Lots the other day and these were on sale" Hmmm...Big Lots has sales? This however has made me the object of legend, a former team member who worked closely with said supervisor for years, upon hearing that her former Non-Company co-worker actually brought in a bag of candy, implied that it was roughly the equivalent of the late Yasser Arafat sitting down for a coffee klatch with Benjamin Netanyahu.
I was to discover this again and again though, that Tootsies cut across boundaries, people just like them regardless of religion, creed, political leanings, sex, class, economic status. Word spread, people from other departments began showing up at my file cabinet to grab a lollipop, indulge in informal chit-chat, jokes began to fly, and I started to really get to know my co-workers. A lot of in-bred prejudices fall away when you realize that people are people, that even the guy you inwardly reviled for having the Obama 2012 sticker on his car, at the end of the day is just a guy who likes a grape tootsie.
As I walked down the halls, people I hadn't known previously, would call out, "Hi, Jill" or smile, ...that's the girl with the Tootsie Pops. I think the Tootsies were the moment I began to be a part of Non-Company, no longer just a long-standing temp.
Today was the day it gelled, as I was walking down the corridor on my way out to the parking lot at lunch, a project manager, waved me down, and handed me a five-dollar bill saying, "Hey, here's my contribution to the Tootsie Pop Fund, I eat a lot of those suckers!" In Non-Company parlance, for someone to actually contribute to a fund without being asked for donations is roughly on par with the Berlin Wall coming down, or at least that's what my incredulous teammate told me when I gleefully waved my five-dollar donation at him.
Like most Americans, I've been frustrated with this protracted government shut-down and I couldn't help thinking with all of this acrimony on the House and Senate floor that maybe if someone could just bring in a glass jar full of Tootsies, surely there is some kind of file cabinet somewhere on the floor of Congress, and set it down, maybe a similar thing could happen. Maybe John Boehner and Harry Reid would discover that despite their differences, they are just two blokes who happen to love the orange-flavored Tootsies. Eric Cantor and Nancy Pelosi might discover that beyond their very disparate ideologies, they both love the pomegranate and think the grape a bit passe'. Maybe for once they'd look beyond parties and just start talking, hanging around the file cabinet, sucking on Tootsie Pops, sharing a joke or two.
Maybe what we really need is the wise old owl, telling us that he couldn't get to the center of the Tootsie Pop without biting, that the world may never know how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll Center of a Tootsie Pop, but that we should never stop trying...
The worst thing for the world right now is it looks like America has stopped trying...
Instead of infighting... perhaps what we really need is to ask Tootsie Roll Industries to air freight a couple of cases of Pops to Congress..
Well, actually I think it started with a hard candy assortment...
No..the actual fact is, it began on Administrative Professionals' Day, when my team gave me a bouquet which consisted of a ceramic pot stuffed with cellophane and butterscotch candies and a balloon(let) imprinted with "Happy Administrative Assistant Day" which is a lot to put on a balloon if you think about it.
When I finished scarfing down the butterscotches a few weeks later, I emptied the ceramic pot and set it on my file cabinet thinking it might be a good place to put odds and ends or maybe a plant...
My team had other ideas..."You've got to re-fill that you know..." they'd say. Or..."That pot is still empty?!"
So I broke down and on my lunch hour purchased a humble hard candy assortment and dutifully filled the pot. I got a few takers. And on it went for some months, until one day when I got tired of the assortment and on a whim grabbed a bag of Tootsie Pops to supplement the usual offerings of peppermints, butterscotches, lemon drops, cinnamon disks, etc. Using the hard candy as a base, like potting soil, I propped up the lollies in the pot and waited to see what would happen.
What happened changed my life, re-shaped my thinking, and taught me things I never expected.
At first, only a handful of people noticed them. But it was the way they'd notice them...For some reason, when people see Tootsie Pops, they tend to get a wistful grin on their faces, their eyes light up, and maybe because they are considered to be a more premium lollipop, they tend to ask before they take one, "Okay if I have one?"
I would always answer, "Sure, but you don't have to ask?" That's what they are there for!" Then again, the grin...Maybe Tootsies take people back to their childhood? I'm not sure, but I've rarely seen smiles like I see when someone is unwrapping a Tootsie pop.
The circle widened to my supervisor, who famously eschews most things consisting of white flour and sugar, calling doughnuts and cupcakes 'death cakes', while ominously warning, "that stuff'll kill ya!" thus violating the most ubiquitous rule of office life, "If you bring the doughnuts they will come". Yet he has a weakness for blueberry tootsies, and time and again after lunch, I would catch him indulging in a post-prandial snack, up to his eyeballs in paperwork and yakking on the phone with the tell-tale white stick clenched between his teeth.
The other Monday, he sheepishly handed me a bag of Tootsies, saying gruffly, "I was out at Big Lots the other day and these were on sale" Hmmm...Big Lots has sales? This however has made me the object of legend, a former team member who worked closely with said supervisor for years, upon hearing that her former Non-Company co-worker actually brought in a bag of candy, implied that it was roughly the equivalent of the late Yasser Arafat sitting down for a coffee klatch with Benjamin Netanyahu.
I was to discover this again and again though, that Tootsies cut across boundaries, people just like them regardless of religion, creed, political leanings, sex, class, economic status. Word spread, people from other departments began showing up at my file cabinet to grab a lollipop, indulge in informal chit-chat, jokes began to fly, and I started to really get to know my co-workers. A lot of in-bred prejudices fall away when you realize that people are people, that even the guy you inwardly reviled for having the Obama 2012 sticker on his car, at the end of the day is just a guy who likes a grape tootsie.
As I walked down the halls, people I hadn't known previously, would call out, "Hi, Jill" or smile, ...that's the girl with the Tootsie Pops. I think the Tootsies were the moment I began to be a part of Non-Company, no longer just a long-standing temp.
Today was the day it gelled, as I was walking down the corridor on my way out to the parking lot at lunch, a project manager, waved me down, and handed me a five-dollar bill saying, "Hey, here's my contribution to the Tootsie Pop Fund, I eat a lot of those suckers!" In Non-Company parlance, for someone to actually contribute to a fund without being asked for donations is roughly on par with the Berlin Wall coming down, or at least that's what my incredulous teammate told me when I gleefully waved my five-dollar donation at him.
Like most Americans, I've been frustrated with this protracted government shut-down and I couldn't help thinking with all of this acrimony on the House and Senate floor that maybe if someone could just bring in a glass jar full of Tootsies, surely there is some kind of file cabinet somewhere on the floor of Congress, and set it down, maybe a similar thing could happen. Maybe John Boehner and Harry Reid would discover that despite their differences, they are just two blokes who happen to love the orange-flavored Tootsies. Eric Cantor and Nancy Pelosi might discover that beyond their very disparate ideologies, they both love the pomegranate and think the grape a bit passe'. Maybe for once they'd look beyond parties and just start talking, hanging around the file cabinet, sucking on Tootsie Pops, sharing a joke or two.
Maybe what we really need is the wise old owl, telling us that he couldn't get to the center of the Tootsie Pop without biting, that the world may never know how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll Center of a Tootsie Pop, but that we should never stop trying...
The worst thing for the world right now is it looks like America has stopped trying...
Instead of infighting... perhaps what we really need is to ask Tootsie Roll Industries to air freight a couple of cases of Pops to Congress..
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
My Gen X Rules for Living ( Title Changed 1-6-2025)
(A quick note on this, I changed the title on this from My Gen X Manifesto in 2025; due to the fact that lately, writings with this title keep coming up in conjunction with mass shootings, etc. I had used that title in jest, but it seems like it no longer is funny...so I changed it. A sad commentary on the world in which we live, but I felt this was a necessary action- January 6.2025)
It seems like more and more I've written this blog to an unseen critic, who is scanning my every word for grammatical errors, theme, content, subject agreement and emotions. I've made myself a wreck wondering if I write one thing, who will be offended, if I write another, do I sound angry, mad, trapped in the past, etc.? Then I keep trying to write this one absolutely fantastic piece that goes viral and makes people want to interview me on television and gives my moment of immortality.
I think today is the day that I will quit listening to the critics and write what I want to hear. If I talk about the past, it's because I truly miss it. It's not to say that there aren't positive things about the present, but for someone coming at life from my perspective, the truth simply and unadulterated is, I'm not at home in this present. I don't like to think that the best years are behind me, but the whole point of this blog is that I am a Gen X'er in a world I increasingly don't understand. It moves a bit too fast, it's a little too loud, far more morally bankrupt than I would prefer given my choice.
Maybe I've never really stepped out from behind the desk to let you know who I am.
My Gen X Manifesto. By the way, I've always wanted to write my own manifesto, mostly because, I really, really like saying...manifesto, it sounds grand and lofty, doesn't it? Of course, Hitler, Lenin, Marx and Mao Tse-Tung all had manifesto's but you know, they're dead...so why quibble...
So here are my bedrock beliefs, a few truths and a bunch of crap I made up because I can...
1. Irregardless SHOULD NOT be a word. For those of you who thought it already was and have used it in sentences, I salute you and, uh...feel your pain.
2. I believe in the idea that every individual should have the God-given right at any time to sing along with A-Ha's "Take on Me", Foreigners' "I Want to Know What Love Is", and Mister Mister's "Broken Wings" on their car stereo and hit the high notes as loudly and off-key as they possibly can.
3. I believe as one comedian, whose name I can't recall once said, "If only Karen Carpenter and Mama Cass Elliott had shared that ham sandwich, they'd both still be alive today and the world would be a much better place!"
4. If you are depressed, sick, or just plain un-inspired, 25 minutes of watching Bob Ross paint can be life-changing. The same principle can be applied to just about anything Gordon Lightfoot sings and Bruch's Symphony No.1 in G Minor.
5. Knives should always be cleaned in between applying peanut butter and jelly. There is nothing more irksome than peanut butter in the jelly and jelly in the peanut butter. Well, actually there is, toast crumbs in the butter.
6. No-one should go through life without viewing the following at least once, "The Sound of Music", "Casablanca", "The Philadelphia Story" (the one with Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart, not the Tom Hanks movie "Philadelphia" which everybody always thinks this movie is), "Bringing Up Baby", "Swing Time", "Singing in the Rain","Now Voyager", "Stella Dallas", "Star Wars Eps. 4-6", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "The Thin Man", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", "While You Were Sleeping", "The Matrix" (but only the first one), "ET" and "Rocky 1,2,3 (skip the rest). This list is actually longer but only these few made the cut because everyone knows a manifesto isn't a doctoral dissertation and space is limited.
7. I dare you to feel un-happy while listening to Matthew Wilder's 'Break My Stride'. Ditto for Katrina and the Waves, 'Walking on Sunshine'.
8. I live by the words of a former pastor, Dr. Mark Rutland who once opined, "There is a direct correlation between your relationship with God and the way you treat the clerk at the supermarket". Practice living with a servant's heart. It's pretty good stuff.
9. I believe that life without a cat or two is pretty useless. Animals just make life better.
10. I believe that the actual day the music died was September 10, 1991 when Nirvana released "Smells like Teen Spirit". I've carried a grudge against grunge ever since. It was so...well...unhappy-sounding.
11. I think people today are drowning in a sea of in-gratitude and narcissism the like of which has never been seen before.
12. I am completely in agreement with child prodigy, Blaise Pascal who wrote at the age of 16, "There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.” He went on to among other things, create the mechanical calculator, shape projective geometry, establish many of the economic principles which guide our economy as it is today, all before age 39 when he died. I'm 39. I need to get cracking...
13. I think our generation, the Gen X'ers are the last generation which will ever have had a true childhood. The last to have sporting events where there were winners and (gasp) losers and not everybody got a trophy just for showing up, where every 20 minutes of our life wasn't scheduled, the last generation to have enough common sense to not walk out in the middle of the street into the path of on-coming cars which happens every evening as I come through my neighborhood on the way home from work.
14. Like Uncle Si on Duck Dynasty, I always have to have a few things on hand, my Bible, Altoids in my purse and a bottle of water somewhere close to hand.
15. I don't deal well in small talk. I've never understood the principle of how to 'small talk', or flirting for that matter. If you perceive I'm flirting with you, it might not be the case. I'm always the last to know that I was, in fact, flirting with you...
16. I've always felt somewhat defective because I don't eat mayonnaise (loathe it) and don't drink coffee. America seems to run on these two (2) commodities and I've always felt weird because I don't like them.
17. Tattoos are a mystery to me. I don't understand why this culture is so obsessed with them. I wish I could see it differently, but to me, I'll never understand why you feel the need to permanently deface your body. To what purpose...to be trendy? Maybe if you wanted to inculcate some principle you feel you might forget, or perhaps so you won't have to worry about losing a wedding band...
18. I'd still like to teach the world to sing...in perfect Harmony. Perhaps it's an overly idealistic, if not outright ridiculous idea, but I so desire peace. I know that our beliefs will always divide us, even to the point of death, but I truly believe in the ideal, that we are all fearfully and wonderfully made and endowed by our creator with the inalienable gifts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
19. I devoutly believe in liberty and democracy as the shared hope of the world. Not so easily attainable, but perhaps more worth the earning because of that fact.
20. Lastly, like Jack Black, I too believe, that "One good rock show, with face-melting guitar licks, can change the world."
So there is my manifesto, or at least Volume I...
I think today is the day that I will quit listening to the critics and write what I want to hear. If I talk about the past, it's because I truly miss it. It's not to say that there aren't positive things about the present, but for someone coming at life from my perspective, the truth simply and unadulterated is, I'm not at home in this present. I don't like to think that the best years are behind me, but the whole point of this blog is that I am a Gen X'er in a world I increasingly don't understand. It moves a bit too fast, it's a little too loud, far more morally bankrupt than I would prefer given my choice.
Maybe I've never really stepped out from behind the desk to let you know who I am.
My Gen X Manifesto. By the way, I've always wanted to write my own manifesto, mostly because, I really, really like saying...manifesto, it sounds grand and lofty, doesn't it? Of course, Hitler, Lenin, Marx and Mao Tse-Tung all had manifesto's but you know, they're dead...so why quibble...
So here are my bedrock beliefs, a few truths and a bunch of crap I made up because I can...
1. Irregardless SHOULD NOT be a word. For those of you who thought it already was and have used it in sentences, I salute you and, uh...feel your pain.
2. I believe in the idea that every individual should have the God-given right at any time to sing along with A-Ha's "Take on Me", Foreigners' "I Want to Know What Love Is", and Mister Mister's "Broken Wings" on their car stereo and hit the high notes as loudly and off-key as they possibly can.
3. I believe as one comedian, whose name I can't recall once said, "If only Karen Carpenter and Mama Cass Elliott had shared that ham sandwich, they'd both still be alive today and the world would be a much better place!"
4. If you are depressed, sick, or just plain un-inspired, 25 minutes of watching Bob Ross paint can be life-changing. The same principle can be applied to just about anything Gordon Lightfoot sings and Bruch's Symphony No.1 in G Minor.
5. Knives should always be cleaned in between applying peanut butter and jelly. There is nothing more irksome than peanut butter in the jelly and jelly in the peanut butter. Well, actually there is, toast crumbs in the butter.
6. No-one should go through life without viewing the following at least once, "The Sound of Music", "Casablanca", "The Philadelphia Story" (the one with Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart, not the Tom Hanks movie "Philadelphia" which everybody always thinks this movie is), "Bringing Up Baby", "Swing Time", "Singing in the Rain","Now Voyager", "Stella Dallas", "Star Wars Eps. 4-6", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "The Thin Man", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", "While You Were Sleeping", "The Matrix" (but only the first one), "ET" and "Rocky 1,2,3 (skip the rest). This list is actually longer but only these few made the cut because everyone knows a manifesto isn't a doctoral dissertation and space is limited.
7. I dare you to feel un-happy while listening to Matthew Wilder's 'Break My Stride'. Ditto for Katrina and the Waves, 'Walking on Sunshine'.
