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.

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.

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)

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...

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.

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.

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 shiner coat 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.

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.