8. I live by the words of a former pastor, Dr. Mark Rutland who once opined, "There is a direct correlation between your relationship with God and the way you treat the clerk at the supermarket". Practice living with a servant's heart. It's pretty good stuff.
9. I believe that life without a cat or two is pretty useless. Animals just make life better.
10. I believe that the actual day the music died was September 10, 1991 when Nirvana released "Smells like Teen Spirit". I've carried a grudge against grunge ever since. It was so...well...unhappy-sounding.
11. I think people today are drowning in a sea of in-gratitude and narcissism the like of which has never been seen before.
12. I am completely in agreement with child prodigy, Blaise Pascal who wrote at the age of 16, "There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.” He went on to among other things, create the mechanical calculator, shape projective geometry, establish many of the economic principles which guide our economy as it is today, all before age 39 when he died. I'm 39. I need to get cracking...
13. I think our generation, the Gen X'ers are the last generation which will ever have had a true childhood. The last to have sporting events where there were winners and (gasp) losers and not everybody got a trophy just for showing up, where every 20 minutes of our life wasn't scheduled, the last generation to have enough common sense to not walk out in the middle of the street into the path of on-coming cars which happens every evening as I come through my neighborhood on the way home from work.
14. Like Uncle Si on Duck Dynasty, I always have to have a few things on hand, my Bible, Altoids in my purse and a bottle of water somewhere close to hand.
15. I don't deal well in small talk. I've never understood the principle of how to 'small talk', or flirting for that matter. If you perceive I'm flirting with you, it might not be the case. I'm always the last to know that I was, in fact, flirting with you...
16. I've always felt somewhat defective because I don't eat mayonnaise (loathe it) and don't drink coffee. America seems to run on these two (2) commodities and I've always felt weird because I don't like them.
17. Tattoos are a mystery to me. I don't understand why this culture is so obsessed with them. I wish I could see it differently, but to me, I'll never understand why you feel the need to permanently deface your body. To what purpose...to be trendy? Maybe if you wanted to inculcate some principle you feel you might forget, or perhaps so you won't have to worry about losing a wedding band...
18. I'd still like to teach the world to sing...in perfect Harmony. Perhaps it's an overly idealistic, if not outright ridiculous idea, but I so desire peace. I know that our beliefs will always divide us, even to the point of death, but I truly believe in the ideal, that we are all fearfully and wonderfully made and endowed by our creator with the inalienable gifts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
19. I devoutly believe in liberty and democracy as the shared hope of the world. Not so easily attainable, but perhaps more worth the earning because of that fact.
20. Lastly, like Jack Black, I too believe, that "One good rock show, with face-melting guitar licks, can change the world."
So there is my manifesto, or at least Volume I...
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Bummin'
Day before yesterday, I sat around the table with some of the family. Just, in passing, I seem to write that a great deal...'I sat around the table with some of the family'...
After we'd eaten, and caught up on the latest news, as seems to be the fashion these days no less than four (4) of us were indulging in a post-prandial scan of our smart phones to be sure that we hadn't missed an email or the latest Facebook post when someone remarked, 'Hey, did you know it was Grandparents Day?'
No one had and except for a few rueful smiles and an apology to my Mom and Stepdad who really are Grandparents, that 'Man, if we'd known, we'd wouldn't have made you cook today!', the matter dropped.
Later, as I drove the 20+ miles home with little to occupy my thoughts but some execrable music (unlike some I haven't been able to make myself pony up for XM Satellite Radio yet) and the antics of my fellow drivers, I had the sudden thought that this was the first time in my life that I had no grandparents left to commemorate. My last surviving grandparent died last December.
As is my wont, I drifted back a bit, thinking about these four personages who gave me my DNA, my fair skin, my tendency toward stubbornness, my love of reading, my extreme dislike of the smell of cooked popcorn (my paternal grandmother), my love of bread and gravy, all of the minutiae that goes into the making of me with all of my attributes and flaws.
It's funny, as I was driving to my Mom's that day, I'd had that sense of deja vu, remembering other Sundays, flying down the interstate in our Volare station wagon on a warm sunny Florida September afternoon to go to Grandma's for an after-church meal. They usually would have returned to Florida from their summer trek to their Ohio home by September. I remember especially loving the month of September because it meant that Grandma and Grandpa would be home. Nothing ever tasted so good as those home-made Sloppy Joe's, always served with soggy potato chips, salad and for some inexplicable reason, Jello. We always had that gelatinous mound of proto-plasm, as an adult I dislike it vehemently, but as a child, I guess I just went with the flow. We'd sit around the table for ages reminiscing and sharing news and stories. 'Yakking' my Grandma always called it. It was the stuff of life for her. Often, we'd still be sitting at that table when Sunday lunch turned to Sunday dinner. It was no problem, out came the leftovers and after that, the lemon bars, seven-layer bars, pistachio cakes, or apple crisp. Seldom, but still notable was the fact that there were a few occasions when we sat even longer and had a second dessert of cookies and heavenly hash ice cream.
I knew that when they came home all of the good stuff would return. Things like taking walks with my Grandma around the Senior Citizen complex they lived in to find petunias, although she called them, 'tunies. Nothing thrilled us more than to see those pastel color flowers with the black faces. And then there was the ritual of 'bumming at the local Mall. I'm never sure if was by accident or by design, but the complex they lived in was one large parking lot walk away from the mall. We'd scramble down the hill that led from the complex to the mall parking lot and then a few more steps to the large glass doors where we'd spend blissful hours walking the mall, bummin', which meant looking in windows, browsing the book shops, the Hallmark store where she bought her boxes of stationary, past the Tiffany Bakery with all of its intoxicating smells, the drugstore for Chicklets and Luden's cough drops, Morrow's Nut House for wax paper bags of pastel non-pariel candies, and then if I'd been good and even some times when I hadn't, I usually netted a mint chip ice cream cone from Baskin Robbins. We rarely bought anything of great value, mostly what Grandma called 'busy work', meaning a coloring book, a packet of Crayolas, a scratch pad. Sometimes I was allowed to have a packet of Starburst candies from the drugstore. Even as an adult, when I chew a Starburst candy, I'm back there, a child, in the drugstore at the mall.
The mall I used to walk with my grandmother still exists, but I rarely go there now. Once, my Mom asked me why, if I go to a mall at all, I never go to that one, "Too many ghosts", I said. When I look across that parking lot on the west side of the mall now, the complex is gone, the pool where I learned to swim lies under the three-story parking garage that adjoins the new multi-plex movie theatre. They demolished the old Twin theater back in the late 80's. Grandma went there for .25 cent movie days on Wednesday mornings.
On occasion, when I feel overwhelmed by life or when I'm ill and broken down in some way, I mentally take that trip in my mind; I'm always amazed at the piercing clarity with which I remember it all. They were such simple pleasures. Just Grandma and I walking the mall and ferreting out treasures.
Bummin...
After we'd eaten, and caught up on the latest news, as seems to be the fashion these days no less than four (4) of us were indulging in a post-prandial scan of our smart phones to be sure that we hadn't missed an email or the latest Facebook post when someone remarked, 'Hey, did you know it was Grandparents Day?'
No one had and except for a few rueful smiles and an apology to my Mom and Stepdad who really are Grandparents, that 'Man, if we'd known, we'd wouldn't have made you cook today!', the matter dropped.
Later, as I drove the 20+ miles home with little to occupy my thoughts but some execrable music (unlike some I haven't been able to make myself pony up for XM Satellite Radio yet) and the antics of my fellow drivers, I had the sudden thought that this was the first time in my life that I had no grandparents left to commemorate. My last surviving grandparent died last December.
As is my wont, I drifted back a bit, thinking about these four personages who gave me my DNA, my fair skin, my tendency toward stubbornness, my love of reading, my extreme dislike of the smell of cooked popcorn (my paternal grandmother), my love of bread and gravy, all of the minutiae that goes into the making of me with all of my attributes and flaws.
It's funny, as I was driving to my Mom's that day, I'd had that sense of deja vu, remembering other Sundays, flying down the interstate in our Volare station wagon on a warm sunny Florida September afternoon to go to Grandma's for an after-church meal. They usually would have returned to Florida from their summer trek to their Ohio home by September. I remember especially loving the month of September because it meant that Grandma and Grandpa would be home. Nothing ever tasted so good as those home-made Sloppy Joe's, always served with soggy potato chips, salad and for some inexplicable reason, Jello. We always had that gelatinous mound of proto-plasm, as an adult I dislike it vehemently, but as a child, I guess I just went with the flow. We'd sit around the table for ages reminiscing and sharing news and stories. 'Yakking' my Grandma always called it. It was the stuff of life for her. Often, we'd still be sitting at that table when Sunday lunch turned to Sunday dinner. It was no problem, out came the leftovers and after that, the lemon bars, seven-layer bars, pistachio cakes, or apple crisp. Seldom, but still notable was the fact that there were a few occasions when we sat even longer and had a second dessert of cookies and heavenly hash ice cream.
I knew that when they came home all of the good stuff would return. Things like taking walks with my Grandma around the Senior Citizen complex they lived in to find petunias, although she called them, 'tunies. Nothing thrilled us more than to see those pastel color flowers with the black faces. And then there was the ritual of 'bumming at the local Mall. I'm never sure if was by accident or by design, but the complex they lived in was one large parking lot walk away from the mall. We'd scramble down the hill that led from the complex to the mall parking lot and then a few more steps to the large glass doors where we'd spend blissful hours walking the mall, bummin', which meant looking in windows, browsing the book shops, the Hallmark store where she bought her boxes of stationary, past the Tiffany Bakery with all of its intoxicating smells, the drugstore for Chicklets and Luden's cough drops, Morrow's Nut House for wax paper bags of pastel non-pariel candies, and then if I'd been good and even some times when I hadn't, I usually netted a mint chip ice cream cone from Baskin Robbins. We rarely bought anything of great value, mostly what Grandma called 'busy work', meaning a coloring book, a packet of Crayolas, a scratch pad. Sometimes I was allowed to have a packet of Starburst candies from the drugstore. Even as an adult, when I chew a Starburst candy, I'm back there, a child, in the drugstore at the mall.
The mall I used to walk with my grandmother still exists, but I rarely go there now. Once, my Mom asked me why, if I go to a mall at all, I never go to that one, "Too many ghosts", I said. When I look across that parking lot on the west side of the mall now, the complex is gone, the pool where I learned to swim lies under the three-story parking garage that adjoins the new multi-plex movie theatre. They demolished the old Twin theater back in the late 80's. Grandma went there for .25 cent movie days on Wednesday mornings.
On occasion, when I feel overwhelmed by life or when I'm ill and broken down in some way, I mentally take that trip in my mind; I'm always amazed at the piercing clarity with which I remember it all. They were such simple pleasures. Just Grandma and I walking the mall and ferreting out treasures.
Bummin...
Monday, August 26, 2013
School Days
You know that icky feeling of dread that you get in your stomach when you feel that you may have forgotten something, something really important?
That feeling was coursing through me at about 7:30 a.m. this morning. The Non-Company German contingent were on their way, and I'd forgotten to check whether or not their flown-ahead shipment of tools and supplies were accounted for last week, before Monday rolled around, before the Germans were set to be here. By 8:00 a.m., I'd been to Receiving and finding no crates from Germany, I, well there is no other way to say it,was absolutely 'wigged out, off-the-reservation, out of my mind'. By 8:15 a.m., I was on the phone haranguing some poor girl in the Orlando International Airport for the number for the freight connection of Lufthansa Airlines. At 8:30 a.m., I was on the phone with Lufthansa Freight, pleading with them to tell me that the shipment had made it through customs, wasn't sitting abandoned in some warehouse somewhere, or worse that it hadn't been left for dead out on the tarmac in Dusseldorf. By 10:30 a.m., relieved to find that the shipment had actually made it to Orlando, I'd finally reached the courier where some burnt out guy named Vinnie (and no I am not making this up) with a devil-may-care heavy on the Bronx accent told me that "yeah, we was supposed to deliver on Friday, but it never made it on the truck, so we figgered we'd just ship it today".
"Okay, I said wearily, biting back the epithets I longed to lob at him, "so what's your ETA?" Vinnie considers his words for a moment and says, "well, sometime between now and noon. Youse see nomally we can tell ya if we already loaded the truck, but were still loadin' it, so we can't tell ya exactly when. Prawbly bout' an hour and a haf." Making it, you guessed it... exactly noon.
Then I proceeded to don safety glasses and steel-toed over shoes every 30 minutes to run out to the factory floor and irritate the crew in Receiving to 'check on the status'. In between floor runs, I nearly downloaded a Trojan horse virus by opening a mail I would normally have never opened had I been in my right mind, locked myself out of a Non-Company database by keying in the wrong password repeatedly, banged my shin on an open file drawer and jammed my fingers in my desk drawer.
In between, I mourned, this was my project, the first one I'd really been given the lead on in all my time at Non-Company. I'm letting my new boss down. I should have checked the status on Friday. Why didn't I check the status on Friday?
So what does this all have to do with school....
At one point today, in a lull between phone calls, between catastrophes, I saw my mobile phone blinking. A strobing blue light, which says hey, you have a message, an email, an update. In this case a Facebook update. So I stole a moment away, strolled through my News Feed, and there I saw a photograph of my friends' daughter. Actually, the friend who was my best friend all through my adolescence, my school years. It was her daughter, all dressed up, first day of school. Fifth Grade. There were several photos. In fact, it appeared to be somewhat of an occasion, pictures with her Dad and sister, with her grandparents, walking to the bus, boarding the bus, her new backpack slung over her shoulder, new lunchbox in her hand. I once knew her grandparents well; growing up they were like a second family to me.
Looking at the pictures, it called back so many memories, this friend and I met at her daughter's age now. With about a six-month age gap between us, she would have been heading off to 4th grade and me to the 5th. But we always walked to the bus stop together. Away from school we were inseparable, the best of friends. Always passing notes, having sleepovers at each other's homes, talking on the phone until all hours. BFF's forever.
I felt hollow inside. We're Facebook friends but not friends in the way we were. Time, distance and different lifestyles have separated us. While I was wigging out at work, trying to solve my crisis, she was experiencing a milestone moment, putting her daughter on the bus. In a few weeks, I'll have mostly forgotten about today's crises, five months from now I won't remember it all, but she'll always have this day to remember. In younger days, we were so sure we'd always be friends, that we'd stay in the same place, that our kids would be friends. Sometimes it seems so implausible that I sit here, edging nearer to 40, and have no children, no spouse. A demanding job that seems to take up every moment of my life, my thoughts...my energy.
I still cherish a photo of us, well, the four of us, she and I, and my younger sister and her younger brother...we were quite a crew. And now...scattered, different states, different lives, all of them with children, she has 2, her brother 2, my sister 3, and me well....0. Sometimes I find it so hard to believe it turned out this way.
I've always believed in the core of my being, that God doesn't make mistakes, that our lives are as he would have us to be. But sometimes, a smaller, inner part of me wonders, was it God choosing this life or me refusing to be braver, to take more risks with my heart?
And every so often, at this time of year, I wish I were putting my kid on the bus.
That feeling was coursing through me at about 7:30 a.m. this morning. The Non-Company German contingent were on their way, and I'd forgotten to check whether or not their flown-ahead shipment of tools and supplies were accounted for last week, before Monday rolled around, before the Germans were set to be here. By 8:00 a.m., I'd been to Receiving and finding no crates from Germany, I, well there is no other way to say it,was absolutely 'wigged out, off-the-reservation, out of my mind'. By 8:15 a.m., I was on the phone haranguing some poor girl in the Orlando International Airport for the number for the freight connection of Lufthansa Airlines. At 8:30 a.m., I was on the phone with Lufthansa Freight, pleading with them to tell me that the shipment had made it through customs, wasn't sitting abandoned in some warehouse somewhere, or worse that it hadn't been left for dead out on the tarmac in Dusseldorf. By 10:30 a.m., relieved to find that the shipment had actually made it to Orlando, I'd finally reached the courier where some burnt out guy named Vinnie (and no I am not making this up) with a devil-may-care heavy on the Bronx accent told me that "yeah, we was supposed to deliver on Friday, but it never made it on the truck, so we figgered we'd just ship it today".
"Okay, I said wearily, biting back the epithets I longed to lob at him, "so what's your ETA?" Vinnie considers his words for a moment and says, "well, sometime between now and noon. Youse see nomally we can tell ya if we already loaded the truck, but were still loadin' it, so we can't tell ya exactly when. Prawbly bout' an hour and a haf." Making it, you guessed it... exactly noon.
Then I proceeded to don safety glasses and steel-toed over shoes every 30 minutes to run out to the factory floor and irritate the crew in Receiving to 'check on the status'. In between floor runs, I nearly downloaded a Trojan horse virus by opening a mail I would normally have never opened had I been in my right mind, locked myself out of a Non-Company database by keying in the wrong password repeatedly, banged my shin on an open file drawer and jammed my fingers in my desk drawer.
In between, I mourned, this was my project, the first one I'd really been given the lead on in all my time at Non-Company. I'm letting my new boss down. I should have checked the status on Friday. Why didn't I check the status on Friday?
So what does this all have to do with school....
At one point today, in a lull between phone calls, between catastrophes, I saw my mobile phone blinking. A strobing blue light, which says hey, you have a message, an email, an update. In this case a Facebook update. So I stole a moment away, strolled through my News Feed, and there I saw a photograph of my friends' daughter. Actually, the friend who was my best friend all through my adolescence, my school years. It was her daughter, all dressed up, first day of school. Fifth Grade. There were several photos. In fact, it appeared to be somewhat of an occasion, pictures with her Dad and sister, with her grandparents, walking to the bus, boarding the bus, her new backpack slung over her shoulder, new lunchbox in her hand. I once knew her grandparents well; growing up they were like a second family to me.
Looking at the pictures, it called back so many memories, this friend and I met at her daughter's age now. With about a six-month age gap between us, she would have been heading off to 4th grade and me to the 5th. But we always walked to the bus stop together. Away from school we were inseparable, the best of friends. Always passing notes, having sleepovers at each other's homes, talking on the phone until all hours. BFF's forever.
I felt hollow inside. We're Facebook friends but not friends in the way we were. Time, distance and different lifestyles have separated us. While I was wigging out at work, trying to solve my crisis, she was experiencing a milestone moment, putting her daughter on the bus. In a few weeks, I'll have mostly forgotten about today's crises, five months from now I won't remember it all, but she'll always have this day to remember. In younger days, we were so sure we'd always be friends, that we'd stay in the same place, that our kids would be friends. Sometimes it seems so implausible that I sit here, edging nearer to 40, and have no children, no spouse. A demanding job that seems to take up every moment of my life, my thoughts...my energy.
I still cherish a photo of us, well, the four of us, she and I, and my younger sister and her younger brother...we were quite a crew. And now...scattered, different states, different lives, all of them with children, she has 2, her brother 2, my sister 3, and me well....0. Sometimes I find it so hard to believe it turned out this way.
I've always believed in the core of my being, that God doesn't make mistakes, that our lives are as he would have us to be. But sometimes, a smaller, inner part of me wonders, was it God choosing this life or me refusing to be braver, to take more risks with my heart?
And every so often, at this time of year, I wish I were putting my kid on the bus.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Reinvention
It's been awhile, I know.
I am not sure if my sabbatical was the equivalent of a summer vacation, or that I couldn't sustain the pace I was trying to keep, or simply that I couldn't hear the voice in my head because of all the background noise, but in the end, I think it's just simply that I've needed time.
Lots of things going on since I last floated my fingertips across these keys. I buried my grandma, got a new boss, changed my hair color (slightly and not actually on purpose), found out my thyroid was out of whack (probably not the technical term for this condition), started learning elementary German on Babble, but most importantly I learned a lot about myself.
On my second to last post, my mother, revealed as one of the most prominent readers of this screed (hey I need all the fans I can get) mentioned that many of my posts sounded angry and it really shook me.
I stood back and took a hard look at myself. And when I began to really measure it and take stock, I was staggered at the sheer amount of negativity in my life. How many times had I metaphorically shot myself in the foot, not believing myself capable of the tasks entrusted to me?
It's hard to change, as a negative person, to begin to embrace positivity. Very. In fact, it's downright excrutiating for someone as diametrically opposed to change as myself.
Sometimes though, you get help along the way from the places and people from whom you'd least expect it. Remember in school when you were getting your schedule at the beginning of the year, how someone would look over your shoulder and shudder and say "Oh Wow, you got O'Malley for Bio!", as if to say, man are you in for it! But then unexpectedly, O'Malley would turn out to be the teacher you most remember looking back, because even though he was tough and demanding, you found yourself doing better and getting more out of his class, because he inspired you, because he believed you were capable of more than you'd even thought you were.
Remember how I said, I got a new boss. I didn't want one. No indeed, I was going along just fine, thank you very much, but Non-Company decided our team was getting one anyway. And there were a few fraught days where I teetered on the verge of taking my marbles and going home...after all... it's just an assignment anyway, right? I took a few days, went to Connecticut to attend my Grandma's memorial service, and I came back thinking, okay, I'll see what this guy is like.
Mr. New Boss is a very austere ex-Naval officer, incredibly soft-spoken in tone, yet somehow as steely as they come. And just like O'Malley the Bio teacher, he demands a great deal from you, but before he did that, he did something that no one had ever done before in all my days at Non-Company, he told me I was valued. And he conveyed the fact that he believed I could do more than I'd settled for. And somehow for the first time in many years, I was inspired again.
Please don't get me wrong here, there are plenty of stressful moments where the old me comes back the one that says, I feel that I just can't get this or that done, but then somehow I find myself digging deeper into reserves that I didn't know I had, because I don't want to let him down and also surprisingly I find, because I don't want to let Non-Company down. Not because of who they are, but suddenly because of who I am.
In many ways things are the same, but somehow, I've subtlety changed. I'm no longer angry at smart phones, I use one all the time and I love the exasperating little dude, I've embraced Kindle and wheras I once dismissed them as red-neck idiots, I now absolutely love the values and faith of Duck Dynasty. I've been to a food truck and while I still don't completely understand the allure, I won't knock it anymore. In short, I don't feel the need as much to run somebody else down to elevate myself and make me feel better.
I'll try to make it back to regular weekly postings and Flashback Fridays, and for those of you who are still reading this, I thank you...
I am not sure if my sabbatical was the equivalent of a summer vacation, or that I couldn't sustain the pace I was trying to keep, or simply that I couldn't hear the voice in my head because of all the background noise, but in the end, I think it's just simply that I've needed time.
Lots of things going on since I last floated my fingertips across these keys. I buried my grandma, got a new boss, changed my hair color (slightly and not actually on purpose), found out my thyroid was out of whack (probably not the technical term for this condition), started learning elementary German on Babble, but most importantly I learned a lot about myself.
On my second to last post, my mother, revealed as one of the most prominent readers of this screed (hey I need all the fans I can get) mentioned that many of my posts sounded angry and it really shook me.
I stood back and took a hard look at myself. And when I began to really measure it and take stock, I was staggered at the sheer amount of negativity in my life. How many times had I metaphorically shot myself in the foot, not believing myself capable of the tasks entrusted to me?
It's hard to change, as a negative person, to begin to embrace positivity. Very. In fact, it's downright excrutiating for someone as diametrically opposed to change as myself.
Sometimes though, you get help along the way from the places and people from whom you'd least expect it. Remember in school when you were getting your schedule at the beginning of the year, how someone would look over your shoulder and shudder and say "Oh Wow, you got O'Malley for Bio!", as if to say, man are you in for it! But then unexpectedly, O'Malley would turn out to be the teacher you most remember looking back, because even though he was tough and demanding, you found yourself doing better and getting more out of his class, because he inspired you, because he believed you were capable of more than you'd even thought you were.
Remember how I said, I got a new boss. I didn't want one. No indeed, I was going along just fine, thank you very much, but Non-Company decided our team was getting one anyway. And there were a few fraught days where I teetered on the verge of taking my marbles and going home...after all... it's just an assignment anyway, right? I took a few days, went to Connecticut to attend my Grandma's memorial service, and I came back thinking, okay, I'll see what this guy is like.
Mr. New Boss is a very austere ex-Naval officer, incredibly soft-spoken in tone, yet somehow as steely as they come. And just like O'Malley the Bio teacher, he demands a great deal from you, but before he did that, he did something that no one had ever done before in all my days at Non-Company, he told me I was valued. And he conveyed the fact that he believed I could do more than I'd settled for. And somehow for the first time in many years, I was inspired again.
Please don't get me wrong here, there are plenty of stressful moments where the old me comes back the one that says, I feel that I just can't get this or that done, but then somehow I find myself digging deeper into reserves that I didn't know I had, because I don't want to let him down and also surprisingly I find, because I don't want to let Non-Company down. Not because of who they are, but suddenly because of who I am.
In many ways things are the same, but somehow, I've subtlety changed. I'm no longer angry at smart phones, I use one all the time and I love the exasperating little dude, I've embraced Kindle and wheras I once dismissed them as red-neck idiots, I now absolutely love the values and faith of Duck Dynasty. I've been to a food truck and while I still don't completely understand the allure, I won't knock it anymore. In short, I don't feel the need as much to run somebody else down to elevate myself and make me feel better.
I'll try to make it back to regular weekly postings and Flashback Fridays, and for those of you who are still reading this, I thank you...
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Reality Bites
The other day, my Mom who counts herself as one of my blog fans, remarked to me that the tenor of my posts seems to come off lately as angry. It was a bit startling to hear this, but after I pondered it for a bit, I came to think she was well, hate myself for saying this...right.
Today, after taking a cursory look at MSN, checking the headlines, stocks, French Open scores, I found the following article, entitled, "The Great Recession Wrecked Generation X" that I am posting a link to here:
http://money.msn.com/now/post.aspx?post=fc1c9c39-1c4a-4223-9ecb-2512551ec4b2
While I know a lot of people, including many in Gen X jib at the title of 'Generation X' or say,
"Oh, I don't buy into that", or "That doesn't apply to me", in my case, I think, this article encapsulates a lot of the anger that seems to be overflowing into my writing lately. Where the author, Jason Notte talks about Gen X since the Great Recession (Depression) being just older, and more tired, but certainly not any better off financially, I was mentally high-fiving him.
Finally, someone coming out and saying it. There were plenty of meglomaniacal posts in the 'Comments' sections from those who say that they weren't affected at all, let's face it there are always exceptions to any rule, but I think many of us, when we matriculated and entered the work force expected so much better. In my case, a crushing workload, which thanks to new cost-cutting measures, I can't even get overtime for, or health benefits, or vacation. When November rolls around, I will have hit the 2 year mark of the longest probationary period in history! And before you say, well you could leave and look for something better. Something better these days usually means another assignment and I already have one of those, a permanent job today is like trying to hit the motherlode in the Yukon! Because let's face it, the Boomers aren't retiring because they can't afford to, the Millenials want your job too and they are younger, cuter and more wired in, so where does that leave me? Really tired mostly, but in the more dire moments, staring into a gaping abyss of hopelessness. Believe it or not I used to be such an idealist; I go back and read the journal entries around the time of my high school graduation and my early days of college and there is such an optimistic, hopeful tone, I'm so excited by the possibilities of life, the feeling that everything is just out there waiting to be conquered. Truthfully, I almost can't read them anymore, knowing what I know now.
The thing is, I haven't given up...I care. I've tried to enact change politically, tried to believe that my congressman really does read the emails I send, that the Florida Governor, who I've ardently supported because he promised to bring employment to our state, will keep his promises. I vote even in the smallest elections, I write, I work hard, I pray.
They call us the slacker generation, but I know many of us are doing the same, working hard, voting, praying, hoping beyond hope, beyond what the experts tell us, beyond what the politicians don't do, beyond the promises they don't keep, that somehow we will beat the odds....
Today, after taking a cursory look at MSN, checking the headlines, stocks, French Open scores, I found the following article, entitled, "The Great Recession Wrecked Generation X" that I am posting a link to here:
http://money.msn.com/now/post.aspx?post=fc1c9c39-1c4a-4223-9ecb-2512551ec4b2
While I know a lot of people, including many in Gen X jib at the title of 'Generation X' or say,
"Oh, I don't buy into that", or "That doesn't apply to me", in my case, I think, this article encapsulates a lot of the anger that seems to be overflowing into my writing lately. Where the author, Jason Notte talks about Gen X since the Great Recession (Depression) being just older, and more tired, but certainly not any better off financially, I was mentally high-fiving him.
Finally, someone coming out and saying it. There were plenty of meglomaniacal posts in the 'Comments' sections from those who say that they weren't affected at all, let's face it there are always exceptions to any rule, but I think many of us, when we matriculated and entered the work force expected so much better. In my case, a crushing workload, which thanks to new cost-cutting measures, I can't even get overtime for, or health benefits, or vacation. When November rolls around, I will have hit the 2 year mark of the longest probationary period in history! And before you say, well you could leave and look for something better. Something better these days usually means another assignment and I already have one of those, a permanent job today is like trying to hit the motherlode in the Yukon! Because let's face it, the Boomers aren't retiring because they can't afford to, the Millenials want your job too and they are younger, cuter and more wired in, so where does that leave me? Really tired mostly, but in the more dire moments, staring into a gaping abyss of hopelessness. Believe it or not I used to be such an idealist; I go back and read the journal entries around the time of my high school graduation and my early days of college and there is such an optimistic, hopeful tone, I'm so excited by the possibilities of life, the feeling that everything is just out there waiting to be conquered. Truthfully, I almost can't read them anymore, knowing what I know now.
The thing is, I haven't given up...I care. I've tried to enact change politically, tried to believe that my congressman really does read the emails I send, that the Florida Governor, who I've ardently supported because he promised to bring employment to our state, will keep his promises. I vote even in the smallest elections, I write, I work hard, I pray.
They call us the slacker generation, but I know many of us are doing the same, working hard, voting, praying, hoping beyond hope, beyond what the experts tell us, beyond what the politicians don't do, beyond the promises they don't keep, that somehow we will beat the odds....
Friday, May 31, 2013
Gen X Retro Flashback- "Mr. Roboto" -Styx
This is for my sister Erin. Whenever I hear this song, I wish we could wind back the clock to 1983, lace up some roller skates and make absolute fools of ourselves.
Oh, and of course, grab a few Jolly Ranchers or an Atomic Fire Ball or two to snack on...
Oh, and of course, grab a few Jolly Ranchers or an Atomic Fire Ball or two to snack on...
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Enter The Dragon (Lady)
A new temp started at Non-Company yesterday.
They never take someone around the first day and introduce them to 'the gang'; I guess it's because some temps never make it past lunchtime.
So today after said temp returned for the second day and apparently made it through the first day lunch period without sprinting to her car and re-enacting the OJ Car Chase-circa 1994, they decided 'What the heck?' and began the Non-Company tour of the factory floor, the conference rooms where she will soon attend her first bewildering Justice League Meeting, her first safety training where she will view what I like to call the, 'Reel of Horror' which basically comprises clips of former Non-Company unfortunates who were maimed or crippled for failing to observe safety precautions. If she's lucky she will view it before lunch, unlike some of us other unfortunates, who have never been quite the same since then when viewing the chili dogs on offer in Non-Company vending machines. Then they take her around and introduce her to the various departments.
Her guide on this tour is a semi-nemesis of mine, who flatly seems to disapprove of me, for reasons I've never been quite able to ascertain. Once again, I feel myself called upon to explain things in MASH terminology (I watched ALOT of MASH in my youth, if Pierce Brosnan as Remington Steele and Michael Weatherly as Tony DiNozzo were film savants, I am a MASH savant), in Non-Company parlance apparently I'm the Margaret Houlihan, the dragon lady, old 'Iron Drawers'. For Semi-Nemesis, instead of introducing me with a smile as we exchange friendly banter like she did with the rest of the Non-Com minions, says, "This is Jill, she keeps these guys in line and runs the department, all of your requests go through her first", although in print it seems to come across a lot warmer than it was said. All of the sudden, I picture myself clad in a prison matron's uniform, wearing combat boots, my hair cropped in a crew cut and for some reason a night stick, which I repeatedly strike across my right palm. Which is so far from the reality of me, who has fluffy bobbed blonde hair and wears lots of jewelry and artfully (I hope) applied cosmetics. I can actually see Newbie Temp shrink from me in much the same way she will a few weeks from now, when she views the 'Reel of Horror'. I try to smile warmly, but for some reason it falls flat. Done with me, they move on to the relative safety of my co-workers. Part of me wants to run after them, wailing, "Really, please give me another chance. I...I love puppies, kittens, sunsets, unicorns, ummm...Justin Bieber...okay, actually I loathe the 'Biebs', but I didn't totally hate that 'Baby, Baby..Oh' song...okay I did, but....please, please...."
I go on to spend a great deal of my lunch hour pondering what it is about me, that creates this alter-ego, this Thatcher-esque 'Iron Lady'. Full disclosure is, I am the only female in my department. It's me and seven other dudes (and no they ARE not dwarves!) I've had to develop a tough skin, a fondness for racy jokes, frat humor, to try to stay elevated just enough above the double-entredes so that I keep my ladylike manner but not be a prig either. I bake them cupcakes for birthdays, keep the candy jar filled, get greeting cards signed on all the appropriate occasions, at the same time, I have to be able to judiciously officiate the occasional infighting, while trying to maintain my reports, my own workload, the extra 'secretarial' duties, arranging lunch for meetings, arranging housing for long-term business trips, scheduling meetings, reminding them about said meetings, and that means I don't have time for the office politics crap. I don't sit on committees, and I don't come in sharing all the gory details of my weekends, because here's the thing, while to women drama is mother's milk, guys don't like it so much. I tend to spend my lunch hours away from the office, away from the lunch room gossip, because I so desperately need those 30-50 mins to myself to maintain my sanity, to read, make phone calls, restore my equilibrium. I guess to them that means I'm stuck-up, but for me it's the difference between cracking up and being a sane and functioning human being.
Don't get me wrong, of all the things I might find wrong about Non-Company, my department is not one of them, the guys I work for are gold. You'd be hard-pressed to find a harder working, more dedicated, talented crew anywhere, but it sets me apart from the rest of the company. It's almost like I can hear the whispers, "That's the girl that works in that department with all the guys, yeah, I've heard about her."...
I wonder if it carries over into the rest of my life. One of my Non-Company dudes once said to me, something to the effect of, I was all hard shell on the outside, with a soft center that rarely gets seen. I ponder what makes me like this. Is it hard-wired into my personality, a hold-over from school days where I was shunned by the other kids for wearing thick glasses and reading all the time? For being a weirdo who actually preferred being quiet and listening to music instead of going out partying and socializing. I was so super-introverted that I really never learned exactly how to socialize, to flirt, how to talk out my feelings. I've heard it before from plenty of people, including an ex-boyfriend who stated, "I never know exactly what you are thinking, because you only share to a point."
I worry that maybe I am Margaret Houlihan, desperate to be included but unwilling to grovel,
"Did you ever once offer me a lousy cup of coffee?"
And I wonder what Newbie Temp would think if I told her how much I envy her this chance to be just that, a new person, cloaked in mystery, someone everyone wants to meet and find out about, not the dragon lady persona I am not even sure how I came to inhabit. But one whose scales I can't seem to shake.
They never take someone around the first day and introduce them to 'the gang'; I guess it's because some temps never make it past lunchtime.
So today after said temp returned for the second day and apparently made it through the first day lunch period without sprinting to her car and re-enacting the OJ Car Chase-circa 1994, they decided 'What the heck?' and began the Non-Company tour of the factory floor, the conference rooms where she will soon attend her first bewildering Justice League Meeting, her first safety training where she will view what I like to call the, 'Reel of Horror' which basically comprises clips of former Non-Company unfortunates who were maimed or crippled for failing to observe safety precautions. If she's lucky she will view it before lunch, unlike some of us other unfortunates, who have never been quite the same since then when viewing the chili dogs on offer in Non-Company vending machines. Then they take her around and introduce her to the various departments.
Her guide on this tour is a semi-nemesis of mine, who flatly seems to disapprove of me, for reasons I've never been quite able to ascertain. Once again, I feel myself called upon to explain things in MASH terminology (I watched ALOT of MASH in my youth, if Pierce Brosnan as Remington Steele and Michael Weatherly as Tony DiNozzo were film savants, I am a MASH savant), in Non-Company parlance apparently I'm the Margaret Houlihan, the dragon lady, old 'Iron Drawers'. For Semi-Nemesis, instead of introducing me with a smile as we exchange friendly banter like she did with the rest of the Non-Com minions, says, "This is Jill, she keeps these guys in line and runs the department, all of your requests go through her first", although in print it seems to come across a lot warmer than it was said. All of the sudden, I picture myself clad in a prison matron's uniform, wearing combat boots, my hair cropped in a crew cut and for some reason a night stick, which I repeatedly strike across my right palm. Which is so far from the reality of me, who has fluffy bobbed blonde hair and wears lots of jewelry and artfully (I hope) applied cosmetics. I can actually see Newbie Temp shrink from me in much the same way she will a few weeks from now, when she views the 'Reel of Horror'. I try to smile warmly, but for some reason it falls flat. Done with me, they move on to the relative safety of my co-workers. Part of me wants to run after them, wailing, "Really, please give me another chance. I...I love puppies, kittens, sunsets, unicorns, ummm...Justin Bieber...okay, actually I loathe the 'Biebs', but I didn't totally hate that 'Baby, Baby..Oh' song...okay I did, but....please, please...."
I go on to spend a great deal of my lunch hour pondering what it is about me, that creates this alter-ego, this Thatcher-esque 'Iron Lady'. Full disclosure is, I am the only female in my department. It's me and seven other dudes (and no they ARE not dwarves!) I've had to develop a tough skin, a fondness for racy jokes, frat humor, to try to stay elevated just enough above the double-entredes so that I keep my ladylike manner but not be a prig either. I bake them cupcakes for birthdays, keep the candy jar filled, get greeting cards signed on all the appropriate occasions, at the same time, I have to be able to judiciously officiate the occasional infighting, while trying to maintain my reports, my own workload, the extra 'secretarial' duties, arranging lunch for meetings, arranging housing for long-term business trips, scheduling meetings, reminding them about said meetings, and that means I don't have time for the office politics crap. I don't sit on committees, and I don't come in sharing all the gory details of my weekends, because here's the thing, while to women drama is mother's milk, guys don't like it so much. I tend to spend my lunch hours away from the office, away from the lunch room gossip, because I so desperately need those 30-50 mins to myself to maintain my sanity, to read, make phone calls, restore my equilibrium. I guess to them that means I'm stuck-up, but for me it's the difference between cracking up and being a sane and functioning human being.
Don't get me wrong, of all the things I might find wrong about Non-Company, my department is not one of them, the guys I work for are gold. You'd be hard-pressed to find a harder working, more dedicated, talented crew anywhere, but it sets me apart from the rest of the company. It's almost like I can hear the whispers, "That's the girl that works in that department with all the guys, yeah, I've heard about her."...
I wonder if it carries over into the rest of my life. One of my Non-Company dudes once said to me, something to the effect of, I was all hard shell on the outside, with a soft center that rarely gets seen. I ponder what makes me like this. Is it hard-wired into my personality, a hold-over from school days where I was shunned by the other kids for wearing thick glasses and reading all the time? For being a weirdo who actually preferred being quiet and listening to music instead of going out partying and socializing. I was so super-introverted that I really never learned exactly how to socialize, to flirt, how to talk out my feelings. I've heard it before from plenty of people, including an ex-boyfriend who stated, "I never know exactly what you are thinking, because you only share to a point."
I worry that maybe I am Margaret Houlihan, desperate to be included but unwilling to grovel,
"Did you ever once offer me a lousy cup of coffee?"
And I wonder what Newbie Temp would think if I told her how much I envy her this chance to be just that, a new person, cloaked in mystery, someone everyone wants to meet and find out about, not the dragon lady persona I am not even sure how I came to inhabit. But one whose scales I can't seem to shake.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Gen X Retro Flashback- "Goonies-R-Good Enough"- Part 1
Memorial Day Weekend in American parlance has always been synonomous with backyard BBQ, beer, and for some reason Summer Movie Box-Office.
If you mention the word,'Goonies' to most Gen X'ers', they'll probably get a goofy smile on their face, and start telling you where they saw it, and who with.
And then they'll start talking about, 'One-Eyed Willie', the 'Truffle Shuffle', 'Sloth' and most everything Chunk and Mouth say throughout the film...
In 1985, Cyndi Lauper made a lengthy video in two parts, which are here in two videos. Look for a youngish Steven Spielberg making a cameo, as well as wrestlers Captain Lou Albano, Rowdy Roddy Piper and a very young Andre the Giant, who will forever be Fezzik from The Princess Bride to me.
But the one thing that every Gen X'er knows, is that 'Goonies Never Say Die'! You know I had to say it....
If you mention the word,'Goonies' to most Gen X'ers', they'll probably get a goofy smile on their face, and start telling you where they saw it, and who with.
And then they'll start talking about, 'One-Eyed Willie', the 'Truffle Shuffle', 'Sloth' and most everything Chunk and Mouth say throughout the film...
In 1985, Cyndi Lauper made a lengthy video in two parts, which are here in two videos. Look for a youngish Steven Spielberg making a cameo, as well as wrestlers Captain Lou Albano, Rowdy Roddy Piper and a very young Andre the Giant, who will forever be Fezzik from The Princess Bride to me.
But the one thing that every Gen X'er knows, is that 'Goonies Never Say Die'! You know I had to say it....
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
The Me I Am Trying to Be
I used to dream about being an ice-skater. In fact, occasionally for no particular reason, I still have visions of myself twirling about in figure eight patterns, then leaping up in a perfect triple axel or triple toe loop. I think in those moments, it's as if a latent part of myself is still open to the possibilities of what might be, instead of the reality of what is.
The pragmatist says, "Are you kidding me? You live in Florida, it's not like we see a whole lot of ice down here!"
"I mean c'mon on, you are knocking on the door of 40, my friend, live in the now!"
Obviously, I think skating is a metaphor for the fact that even nearing my 40's, some part of me is still the daydream believer.
Many, many years ago, one summer day in about 1984, if my memory serves, my mother and I, after much whining and pleading on my part, entered a children's bookstore in a small strip mall in a non-descript Central Florida town. This was before the days of Books a Million, the Barnes and Noble Superstores, long before Borders was ever dreamt up to ultimately fail. The most we had was a small B. Dalton and a Waldenbooks in the mall, and I am not sure they were there at the same time.
I remember preferring B. Dalton because they had these faux wood floors that were fastened down with rivets that were the same size, color and texture of pennies. In fact as a child, I was certain they were. I used to just wander through the shop counting the 'pennies'. Because at that time, kids were not the big business they are today. There might have been a small children's section, jammed in at the end of the adult shelves. But there were no huge displays of stuffed animals from fiction, no child size chairs to sit in, no puzzles area or literature based toys. There were simply books, and as much as I grew to absolutely adore them, books were not all that attractive to me, packaged thusly, as a child.
So this children's bookstore was a dream come true. Seeing its sign up for the 'Grand Opening', I literally could not wait to go there. Here I sit now, nearly forty and I can even remember where it was, the shopping center. I could drive there now and point out the exact location. In fact, I'm certain that the frontage it occupied was combined with another store front and became the pub where I once spent an evening in the company of a spectacularly alcoholic Englishman.
There in the shop I browsed, looking at books that were written and illustrated just for kids. I remember feeling almost overcome at the variety, the colors, the authors, some of whose names I was familiar and some who I would come to know. It was a brand new world of sparkling vistas, which would ignite a passion within me, that would never subside, up to and until this very day. From that moment on, bookstores became magical to me. Some people find their truest selves when they first sit in front of a piano, some in front of sewing machines, others in-front of a Mac, or a drill press. I found my truest self standing that day in a bright cheerful shop filled with the smell of printed paper and glossy cardboard covers.
My mother, always raised to be frugal, has ultimately failed in her attempts to instill in me the virtues of eschewing book ownership in favor of book borrowing. I think if she were honest, or I could somehow get her to ingest copious quantities of truth serum, it would come out that she actually feels worse about that than me being unmarried at nearly forty! She is a good sport though and some years ago, bequeathed to me a bookmark that is imprinted with an original quote by Erasmus, that states, "When I get a little money, I buy books, and if I have any left I buy food and clothes!"
So it was a big leap for her, when, I pressed her to purchase for me a book of pyschological exercises (for kids mind you) entitled, "The Me I Am Trying To Be". I think it was the 80's version of "Free to Be You and Me" (all apologies to Marlo Thomas) and she agreed.
I dutifully read and re-read this paperbound book of riddles, morality stories, injunctions not to be a bully, and I did all the exercises, my answers scrawled in a childish hand, listing my dreams and aspirations for the future, whom I hoped to marry (he, whoever he may be, has apparently lost his way or married a supermodel instead), how to treat 'old people', not to steal, or shoplift, etc., etc. In short, completion of the book was supposed to create the 'Me I Was Meant To Be'. Somehow, occasionally, I felt that I let the book down.
And I question...am I the 'Me I Was Meant to Be'?
For years, I kept the book, returning to it as a superior adolescent, a smug teenager, a scared twenty-something, to smile at it, shake my head with rueful laughter, wonder what possessed me to write this thing or that one. In my thirties, I lost track of it. In one of my clear-outs, I probably decided to part with it for once and for all, rationalizing that I WAS 'the Me I Was Meant To Be'!
In this last appraisal though, I think that I probably found the me I was meant to be standing in the midst of all those shelves in that children's bookstore before I ever did one exercise in that book, the true self who loves nothing more than the printed word, to read it, to write it, to savor it.
Like anything good and meaningful, I think the act of becoming is something you have to work out everyday for yourself, your salvation, marriage, relationships, your occupation.
So for today, be the me you were meant to be, but never stop trying to be the me you are trying to be...
The pragmatist says, "Are you kidding me? You live in Florida, it's not like we see a whole lot of ice down here!"
"I mean c'mon on, you are knocking on the door of 40, my friend, live in the now!"
Obviously, I think skating is a metaphor for the fact that even nearing my 40's, some part of me is still the daydream believer.
Many, many years ago, one summer day in about 1984, if my memory serves, my mother and I, after much whining and pleading on my part, entered a children's bookstore in a small strip mall in a non-descript Central Florida town. This was before the days of Books a Million, the Barnes and Noble Superstores, long before Borders was ever dreamt up to ultimately fail. The most we had was a small B. Dalton and a Waldenbooks in the mall, and I am not sure they were there at the same time.
I remember preferring B. Dalton because they had these faux wood floors that were fastened down with rivets that were the same size, color and texture of pennies. In fact as a child, I was certain they were. I used to just wander through the shop counting the 'pennies'. Because at that time, kids were not the big business they are today. There might have been a small children's section, jammed in at the end of the adult shelves. But there were no huge displays of stuffed animals from fiction, no child size chairs to sit in, no puzzles area or literature based toys. There were simply books, and as much as I grew to absolutely adore them, books were not all that attractive to me, packaged thusly, as a child.
So this children's bookstore was a dream come true. Seeing its sign up for the 'Grand Opening', I literally could not wait to go there. Here I sit now, nearly forty and I can even remember where it was, the shopping center. I could drive there now and point out the exact location. In fact, I'm certain that the frontage it occupied was combined with another store front and became the pub where I once spent an evening in the company of a spectacularly alcoholic Englishman.
There in the shop I browsed, looking at books that were written and illustrated just for kids. I remember feeling almost overcome at the variety, the colors, the authors, some of whose names I was familiar and some who I would come to know. It was a brand new world of sparkling vistas, which would ignite a passion within me, that would never subside, up to and until this very day. From that moment on, bookstores became magical to me. Some people find their truest selves when they first sit in front of a piano, some in front of sewing machines, others in-front of a Mac, or a drill press. I found my truest self standing that day in a bright cheerful shop filled with the smell of printed paper and glossy cardboard covers.
My mother, always raised to be frugal, has ultimately failed in her attempts to instill in me the virtues of eschewing book ownership in favor of book borrowing. I think if she were honest, or I could somehow get her to ingest copious quantities of truth serum, it would come out that she actually feels worse about that than me being unmarried at nearly forty! She is a good sport though and some years ago, bequeathed to me a bookmark that is imprinted with an original quote by Erasmus, that states, "When I get a little money, I buy books, and if I have any left I buy food and clothes!"
So it was a big leap for her, when, I pressed her to purchase for me a book of pyschological exercises (for kids mind you) entitled, "The Me I Am Trying To Be". I think it was the 80's version of "Free to Be You and Me" (all apologies to Marlo Thomas) and she agreed.
I dutifully read and re-read this paperbound book of riddles, morality stories, injunctions not to be a bully, and I did all the exercises, my answers scrawled in a childish hand, listing my dreams and aspirations for the future, whom I hoped to marry (he, whoever he may be, has apparently lost his way or married a supermodel instead), how to treat 'old people', not to steal, or shoplift, etc., etc. In short, completion of the book was supposed to create the 'Me I Was Meant To Be'. Somehow, occasionally, I felt that I let the book down.
And I question...am I the 'Me I Was Meant to Be'?
For years, I kept the book, returning to it as a superior adolescent, a smug teenager, a scared twenty-something, to smile at it, shake my head with rueful laughter, wonder what possessed me to write this thing or that one. In my thirties, I lost track of it. In one of my clear-outs, I probably decided to part with it for once and for all, rationalizing that I WAS 'the Me I Was Meant To Be'!
In this last appraisal though, I think that I probably found the me I was meant to be standing in the midst of all those shelves in that children's bookstore before I ever did one exercise in that book, the true self who loves nothing more than the printed word, to read it, to write it, to savor it.
Like anything good and meaningful, I think the act of becoming is something you have to work out everyday for yourself, your salvation, marriage, relationships, your occupation.
So for today, be the me you were meant to be, but never stop trying to be the me you are trying to be...
Friday, May 17, 2013
Gen X Retro Flashback- 'Major Tom' - Peter Shilling
Kids, I have to be honest and say that while I have always really liked this track, until today, I'd never seen the video! And it's a video that could ONLY have been shot in the 80's. This song, originally recorded in German, (like Nena's 99 Luftballons) is meant to be a re-telling of David Bowie's 'Space Odyssey' ("Ground Control to Major Tom..."), but for some reason, Peter Shilling spends most of his time in the video sitting in an abandoned car on a pile of other...you guessed it, abandoned cars with... even more incomprehensible...a group of derelict winos. Then for some reason, out of of nowhere appear, a whole gaggle of 60's era carhops skating around...well...space. Perhaps, I simply am not 'getting' the symbolism!
Apparently, Peter Shilling still has quite a robust career in Germany an an 'electro-pop' artist.
Here from 1983, is, 'Major Tom'
Apparently, Peter Shilling still has quite a robust career in Germany an an 'electro-pop' artist.
Here from 1983, is, 'Major Tom'
Friday, May 10, 2013
Gen X Retro Flashback- "Countdown" Rush
Countless times I sat down in front of this PC to write about the NASA Space Shuttles. Every time so far, I have faltered trying to put into words what it meant to me. Maybe it was growing up in Florida, growing up in the 80's, I think it was different for us here.
Back in the 80's, kids dreamed of going on Double Dare and maybe winning a grand prize trip to Alabama to go to Space Camp, here in Florida it was a rite of passage taking a field trip to the Kennedy Space Center, we had extensive science class units on the shuttle, learning all about its bombay doors, the solid rocket boosters, the much heralded robotic arm. We always left our classrooms on shuttle days to walk out in single file lines to sports fields to catch a glimpse of Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis. We remember only too well the bitterly cold January day in 1986 when a usual launch day turned into a solemn day of grief.
I can honestly say that I viewed nearly every launch of the shuttle in some way. On TV, once or twice out at KSC, in my driveway, parking lots, school football fields and I can hardly ever remember a time when I didn't get goose bumps or a little bit of a lump in my throat. I saw the first launch of the program as a child and I was there for the last as an adult woman. Full Circle.
Maybe to some, it was a hunk of metal that cost uneccessary tax dollars and didn't always perform as it should, but to me it was special. It was emblematic of the American pioneering spirit, and here in Florida, I can tell you it was absolutely magical.
Back in 2011, when the last shuttle missions were flown, I wrote the only letter I've ever sent to the White House asking for justification of ending the program that meant so much to so many in terms of employment, tourism, and national pride. It was probably the equivalent of drunk texting, except I was only drunk and maudlin on my own tears, and I am sure that it probably never saw the light of day to anyone who mattered. But those little white spacecraft meant the world to me.
In 1981, the band Rush traveled to Florida to observe a launch of the space shuttle Columbia and they wrote the song "Countdown" to express what they felt. To me, it sums up everything about what it was like to be there, to see it. And a few years ago, a fan took the song and synced it with photos of the various shuttle missions, dozens and dozens of images. It's a labor of love, and I wanted to share it with you today as the flashback. I've included the lyrics as well. So here from 1981, is Countdown:
Lit up with anticipation
We arrive at the launching site
The sky is still dark, nearing dawn
On the Florida coastline
Circling choppers slash the night
With roving searchlight beams
This magic day when super-science
Mingles with the bright stuff of dreams
Floodlit in the hazy distance
The star of this unearthly show
Venting vapours, like the breath
Of a sleeping white dragon
Crackling speakers, voices tense
Resume the final count
All systems check, T minus nine
As the sun and the drama start to mount
The air is charged
A humid, motionless mass
The crowds and the cameras,
The cars full of spectators pass
Excitement so thick you could cut it with a knife
Technology...high, on the leading edge of life
The earth beneath us starts to tremble
With the spreading of a low black cloud
A thunderous roar shakes the air
Like the whole world exploding
Scorching blast of golden fire
As it slowly leaves the ground
Tears away with a mighty force
The air is shattered by the awesome sound
Like a pillar of cloud
The smoke lingers high in the air
In fascination
With the eyes of the world
We stare...
Back in the 80's, kids dreamed of going on Double Dare and maybe winning a grand prize trip to Alabama to go to Space Camp, here in Florida it was a rite of passage taking a field trip to the Kennedy Space Center, we had extensive science class units on the shuttle, learning all about its bombay doors, the solid rocket boosters, the much heralded robotic arm. We always left our classrooms on shuttle days to walk out in single file lines to sports fields to catch a glimpse of Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis. We remember only too well the bitterly cold January day in 1986 when a usual launch day turned into a solemn day of grief.
I can honestly say that I viewed nearly every launch of the shuttle in some way. On TV, once or twice out at KSC, in my driveway, parking lots, school football fields and I can hardly ever remember a time when I didn't get goose bumps or a little bit of a lump in my throat. I saw the first launch of the program as a child and I was there for the last as an adult woman. Full Circle.
Maybe to some, it was a hunk of metal that cost uneccessary tax dollars and didn't always perform as it should, but to me it was special. It was emblematic of the American pioneering spirit, and here in Florida, I can tell you it was absolutely magical.
Back in 2011, when the last shuttle missions were flown, I wrote the only letter I've ever sent to the White House asking for justification of ending the program that meant so much to so many in terms of employment, tourism, and national pride. It was probably the equivalent of drunk texting, except I was only drunk and maudlin on my own tears, and I am sure that it probably never saw the light of day to anyone who mattered. But those little white spacecraft meant the world to me.
In 1981, the band Rush traveled to Florida to observe a launch of the space shuttle Columbia and they wrote the song "Countdown" to express what they felt. To me, it sums up everything about what it was like to be there, to see it. And a few years ago, a fan took the song and synced it with photos of the various shuttle missions, dozens and dozens of images. It's a labor of love, and I wanted to share it with you today as the flashback. I've included the lyrics as well. So here from 1981, is Countdown:
Lit up with anticipation
We arrive at the launching site
The sky is still dark, nearing dawn
On the Florida coastline
Circling choppers slash the night
With roving searchlight beams
This magic day when super-science
Mingles with the bright stuff of dreams
Floodlit in the hazy distance
The star of this unearthly show
Venting vapours, like the breath
Of a sleeping white dragon
Crackling speakers, voices tense
Resume the final count
All systems check, T minus nine
As the sun and the drama start to mount
The air is charged
A humid, motionless mass
The crowds and the cameras,
The cars full of spectators pass
Excitement so thick you could cut it with a knife
Technology...high, on the leading edge of life
The earth beneath us starts to tremble
With the spreading of a low black cloud
A thunderous roar shakes the air
Like the whole world exploding
Scorching blast of golden fire
As it slowly leaves the ground
Tears away with a mighty force
The air is shattered by the awesome sound
Like a pillar of cloud
The smoke lingers high in the air
In fascination
With the eyes of the world
We stare...
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Allies
This past Saturday, some members of my family gathered for a Kentucky Derby dinner. It was an excuse to get together, pig out on good things like smoked chicken, and bourbon-laced pie (relax, the alcohol cooks off!) talk and of course, watch the race. Due to the circumstances of my parents' divorce in my teens, most of these family members are what I like to call 'shirt tail relatives', no less beloved or kindred, they are not blood. And my stepfather's sister brought along her mother-in-law, a lady I've only met on a couple of occasions, but whom I've always liked.
She's eighty eight and I can only hope to be as sharp and in possession of my wits as she when I am in my eighties. Impeccably groomed, her silver hair set in elegant waves, she wore a pair of tan trousers with razor sharp creases, and a matching blouse with a high neckline and the jabot had in it's center a brooch, in fact in the few instances we've met, I've never seen her without a brooch. Her feet were clad in a pair of sensible white walking shoes, but I'd bet my car that given her choice and without the inconvenience of age and a delicate hip, she'd have worn a pair of heels.
During the course of conversation, the topic of cooking came up and she matter of factly stated that she wasn't much of a cook, 'I was too busy being a businesswoman' she said. I wondered about that, and after the race was run and the ladies had adjourned to the living room for chat, I drew her out and asked what she meant by being 'busy as a business woman' and this elegant petite lady told me of the businesses she'd run, a salon and as a women's clothier. It was interesting that, as so many people do, she had stayed mostly quiet during dinner, etc, but when asked about her business, all at once she became quite animated, her true passion unmasked, as if she'd just been waiting for someone to ask her about it. She told me that her first trip by herself ever was to New York as a buyer for her clothing store. I thought of this young woman traveling by herself on business in a time where it just wasn't done and the courage that must have taken. Although in truth I've never been much of a feminist, all the same I thought about the strides she taken for women, etc. I just admired her pluck.
Then all at once, the tenor of the conversation changed and she began to reminisce about her husband, an air force pilot during WWII, who flew the 'hump' (China, Burma, India) on dangerous bombing raids, an all but forgotten arena of the war now. And it was then that I realised, she wasn't really alone on those trips, making the businesses work, it wasn't about feminist independence, it was about the reality of trying to make a life for her husband to come back to. And that if he might not have been there in person, he was with her in spirit, an ally, a person to make a life with. What she did wasn't for her, it was for them.
Earlier on in the day, my mother and I looked at a photo of our extended family that I'd seen several times before. With grief now more in the rear window, we were able to look at Uncle Bob again without tears, enjoy his goofy childish grin as he sat on my Grandpa's lap. My mother related to me the fact that, although she had looked at the photo countless times before, there were things she hadn't seen before. For one, she'd never before noticed the date of the photo, but looking at the faces of her brother and cousins, she began trying to work out what it might have been. To confirm it, hoping that there might be a scrawl on the back to confirm her suspicions, she prized the photo from its frame, and there it was, 1945. She noted Christmas decorations in the photo, meagre but there. She saw as never before how thin and angular her parents faces appeared, no doubt due to the rationing, the strain of casualty lists inscribed with the names of friends and acquaintances who would never return home, the worry about being bombed, how to feed their new and growing family, about my aunt who worked as a WAC at Walter Reed Hospital. So on this day in 1945, we see a family re-united, together, intact, whole, celebrating not only the holiday but no doubt the end of a World War. To the left of this family tableau is my Great-Grandmother, surveying her children, her grandchildren and looking to her husband, to the right is my Great-Grandfather surveying his children, his grandchildren, looking to his wife. Their expressions say, "We made it through, we're all still here" Husband and Wife, allies...
Throughout my long and protracted and ultimately unsucessful search for the ideal mate, I had never before considered this. The intangible benefits of being with a person who is truly united with you in something that is bigger than mere human attraction. What Match.com, E-Harmony, Zoosk, Christian Mingle, etc. never tell you is, that while you might find in someone's profile their vital statistics, their predilections for certain types of foods, bands, books and pets, that what you really need to know about that person is if they are going to be your friend, are they going to be an ally, are they going to be (in the current venacular), someone who 'has your back', someone you can count on in the hard times, in the lean times, in short someone who'll turn their life inside out to make a life with you. Somehow, my great-grandparents knew that, and my shirt-tale relative business-lady. They figured out that while looks fade, attraction fades, that there is no substitute for substance.
A few years back, in an emotional valley, I listened to a woman on Oprah (I know, I know...don't judge me,) tell us how we didn't have the man we wanted, because we didn't know what we really wanted, what our 'mandate' was, and so on her advice, I crafted a 3-legal-size-page list of my 'must have' characteristics in a mate. She insisted that we be specific down to the hair and eye color. Looking back at that list now, what I see is a man with the mashed up features of Richard Armitage, Toby Stephens, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, with a dash of Johnny Lee Miller, Phil Mickleson's cute grin and somewhere in there, attributes of both Bruce Willis and Andre Agassi... So a balding handsome ginger-haired yet broodingly dark Englishman American with the sense of humor of Jerry Seinfeld, the intellect of an Oxford Don, the spirtual characteristics of Billy Graham, the altruism of Albert Schweitzer who loves the Beatles, the color blue and would never criticize me for anything!
Tonight, I unearthed that list from the recesses of my closet, I tore it up into tiny shreds and thought, maybe I'll follow the advice of the greatest generation. Maybe it just might be... that what I really need is an ally.
She's eighty eight and I can only hope to be as sharp and in possession of my wits as she when I am in my eighties. Impeccably groomed, her silver hair set in elegant waves, she wore a pair of tan trousers with razor sharp creases, and a matching blouse with a high neckline and the jabot had in it's center a brooch, in fact in the few instances we've met, I've never seen her without a brooch. Her feet were clad in a pair of sensible white walking shoes, but I'd bet my car that given her choice and without the inconvenience of age and a delicate hip, she'd have worn a pair of heels.
During the course of conversation, the topic of cooking came up and she matter of factly stated that she wasn't much of a cook, 'I was too busy being a businesswoman' she said. I wondered about that, and after the race was run and the ladies had adjourned to the living room for chat, I drew her out and asked what she meant by being 'busy as a business woman' and this elegant petite lady told me of the businesses she'd run, a salon and as a women's clothier. It was interesting that, as so many people do, she had stayed mostly quiet during dinner, etc, but when asked about her business, all at once she became quite animated, her true passion unmasked, as if she'd just been waiting for someone to ask her about it. She told me that her first trip by herself ever was to New York as a buyer for her clothing store. I thought of this young woman traveling by herself on business in a time where it just wasn't done and the courage that must have taken. Although in truth I've never been much of a feminist, all the same I thought about the strides she taken for women, etc. I just admired her pluck.
Then all at once, the tenor of the conversation changed and she began to reminisce about her husband, an air force pilot during WWII, who flew the 'hump' (China, Burma, India) on dangerous bombing raids, an all but forgotten arena of the war now. And it was then that I realised, she wasn't really alone on those trips, making the businesses work, it wasn't about feminist independence, it was about the reality of trying to make a life for her husband to come back to. And that if he might not have been there in person, he was with her in spirit, an ally, a person to make a life with. What she did wasn't for her, it was for them.
Earlier on in the day, my mother and I looked at a photo of our extended family that I'd seen several times before. With grief now more in the rear window, we were able to look at Uncle Bob again without tears, enjoy his goofy childish grin as he sat on my Grandpa's lap. My mother related to me the fact that, although she had looked at the photo countless times before, there were things she hadn't seen before. For one, she'd never before noticed the date of the photo, but looking at the faces of her brother and cousins, she began trying to work out what it might have been. To confirm it, hoping that there might be a scrawl on the back to confirm her suspicions, she prized the photo from its frame, and there it was, 1945. She noted Christmas decorations in the photo, meagre but there. She saw as never before how thin and angular her parents faces appeared, no doubt due to the rationing, the strain of casualty lists inscribed with the names of friends and acquaintances who would never return home, the worry about being bombed, how to feed their new and growing family, about my aunt who worked as a WAC at Walter Reed Hospital. So on this day in 1945, we see a family re-united, together, intact, whole, celebrating not only the holiday but no doubt the end of a World War. To the left of this family tableau is my Great-Grandmother, surveying her children, her grandchildren and looking to her husband, to the right is my Great-Grandfather surveying his children, his grandchildren, looking to his wife. Their expressions say, "We made it through, we're all still here" Husband and Wife, allies...
Throughout my long and protracted and ultimately unsucessful search for the ideal mate, I had never before considered this. The intangible benefits of being with a person who is truly united with you in something that is bigger than mere human attraction. What Match.com, E-Harmony, Zoosk, Christian Mingle, etc. never tell you is, that while you might find in someone's profile their vital statistics, their predilections for certain types of foods, bands, books and pets, that what you really need to know about that person is if they are going to be your friend, are they going to be an ally, are they going to be (in the current venacular), someone who 'has your back', someone you can count on in the hard times, in the lean times, in short someone who'll turn their life inside out to make a life with you. Somehow, my great-grandparents knew that, and my shirt-tale relative business-lady. They figured out that while looks fade, attraction fades, that there is no substitute for substance.
A few years back, in an emotional valley, I listened to a woman on Oprah (I know, I know...don't judge me,) tell us how we didn't have the man we wanted, because we didn't know what we really wanted, what our 'mandate' was, and so on her advice, I crafted a 3-legal-size-page list of my 'must have' characteristics in a mate. She insisted that we be specific down to the hair and eye color. Looking back at that list now, what I see is a man with the mashed up features of Richard Armitage, Toby Stephens, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, with a dash of Johnny Lee Miller, Phil Mickleson's cute grin and somewhere in there, attributes of both Bruce Willis and Andre Agassi... So a balding handsome ginger-haired yet broodingly dark Englishman American with the sense of humor of Jerry Seinfeld, the intellect of an Oxford Don, the spirtual characteristics of Billy Graham, the altruism of Albert Schweitzer who loves the Beatles, the color blue and would never criticize me for anything!
Tonight, I unearthed that list from the recesses of my closet, I tore it up into tiny shreds and thought, maybe I'll follow the advice of the greatest generation. Maybe it just might be... that what I really need is an ally.
Friday, May 3, 2013
Gen X Retro Flashback- New Song- Howard Jones
I picked this one because it's been playing in my head now for a couple of days. I think I must have heard this one someone's piped in Muzak, and it just seemed so very 80's - New Wave. I absolutely loved Howard Jones; he's probably more known for hits like 'No One is To Blame' and 'Things Can Only Get Better', but I almost love this one better because it's more obscure. Things to look for in the video are 80's mod fashions and a guy with well...many chains.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
It's So Funny How We Don't Talk Anymore....
The other day I arrived at work with my nightgown draped over my arm.
True story. No I wasn't doing the 'walk of shame' and I hadn't recently escaped from some institution that denied me the use of scissors or well...my arms for that matter.
True story. No I wasn't doing the 'walk of shame' and I hadn't recently escaped from some institution that denied me the use of scissors or well...my arms for that matter.
Nevertheless there I was was, nightgown in hand.
It's easily explained away, I sit in a cubicle that is situated directly under an air conditioning vent which means that despite the fact that it may in fact be April or August, you will probably find me with my arms covered in some kind of 'shrug' or wrap. My favorite one is this little stretch black cotton number that has 3-quarter sleeves and is in fact the same color and fabric as my nightie. So running out the door, I grabbed my 'shrug' and ended up at work with my night-gown.
This all led me to think that maybe, just maybe, I needed to slow down a bit.
I've always hated the term multi-tasking. Probably because I am not one of those people who easily does it. For MASH fans, I've always subscribed to the Charles Emerson Winchester, III methodology, (must be said in a condescending pseudo-British Boston accent) "I do one thing, I do it very well and then I move on".
However, I live in this world that insists that we go at everything with breakneck speed and somehow the iconoclast in me is roused and I feel frantic at the loss of peace, quality, thoroughness. The truth is, you just can't rush everything.
I've always liked to say I am analog in a digital world but of late, I feel more like I'm unplugged and acoustic!
Non-company just moved everyone to a new social networking interface called "Yammer". Probably some of you Millenials are familiar with it. It's like Facebook...only instead of updating people on how much you love your husband, what you had for lunch or how your trip to Disney went, people on Yammer, well, yammer about how much they love their job, how they wish they could step out for lunch but are stuck completing their end of the month reports, and how that trip to visit X-Customer in Scranton went.
Once again, the dissenter in me rears her ugly head and bemoans the fact that people have quit writing letters, having face to face conversations, and relating to people. The other morning, I found myself yammering to my team who were sitting inches away that I would be in training all morning and my self-loathing reached epic proportions.
What's more ironic is that the training was all about engaging in respectful dialogs with one's colleagues! Basically, Non-Company could have saved itself several grand if they had just yammered out one 'tweet' outlining the Golden Rule, "Do Unto To Others As You Would Have Done To You". When I mentioned this to one of my colleagues, he sniffed derisively and huffed to me, "Not everyone's religious!" I tried but failed to restrain myself from saying that it was not a Bible verse as such, but a universal maxim that has similar application in, but not limited to Judaism, Confuscism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Zoroastrinism, and Christianity.
It's hard to observe the Golden Rule though or any rule for that matter when you're safely ensconced in your cubicle pecking away at your keyboard. Or in your home for that matter. I cannot even count the times when I've read the 'comments' section after an article and felt my stomach roil as I read remarks from otherwise seemingly benign, well-adjusted human beings who when roused could rival the meglomania of Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler put together. Or possibly the late Kim Jung Il, Sadaam Hussein,Yasser Arafat and Hugo Chavez put together. Sometimes it's as if, not hearing the words aloud prevents us from being able to filter, to restrain our malice, to temper our words with kindness. One of my favorite theologians and humorists, the late Jamie Buckingham once said words, that I've quoted not once but hundreds of times "Sometimes it's better to be kind than to be right".
The next time you want to weigh in on an issue, Yammer with your colleagues, Facebook with your friends, maybe get up and walk to see them, pick up the phone, uncap the pen and relate personally. Okay, perhaps I reached a bit on the last one, but I've always been drawn to the fact that the Apostle Paul (and yeah, maybe I am being a bit 'religious' here) stressed the fact that he wrote his letters 'in his own hand' (probably depending on the era, his own hand might have meant a Royal Typewriter, an IBM Selectric, or a Mac) but the point is, he underwent considerable trouble and pain to obtain the parchments, the quills, ill to the point of death, Paul went out of his way to communicate, to relate. And his words form approximately half of the whole New Testament not to mention becoming the basis for the early Christian church.
So slow down a bit, get out from behind the PC, switch off your 'droid for an hour, and talk. Or you too might find yourself clutching your nightgown over your arm and wondering where it all went wrong.
It's easily explained away, I sit in a cubicle that is situated directly under an air conditioning vent which means that despite the fact that it may in fact be April or August, you will probably find me with my arms covered in some kind of 'shrug' or wrap. My favorite one is this little stretch black cotton number that has 3-quarter sleeves and is in fact the same color and fabric as my nightie. So running out the door, I grabbed my 'shrug' and ended up at work with my night-gown.
This all led me to think that maybe, just maybe, I needed to slow down a bit.
I've always hated the term multi-tasking. Probably because I am not one of those people who easily does it. For MASH fans, I've always subscribed to the Charles Emerson Winchester, III methodology, (must be said in a condescending pseudo-British Boston accent) "I do one thing, I do it very well and then I move on".
However, I live in this world that insists that we go at everything with breakneck speed and somehow the iconoclast in me is roused and I feel frantic at the loss of peace, quality, thoroughness. The truth is, you just can't rush everything.
I've always liked to say I am analog in a digital world but of late, I feel more like I'm unplugged and acoustic!
Non-company just moved everyone to a new social networking interface called "Yammer". Probably some of you Millenials are familiar with it. It's like Facebook...only instead of updating people on how much you love your husband, what you had for lunch or how your trip to Disney went, people on Yammer, well, yammer about how much they love their job, how they wish they could step out for lunch but are stuck completing their end of the month reports, and how that trip to visit X-Customer in Scranton went.
Once again, the dissenter in me rears her ugly head and bemoans the fact that people have quit writing letters, having face to face conversations, and relating to people. The other morning, I found myself yammering to my team who were sitting inches away that I would be in training all morning and my self-loathing reached epic proportions.
What's more ironic is that the training was all about engaging in respectful dialogs with one's colleagues! Basically, Non-Company could have saved itself several grand if they had just yammered out one 'tweet' outlining the Golden Rule, "Do Unto To Others As You Would Have Done To You". When I mentioned this to one of my colleagues, he sniffed derisively and huffed to me, "Not everyone's religious!" I tried but failed to restrain myself from saying that it was not a Bible verse as such, but a universal maxim that has similar application in, but not limited to Judaism, Confuscism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Zoroastrinism, and Christianity.
It's hard to observe the Golden Rule though or any rule for that matter when you're safely ensconced in your cubicle pecking away at your keyboard. Or in your home for that matter. I cannot even count the times when I've read the 'comments' section after an article and felt my stomach roil as I read remarks from otherwise seemingly benign, well-adjusted human beings who when roused could rival the meglomania of Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler put together. Or possibly the late Kim Jung Il, Sadaam Hussein,Yasser Arafat and Hugo Chavez put together. Sometimes it's as if, not hearing the words aloud prevents us from being able to filter, to restrain our malice, to temper our words with kindness. One of my favorite theologians and humorists, the late Jamie Buckingham once said words, that I've quoted not once but hundreds of times "Sometimes it's better to be kind than to be right".
The next time you want to weigh in on an issue, Yammer with your colleagues, Facebook with your friends, maybe get up and walk to see them, pick up the phone, uncap the pen and relate personally. Okay, perhaps I reached a bit on the last one, but I've always been drawn to the fact that the Apostle Paul (and yeah, maybe I am being a bit 'religious' here) stressed the fact that he wrote his letters 'in his own hand' (probably depending on the era, his own hand might have meant a Royal Typewriter, an IBM Selectric, or a Mac) but the point is, he underwent considerable trouble and pain to obtain the parchments, the quills, ill to the point of death, Paul went out of his way to communicate, to relate. And his words form approximately half of the whole New Testament not to mention becoming the basis for the early Christian church.
So slow down a bit, get out from behind the PC, switch off your 'droid for an hour, and talk. Or you too might find yourself clutching your nightgown over your arm and wondering where it all went wrong.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Flashback Fridays-Gen X Retro Flashback
Ok, am stealing this idea from a fellow blogger, who has his own, 'Music Tuesdays'.
It's been awhile since I did a Retro Flashback, but I am going to try and feature a Retro Flashback every Friday starting this week.
For the week ending 4/26, I'm sending this one out to 'Bamafan' (you know who you are). For being a loyal supporter, and fellow lover of all things 80's, Bamafan, here's your long-distance dedication...
"Waiting For A Star to Fall"- Boy Meets Girl (1988)
(the little girl in the video is apparently members Merill and Rubicam's real life daughter)
It's been awhile since I did a Retro Flashback, but I am going to try and feature a Retro Flashback every Friday starting this week.
For the week ending 4/26, I'm sending this one out to 'Bamafan' (you know who you are). For being a loyal supporter, and fellow lover of all things 80's, Bamafan, here's your long-distance dedication...
"Waiting For A Star to Fall"- Boy Meets Girl (1988)
(the little girl in the video is apparently members Merill and Rubicam's real life daughter)
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Waiting For A Star To Fall...
There was a one-hit wonder around 1988, by a group called 'Boy Meets Girl' with this title. I remember loving the track, all full of romance and promise and big synthesized 80's sound. Apparently it made the rounds of the studio industry, being discarded by the likes of the late Whitney Houston, and Belinda Carlisle of Go-Go's fame who had a smash solo album out at about the same time.
This pop group was formed of a husband and wife team who were writers and back-up singers on many of Houston's top hits like 'How Will I Know' and 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody' and others like Bette Midler. They had exactly one hit with this song on their own.
I'm saying all that to say that sometimes despite all of your best efforts, what you want to say or do may not always be embraced by the world, the public at large.
I feel that a lot lately. Just last week, the office grapevine at Non-Company working overtime, let it be known that another co-worker, another temp like me but who had started about 6 months after I did (on this assignment) was on the fast track for being hired on permanently. I confronted HR and management and was firmly but oh so politely informed that, it pretty much, was none of my business. "She's in a different department". It was a nice way of saying we don't have to explain, we're doing it. It put me in mind of a comedy sketch on Laugh-In, where Lily Tomlin played condescending phone operator Ernestine, "We don't care, we don't have to, we're the Phone Company!" Or my sister, who is fond of quoting the phrase, 'Suck it up cupcake!'
All kidding aside, it hurts, I mean REALLY hurts. It's like an emotional sucker punch to the gut. I know that you are supposed to automatically lose that 'it-isn't-fair' mentality when you reach adulthood, maturity, but the truth is, the angry little girl isn't as far below the surface as she should be.
If you're me, you scramble to go about life, working hard and trying to keep so busy, that the comtemplative moments when you sit there and ponders the why's aren't so frequent. But nevertheless, they come...boy do they come.
Have you ever felt that your whole inside was awash in sobs, while on the outside you smiled pretty, put on your lipstick, eyeliner, collected the mail, filed your files, typed your 80 emails, and politely answered the phone?
My life lately is a haze of Advil to control the headaches, too many Famous Amos choc chip cookies to dull the pain, because the sugar high allows me to feel good for a few minutes, too much escape into old NCIS and Big Bang Theory Eps to pass the time so I don't dwell on the fact that life seems to be passing me by while I search in vain for a career. I obsess over the health of my pets and hug them too hard to make up for the lack of relationships and children.
And in the scraps of time that are left over, I sit here with my hands poised over this keyboard trying to somehow marshall my errant thoughts into treatises that I hope will somehow astonish the world, only to find that world doesn't really want my thoughts, my words. They want a South Korean rapping about Gangnam Style (whatever that is), they want videos of cats doing cute cat things, they want flash mobs doing dub step (whatever that is), they want to feel bad about oppressive African warlords (Kony) which they in turn will do nothing about except feel bad.
Like the song, so many times, my life itself feels like it's a waiting for a star to fall...
This pop group was formed of a husband and wife team who were writers and back-up singers on many of Houston's top hits like 'How Will I Know' and 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody' and others like Bette Midler. They had exactly one hit with this song on their own.
I'm saying all that to say that sometimes despite all of your best efforts, what you want to say or do may not always be embraced by the world, the public at large.
I feel that a lot lately. Just last week, the office grapevine at Non-Company working overtime, let it be known that another co-worker, another temp like me but who had started about 6 months after I did (on this assignment) was on the fast track for being hired on permanently. I confronted HR and management and was firmly but oh so politely informed that, it pretty much, was none of my business. "She's in a different department". It was a nice way of saying we don't have to explain, we're doing it. It put me in mind of a comedy sketch on Laugh-In, where Lily Tomlin played condescending phone operator Ernestine, "We don't care, we don't have to, we're the Phone Company!" Or my sister, who is fond of quoting the phrase, 'Suck it up cupcake!'
All kidding aside, it hurts, I mean REALLY hurts. It's like an emotional sucker punch to the gut. I know that you are supposed to automatically lose that 'it-isn't-fair' mentality when you reach adulthood, maturity, but the truth is, the angry little girl isn't as far below the surface as she should be.
If you're me, you scramble to go about life, working hard and trying to keep so busy, that the comtemplative moments when you sit there and ponders the why's aren't so frequent. But nevertheless, they come...boy do they come.
Have you ever felt that your whole inside was awash in sobs, while on the outside you smiled pretty, put on your lipstick, eyeliner, collected the mail, filed your files, typed your 80 emails, and politely answered the phone?
My life lately is a haze of Advil to control the headaches, too many Famous Amos choc chip cookies to dull the pain, because the sugar high allows me to feel good for a few minutes, too much escape into old NCIS and Big Bang Theory Eps to pass the time so I don't dwell on the fact that life seems to be passing me by while I search in vain for a career. I obsess over the health of my pets and hug them too hard to make up for the lack of relationships and children.
And in the scraps of time that are left over, I sit here with my hands poised over this keyboard trying to somehow marshall my errant thoughts into treatises that I hope will somehow astonish the world, only to find that world doesn't really want my thoughts, my words. They want a South Korean rapping about Gangnam Style (whatever that is), they want videos of cats doing cute cat things, they want flash mobs doing dub step (whatever that is), they want to feel bad about oppressive African warlords (Kony) which they in turn will do nothing about except feel bad.
Like the song, so many times, my life itself feels like it's a waiting for a star to fall...
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Breaking Down
A couple of months ago, I departed a Walgreens parking lot that was the anchor of a larger strip mall. As I reversed the car out of the parking lot; I halted suddenly hearing a spate of loud yelling. A woman's yell... more of a frenzied shriek actually. My first thought, was
"Oh my God, I've hit her!"
But as I checked the views (again) in the rearview mirror and the side windows, with a deep sigh of relief that came from the depths of my being, I realized that she was actually about 6 cars away, she had also begun reversing her car, when from around the corner, a Jimmy Johns delivery driver who thinking he had enough time and space to continue the turn without harming her, had driven around the corner. The woman in the car just went beserk, she actually jerked the car out horizontally and deliberately blocked the driver, basically trapping him where he couldn't move his truck at all, and when I say she unloaded on him, she unloaded on him, screaming, cursing and flailing her arms about. The driver repeatedly tried to apologize, tried to explain, but she was having none of it. The thing I remember her saying most often, when she wasn't dropping the f-bomb, is, 'Why, why couldn't you JUST HAVE WAITED' 'COULDN'T YOU JUST HAVE (insert curse with ing) WAITED' 'WHY ARE YOU SO (insert curse with ing) IN A HURRY'.
For me, it was obvious, he was trying to get food out to customers and was racing the clock. And I suspect once the woman simmered down, she would have realized it too. But it also occurred to me that her diatribe wasn't necessarily aimed at THAT delivery driver at THAT particular time, it could have been anyone at any time. He just happened to be there, a convenient scapegoat. She'd just had enough. A tiny part of me sympathized, countless times I've felt the same way inside, but just never reached the point where my anger overcame my inherent shyness, my extreme dislike of 'scenes', the horror of confrontation.
I've thought of this scene again and again in my mind over the last few months since I witnessed it. For me, it seems to be sort of a visual metaphor for our society of late.
You can say all you want about how tragedies on the order of the Sandy Hook School Shooting, the Colorado Movie Theatre Massacre, etc. have been happening all throughout the whole scope of human history. You can conveniently explain it away, that it's just recently that we've had 24-hour news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, etc., but I'm sensing something deeper, more malevolent lately. Just watching people break down more and more every day.
I didn't say a great deal about the New Town tragedy when it happened because it occurred at the same time as the deaths of my uncle and grandmother. There comes a point when it's just more than the human heart can bear.
The faces of the children... I remember standing in the breakroom at Noncompany watching a few moments of a memorial for the slain schoolchildren. I had taken my customary 5 mins away from my desk to dash in for hot water to prepare my morning chamomile and just happened to be there as it began. With me at that moment was an immigrant woman who takes care of the janitorial needs at the company and while there is enough of a language barrier that mostly I smile at her and nod a lot, and we say "Hi" because she knows that word, there came a moment when I learned more about her character than words can ever say. There as we stood looking up at the TV monitor and I was biting the inside of my lip to keep myself from tearing up, she simply leaned her arms onto the yellow cart she pushes, bowed her head, closed her eyes and I watched her lips moving in words of silent prayer. Perhaps for the children who lost their lives, perhaps for their parents who lost their legacy, their immortality...perhaps for me because I was too full of pride to cry the tears that overflowed inside me.
It happened again yesterday...another senseless tragedy. A road of marathon runners, suddenly strewn with limbs, the stench of blood, the anguished cries of victims, the shriek of ambulances. Another 8 year old boy who was there to watch his father fulfill a dream, cut down before he can play the piano, become a football star, go to his high school prom, fall in love, marry. Gone. Gone at 8. There were others of course, but it's this young boy that I can't get out of my head.
I am weary of hearing the debates over what constitutes an act of terrorism, is it domestic, is it foreign? How did they do it? Who did it? Tired of the politics...the speculation, the endless talking...
All I know tonight is that an eight year old and 2 adults died and scores of others were wounded and maimed.
And that our society just broke down a little further.
"Oh my God, I've hit her!"
But as I checked the views (again) in the rearview mirror and the side windows, with a deep sigh of relief that came from the depths of my being, I realized that she was actually about 6 cars away, she had also begun reversing her car, when from around the corner, a Jimmy Johns delivery driver who thinking he had enough time and space to continue the turn without harming her, had driven around the corner. The woman in the car just went beserk, she actually jerked the car out horizontally and deliberately blocked the driver, basically trapping him where he couldn't move his truck at all, and when I say she unloaded on him, she unloaded on him, screaming, cursing and flailing her arms about. The driver repeatedly tried to apologize, tried to explain, but she was having none of it. The thing I remember her saying most often, when she wasn't dropping the f-bomb, is, 'Why, why couldn't you JUST HAVE WAITED' 'COULDN'T YOU JUST HAVE (insert curse with ing) WAITED' 'WHY ARE YOU SO (insert curse with ing) IN A HURRY'.
For me, it was obvious, he was trying to get food out to customers and was racing the clock. And I suspect once the woman simmered down, she would have realized it too. But it also occurred to me that her diatribe wasn't necessarily aimed at THAT delivery driver at THAT particular time, it could have been anyone at any time. He just happened to be there, a convenient scapegoat. She'd just had enough. A tiny part of me sympathized, countless times I've felt the same way inside, but just never reached the point where my anger overcame my inherent shyness, my extreme dislike of 'scenes', the horror of confrontation.
I've thought of this scene again and again in my mind over the last few months since I witnessed it. For me, it seems to be sort of a visual metaphor for our society of late.
You can say all you want about how tragedies on the order of the Sandy Hook School Shooting, the Colorado Movie Theatre Massacre, etc. have been happening all throughout the whole scope of human history. You can conveniently explain it away, that it's just recently that we've had 24-hour news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, etc., but I'm sensing something deeper, more malevolent lately. Just watching people break down more and more every day.
I didn't say a great deal about the New Town tragedy when it happened because it occurred at the same time as the deaths of my uncle and grandmother. There comes a point when it's just more than the human heart can bear.
The faces of the children... I remember standing in the breakroom at Noncompany watching a few moments of a memorial for the slain schoolchildren. I had taken my customary 5 mins away from my desk to dash in for hot water to prepare my morning chamomile and just happened to be there as it began. With me at that moment was an immigrant woman who takes care of the janitorial needs at the company and while there is enough of a language barrier that mostly I smile at her and nod a lot, and we say "Hi" because she knows that word, there came a moment when I learned more about her character than words can ever say. There as we stood looking up at the TV monitor and I was biting the inside of my lip to keep myself from tearing up, she simply leaned her arms onto the yellow cart she pushes, bowed her head, closed her eyes and I watched her lips moving in words of silent prayer. Perhaps for the children who lost their lives, perhaps for their parents who lost their legacy, their immortality...perhaps for me because I was too full of pride to cry the tears that overflowed inside me.
It happened again yesterday...another senseless tragedy. A road of marathon runners, suddenly strewn with limbs, the stench of blood, the anguished cries of victims, the shriek of ambulances. Another 8 year old boy who was there to watch his father fulfill a dream, cut down before he can play the piano, become a football star, go to his high school prom, fall in love, marry. Gone. Gone at 8. There were others of course, but it's this young boy that I can't get out of my head.
I am weary of hearing the debates over what constitutes an act of terrorism, is it domestic, is it foreign? How did they do it? Who did it? Tired of the politics...the speculation, the endless talking...
All I know tonight is that an eight year old and 2 adults died and scores of others were wounded and maimed.
And that our society just broke down a little further.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Siblings
Uncle Bob would have been 73 today.
Funnily enough, I discovered coincidentally today is also National Sibling Day.
My uncle left behind a sister and a brother. I haven't experienced it, but the loss of a sibling must be a different sort of grief. My uncle was not just my uncle, he was someone's brother.
I'm never sure what the design is or why it sometimes happens, but last night, before I discovered that we even had a National Sibling Day, I was thinking of my siblings and feeling the miles that stretch between us both literally and sometimes figuratively.
Thinking in an abstract way of what their loss would mean to me. I don't mean this in a macabre way, but the loss of a close family member sometimes draws everything together in a finite, more urgent sense of meaning. You just begin to think differently.
Last night I sat wordlessly looking at a photo of my sister and her new-born son. The memories crowded in, flashbacks of her. Erin. Fearless, tomboy, scarily coordinated in a way I could never dream of being. Oozing self-confidence and a pragmatism that has never ceased to amaze me. We couldn't be more different. To think of Erin is to see a flash of pink and purple, perpetually in motion, as if life were a race that you feared lagging behind. The scabs on your arms and knees, the broken arm when you were 7, and the gap-toothed urchin grin (before your braces) your ribbons at the finish line. When I think of you, it is us racing to get our roller skates on so we could be sure of being on the floor when 'Mr. Roboto' was played, it is you deliberately licking all of the tomato sauce off your Spaghettio Meatballs so you wouldn't have to share, it's the time when I was tired of your trantrums so I shoved you into an elevator in the County Courthouse downtown and listened to you screaming up 12 floors, it's me driving like a mad woman hell for leather to your bedside when you were in labor with my niece and you telling me before I could say a word, 'don't worry, I've got drugs I can't feel a thing' because you knew I'd be worrying, it's the two of us weeping together at Grandpa's grave, and it's the photo of you and I when we were little where I've got my arm around you protectively because back then you'd let me.
This one's for you Erin...
It's for my brother, David. We've had our differences and while we aren't miles apart literally, figuratively our lives could not be more different. Still, when I think of you, I see a grey Subaru sportscar and I can still smell the mingled odors of cologne, mexican food, and stale cigarette smoke, you in your Chi-Chi's uniform and me in my Chick-Fil-A visor, barrelling down the road to our jobs with the radio all the way up, U2's 'Achtung Baby' vibrating the windows. It's when you lied and told me the Beverly Cleary book I'd unearthed by your bed was a library book and I wasn't allowed to read it. I yelled at you telling you how mean you were, only one week later to find that book wrapped in a package on the dining room table for my birthday. On another birthday, you used your Albertson's courtesy clerk salary to buy me the Julian Lennon cassette that I still have (it's the only one I kept), sitting up late at midnight watching MTV with you when I was supposed to be in bed and you didn't rat me out, the time when I had a panic attack on the way to the airport at nearly 11 p.m. and you left your home and comfortable bed and followed me all the way there and back in your car so I wouldn't be alone.
This one's for you David...
It's for my brother Doug. You were always so much older than me and as such, a mystery. We've been miles apart in geography and years. To think of you, is to think of the Summer of 1982, where you taught me the song 'You get a line and I'll get a pole honey', it's you insisting that hot water made ice cubes freeze faster, watching you in your white jeans and red polo shirt helping kids at the Little 500 Go-Cart Track-your first summer job... you were so cool, unflappable. I used to like to try and see if I could make you mad, because it seemed inconceivable that anybody could be that low-key, that slow to anger. I remember you liked Ataris, soccer and model airplanes. But some of the best memories I have are of you as an adult seeing the way you treat your wife, how in love you still are even after these 20 years, it gives me renewed faith in relationships. To see how you've become such a devout man of God, how strongly you hold your beliefs, but mostly it's your enigmatic character and economy of speech that are the things I think most of when I look back.
This one's for you Doug...
And for Laura. You were kind of a bonus, a treat, because we didn't meet and become sisters until you were 6. To think of you then, is actually to see your daughter now. She's your mini-me. Like her, you were always so shy and petite. I remember being much amused when we first met because you'd named your gerbil, Jill. Actually, I probably had more fun with you than any of the others because I was so much older (and had a car). My best memories of you are when you made me face my fears of roller coasters at Disney, dared me and we went on all of them but one in a day, eating churros in Epcot with a maraiachi band in the distance that wouldn't go away, you dragging me to all the Pauly Shore movies, us laughing at our rented copy of Dumb and Dumber until we literally fell off the bed! Picking you up from school on every other Friday stopping and ruining our dinner by having a snack at McDonalds on the way home, Saturday nights at Fun World, etc. Mostly though when I see you, the word grace is what immediately comes to mind, it's in everything you do, the way you raise your kids, the kindness that you exhibit to everyone you meet, the effortless way you seem to deflect life's slings and arrows. I'm so glad that God brought you into my life.
This one's for you Laura...
It's sad that so often we wait until funerals to tell people what we think of them, it isn't until death parts us that we realize how dear our brothers and sisters' and our memories of them really are.
So I thought I'd tell you today...that I think of you, that I cherish the memories, how thankful I am that you're part of my life.
Funnily enough, I discovered coincidentally today is also National Sibling Day.
My uncle left behind a sister and a brother. I haven't experienced it, but the loss of a sibling must be a different sort of grief. My uncle was not just my uncle, he was someone's brother.
I'm never sure what the design is or why it sometimes happens, but last night, before I discovered that we even had a National Sibling Day, I was thinking of my siblings and feeling the miles that stretch between us both literally and sometimes figuratively.
Thinking in an abstract way of what their loss would mean to me. I don't mean this in a macabre way, but the loss of a close family member sometimes draws everything together in a finite, more urgent sense of meaning. You just begin to think differently.
Last night I sat wordlessly looking at a photo of my sister and her new-born son. The memories crowded in, flashbacks of her. Erin. Fearless, tomboy, scarily coordinated in a way I could never dream of being. Oozing self-confidence and a pragmatism that has never ceased to amaze me. We couldn't be more different. To think of Erin is to see a flash of pink and purple, perpetually in motion, as if life were a race that you feared lagging behind. The scabs on your arms and knees, the broken arm when you were 7, and the gap-toothed urchin grin (before your braces) your ribbons at the finish line. When I think of you, it is us racing to get our roller skates on so we could be sure of being on the floor when 'Mr. Roboto' was played, it is you deliberately licking all of the tomato sauce off your Spaghettio Meatballs so you wouldn't have to share, it's the time when I was tired of your trantrums so I shoved you into an elevator in the County Courthouse downtown and listened to you screaming up 12 floors, it's me driving like a mad woman hell for leather to your bedside when you were in labor with my niece and you telling me before I could say a word, 'don't worry, I've got drugs I can't feel a thing' because you knew I'd be worrying, it's the two of us weeping together at Grandpa's grave, and it's the photo of you and I when we were little where I've got my arm around you protectively because back then you'd let me.
This one's for you Erin...
It's for my brother, David. We've had our differences and while we aren't miles apart literally, figuratively our lives could not be more different. Still, when I think of you, I see a grey Subaru sportscar and I can still smell the mingled odors of cologne, mexican food, and stale cigarette smoke, you in your Chi-Chi's uniform and me in my Chick-Fil-A visor, barrelling down the road to our jobs with the radio all the way up, U2's 'Achtung Baby' vibrating the windows. It's when you lied and told me the Beverly Cleary book I'd unearthed by your bed was a library book and I wasn't allowed to read it. I yelled at you telling you how mean you were, only one week later to find that book wrapped in a package on the dining room table for my birthday. On another birthday, you used your Albertson's courtesy clerk salary to buy me the Julian Lennon cassette that I still have (it's the only one I kept), sitting up late at midnight watching MTV with you when I was supposed to be in bed and you didn't rat me out, the time when I had a panic attack on the way to the airport at nearly 11 p.m. and you left your home and comfortable bed and followed me all the way there and back in your car so I wouldn't be alone.
This one's for you David...
It's for my brother Doug. You were always so much older than me and as such, a mystery. We've been miles apart in geography and years. To think of you, is to think of the Summer of 1982, where you taught me the song 'You get a line and I'll get a pole honey', it's you insisting that hot water made ice cubes freeze faster, watching you in your white jeans and red polo shirt helping kids at the Little 500 Go-Cart Track-your first summer job... you were so cool, unflappable. I used to like to try and see if I could make you mad, because it seemed inconceivable that anybody could be that low-key, that slow to anger. I remember you liked Ataris, soccer and model airplanes. But some of the best memories I have are of you as an adult seeing the way you treat your wife, how in love you still are even after these 20 years, it gives me renewed faith in relationships. To see how you've become such a devout man of God, how strongly you hold your beliefs, but mostly it's your enigmatic character and economy of speech that are the things I think most of when I look back.
This one's for you Doug...
And for Laura. You were kind of a bonus, a treat, because we didn't meet and become sisters until you were 6. To think of you then, is actually to see your daughter now. She's your mini-me. Like her, you were always so shy and petite. I remember being much amused when we first met because you'd named your gerbil, Jill. Actually, I probably had more fun with you than any of the others because I was so much older (and had a car). My best memories of you are when you made me face my fears of roller coasters at Disney, dared me and we went on all of them but one in a day, eating churros in Epcot with a maraiachi band in the distance that wouldn't go away, you dragging me to all the Pauly Shore movies, us laughing at our rented copy of Dumb and Dumber until we literally fell off the bed! Picking you up from school on every other Friday stopping and ruining our dinner by having a snack at McDonalds on the way home, Saturday nights at Fun World, etc. Mostly though when I see you, the word grace is what immediately comes to mind, it's in everything you do, the way you raise your kids, the kindness that you exhibit to everyone you meet, the effortless way you seem to deflect life's slings and arrows. I'm so glad that God brought you into my life.
This one's for you Laura...
It's sad that so often we wait until funerals to tell people what we think of them, it isn't until death parts us that we realize how dear our brothers and sisters' and our memories of them really are.
So I thought I'd tell you today...that I think of you, that I cherish the memories, how thankful I am that you're part of my life.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Sick...
Once more, I find myself sitting at this laptop sick... a cold this time. Thankfully, not flu. Just under the weather, drippy nose, sore throat, uproareous sneezing and a general malaise of fatigue and giddiness brought on by a mix of over the counter meds and constant and unrelenting anxiety.
I've been wondering what I do or don't do that seems to constantly bring on these spates of illness. In the not too distant past, I've spent considerable amounts of cash (to me, I realise considerable is a relative term) on vitamin/mineral supplements of the gummy, one a day, women's health specific and antioxidant variety. A plethora of medicaments promising to eradicate fatigue, boost my immune system, my metabolism, and give me a shinercoat hair and skin. I admit I've been a sucker for every TV shill that promised to somehow change my life the better living through chemistry route.
If I really stopped long enough to think about it, I'd be downright angry at the fact that all these things have really given me, is colorful and expensive urine. But I am far too tired to be angry. I'm just flat tired, worn out with a slipping down kind of life.
Once, many years ago, I think I was about seven or eight or so, I got a rare and lingering cold with a cough that wouldn't go away. I say rare because I can count on the fingers of my left hand how many times I was sick in my childhood. We just weren't. My parents expressed a broad contempt of the children in our neighbourhood who lived on Dimetapp and made constant visits to the doctor. We seemed to boast in our household how we 'never went to the doctor' as if it were some badge of honor. But that one time, I had a cough serious enough to warrant a rare trip to the doctor. It was exciting. I got a note to be picked up by my mother from school. A normally unthinkable thing..leaving school before the day was over. And it just got better from there, after the visit from the doctor, and a stop at Eckerd Drugs for a glass(!!) bottle of cough syrup that tasted like cherry and a bottle of the Pepto-Bismol pink antibotic that tasted like bubble gum, my mother made a totally out of character decision and instead of going back to school, we stopped off at a Showbiz Pizza (like Chuck E Cheese in the 80's) and I was allowed to have pizza and play some video games in the arcade.
I've always wondered in later years if it wasn't that break from the norm that really caused the cough to subside, more than the antibotics or the cough syrup (although being laced with codeine never hurts!) That maybe I just needed a break, some TLC, some one on one time with a parent having fun.
And now as my 38 year old self, I often wonder if my illnesses aren't my body forcing me to take a break. Maybe it's saying I need to eat pizza and play video games a little more instead of the flat out work that seems to be the tempo of my life.
The problem is that I am always subject to severe guilt about any appearance of 'shirking'. Even now as I sit here in my bed with a bedside table full of the over-the-counter medicaments my parents have such contempt for, I am trying to race the clock, trying to get better quickly because I am feeling such guilt at not being at my desk at Non-Company-I-Work-For-But-Am-Not-Really-One-Of-Them. Not being there for them to yell over to me, 'Schedule a Meeting for us in the Apex Conference Room', worrying about the 80-90+ emails or more that are just mounting up in my inboxes, my monthly reports that are unfinished and on and on it goes.
Non-Company itself is part of the problem. I guess it's having nothing to look forward to, except weeks and weeks of monotonous routine. The same spate of problems, following endless intractible, yet mostly meaningless procedures. The labyrinth of office politics. Never having a day of vacation, a day off, unless I am sick and that is unpaid.
I guess on a day like this, I would give anything for my Mom to show up with a get-out-of-work note and a trip to the arcade for some video games and pizza.
I've been wondering what I do or don't do that seems to constantly bring on these spates of illness. In the not too distant past, I've spent considerable amounts of cash (to me, I realise considerable is a relative term) on vitamin/mineral supplements of the gummy, one a day, women's health specific and antioxidant variety. A plethora of medicaments promising to eradicate fatigue, boost my immune system, my metabolism, and give me a shiner
If I really stopped long enough to think about it, I'd be downright angry at the fact that all these things have really given me, is colorful and expensive urine. But I am far too tired to be angry. I'm just flat tired, worn out with a slipping down kind of life.
Once, many years ago, I think I was about seven or eight or so, I got a rare and lingering cold with a cough that wouldn't go away. I say rare because I can count on the fingers of my left hand how many times I was sick in my childhood. We just weren't. My parents expressed a broad contempt of the children in our neighbourhood who lived on Dimetapp and made constant visits to the doctor. We seemed to boast in our household how we 'never went to the doctor' as if it were some badge of honor. But that one time, I had a cough serious enough to warrant a rare trip to the doctor. It was exciting. I got a note to be picked up by my mother from school. A normally unthinkable thing..leaving school before the day was over. And it just got better from there, after the visit from the doctor, and a stop at Eckerd Drugs for a glass(!!) bottle of cough syrup that tasted like cherry and a bottle of the Pepto-Bismol pink antibotic that tasted like bubble gum, my mother made a totally out of character decision and instead of going back to school, we stopped off at a Showbiz Pizza (like Chuck E Cheese in the 80's) and I was allowed to have pizza and play some video games in the arcade.
I've always wondered in later years if it wasn't that break from the norm that really caused the cough to subside, more than the antibotics or the cough syrup (although being laced with codeine never hurts!) That maybe I just needed a break, some TLC, some one on one time with a parent having fun.
And now as my 38 year old self, I often wonder if my illnesses aren't my body forcing me to take a break. Maybe it's saying I need to eat pizza and play video games a little more instead of the flat out work that seems to be the tempo of my life.
The problem is that I am always subject to severe guilt about any appearance of 'shirking'. Even now as I sit here in my bed with a bedside table full of the over-the-counter medicaments my parents have such contempt for, I am trying to race the clock, trying to get better quickly because I am feeling such guilt at not being at my desk at Non-Company-I-Work-For-But-Am-Not-Really-One-Of-Them. Not being there for them to yell over to me, 'Schedule a Meeting for us in the Apex Conference Room', worrying about the 80-90+ emails or more that are just mounting up in my inboxes, my monthly reports that are unfinished and on and on it goes.
Non-Company itself is part of the problem. I guess it's having nothing to look forward to, except weeks and weeks of monotonous routine. The same spate of problems, following endless intractible, yet mostly meaningless procedures. The labyrinth of office politics. Never having a day of vacation, a day off, unless I am sick and that is unpaid.
I guess on a day like this, I would give anything for my Mom to show up with a get-out-of-work note and a trip to the arcade for some video games and pizza.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Everyday is a gift...
No, this title is not a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that three of my family members have died in the last 6 months or so. It's not really meant to be as touchy-feely as it sounds, but lately I've found, it is the truest thing I know.
One of my work colleagues is going through cancer, and when I say 'going through cancer', he IS. They've put him under the knife twice, subjected him to countless rounds of chemotherapy, and next week, he's undergoing radiation. The cancer has taken away body weight, his energy and made his voice as raspy as emery boards. What cancer hasn't taken away is his sense of humor, his devotion to Nascar and his unflagging optimism. Everytime I ask him tenatively, "How are you Rick?", without fail he'll say, "Well, I'm still on this side of the dirt!"
A few months earlier, I sat in the auditorium of a local high school attending a benefit for children afflicted by cancer and rare blood diseases. One by one, parents came and described...so matter of factly what they are up against, named diseases I'd never heard of, how many rounds of chemo their child had endured, how many procedures, how many sleepless nights in strange hospital rooms. It's a good thing the auditorium was darkened, there was barely a dry eye in the place. But again, what struck me was, not one of these parents or the children, children with shaved heads and twigs where arms and legs should be, ever lost their optimism. They enthused about the cancer society, they talked about upcoming birthdays, family vacations, detailed plans for 'after cancer' or 'for when they finally beat this cancer'. Not if...when.
A few years before that, I sat weeping on the phone as my mother told me in a bemused voice, that the diagnosis was in, 'it was cancer'. The words floored me with disbelief, 'my mother has cancer' (HAD) I could barely accept hearing it. I watched her go through the chemo, the fatigue, watched as the body weight dropped off to nothing leaving her looking more like a victim of Auschwitz than my mother. But through it all, she never accepted defeat, never gave way to pity, and only rarely did she even miss a day of work. Not if...when. When I beat this cancer.
It got me thinking. Really thinking.
If it isn't cancer, sometimes it's depression, it's fear, it's anxiety, it's living a life that is so centered around yourself that you forget, you forget to be grateful for the true gift that life is.
I know...I did.
A few years ago, I dropped out of life. To think about where I was a few years ago is to try and remember a stranger. A person cloaked in fear. Like many 30-somethings, and I daresay many Gen X'ers, I experienced panic-attacks. And then one day I found that my entire life was one big panic attack and for some years after that, I literally hid at home and shut out life. There were years that I only went out for basic necessities. The details aren't all that important. You can pick up almost any medical journal, or Google 'agoraphobia' and you will have a portrait of my life and many other sufferers.
I gave into the defeat, into the pity, I wallowed in it until my fingers and toes were pruney. I rejected the gift that I had been given.
And then slowly but miraculously, the fear began to recede. It's a great story how that happened, but I'll leave that for another time, that isn't what this is about. I began to embrace life again, I went outside, I went out of my comfort zone, and for the first time in a long while, I realized I was okay. I embraced the gift of everyday.
Sometimes, the gift is, for me, driving in my little black Miata, with the radio up and singing with all of my might! It's me being at a Beach Boys concert in huge outdoor ampitheater as I was the other weekend packed with people and not being catatonic with fear. Sometimes I look at other people and almost feel bad for them because they have no idea how great liberty really is. You can't know what true liberation is if you've never been captive.
And while I do not equate recovering from agoraphobia with defeating cancer, what is true is both of them require an attitude shift. Researchers are now quite clear in their belief that attitude is a major contributing factor toward the recovery of disease, whether the disease be mental or physical.
Your life can change with your next breath.
I urge you, don't reject the gift.
One of my work colleagues is going through cancer, and when I say 'going through cancer', he IS. They've put him under the knife twice, subjected him to countless rounds of chemotherapy, and next week, he's undergoing radiation. The cancer has taken away body weight, his energy and made his voice as raspy as emery boards. What cancer hasn't taken away is his sense of humor, his devotion to Nascar and his unflagging optimism. Everytime I ask him tenatively, "How are you Rick?", without fail he'll say, "Well, I'm still on this side of the dirt!"
A few months earlier, I sat in the auditorium of a local high school attending a benefit for children afflicted by cancer and rare blood diseases. One by one, parents came and described...so matter of factly what they are up against, named diseases I'd never heard of, how many rounds of chemo their child had endured, how many procedures, how many sleepless nights in strange hospital rooms. It's a good thing the auditorium was darkened, there was barely a dry eye in the place. But again, what struck me was, not one of these parents or the children, children with shaved heads and twigs where arms and legs should be, ever lost their optimism. They enthused about the cancer society, they talked about upcoming birthdays, family vacations, detailed plans for 'after cancer' or 'for when they finally beat this cancer'. Not if...when.
A few years before that, I sat weeping on the phone as my mother told me in a bemused voice, that the diagnosis was in, 'it was cancer'. The words floored me with disbelief, 'my mother has cancer' (HAD) I could barely accept hearing it. I watched her go through the chemo, the fatigue, watched as the body weight dropped off to nothing leaving her looking more like a victim of Auschwitz than my mother. But through it all, she never accepted defeat, never gave way to pity, and only rarely did she even miss a day of work. Not if...when. When I beat this cancer.
It got me thinking. Really thinking.
If it isn't cancer, sometimes it's depression, it's fear, it's anxiety, it's living a life that is so centered around yourself that you forget, you forget to be grateful for the true gift that life is.
I know...I did.
A few years ago, I dropped out of life. To think about where I was a few years ago is to try and remember a stranger. A person cloaked in fear. Like many 30-somethings, and I daresay many Gen X'ers, I experienced panic-attacks. And then one day I found that my entire life was one big panic attack and for some years after that, I literally hid at home and shut out life. There were years that I only went out for basic necessities. The details aren't all that important. You can pick up almost any medical journal, or Google 'agoraphobia' and you will have a portrait of my life and many other sufferers.
I gave into the defeat, into the pity, I wallowed in it until my fingers and toes were pruney. I rejected the gift that I had been given.
And then slowly but miraculously, the fear began to recede. It's a great story how that happened, but I'll leave that for another time, that isn't what this is about. I began to embrace life again, I went outside, I went out of my comfort zone, and for the first time in a long while, I realized I was okay. I embraced the gift of everyday.
Sometimes, the gift is, for me, driving in my little black Miata, with the radio up and singing with all of my might! It's me being at a Beach Boys concert in huge outdoor ampitheater as I was the other weekend packed with people and not being catatonic with fear. Sometimes I look at other people and almost feel bad for them because they have no idea how great liberty really is. You can't know what true liberation is if you've never been captive.
And while I do not equate recovering from agoraphobia with defeating cancer, what is true is both of them require an attitude shift. Researchers are now quite clear in their belief that attitude is a major contributing factor toward the recovery of disease, whether the disease be mental or physical.
Your life can change with your next breath.
I urge you, don't reject the gift.
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