Month: March 2019

Ben’s a Meanie

Ben Franklin, one of our greatest founding fathers, was also an incredible inventor. He invented the lighting rod, swimming fins, street lamps, the odometer and bifocals, among other amazing discoveries. He never patented any of these life-changing inventions, forgoing any profits, as he considered them a gift to humanity. Contrary to belief, Ben Franklin didn’t actually invent “Daylight Saving Time” (by the way, there is no “s” after Saving if you are writing about it correctly – this was news to me, too) but he was a proponent of it. This just proves that nobody’s perfect, not even Benjamin Franklin.

I hate this “spring forward” part of Daylight Saving Time. This will most likely be the grumpiest Monday of the year, for me and my family. Why does losing that extra hour of real sleep feel like I didn’t sleep at all last night? Once again, just after I was getting used to seeing the early morning heartwarming, hopeful sunshine, I had to take my dogs out for their morning release, in the darkest of dark, praying that no alligators had climbed up out from the lake, into our yard hoping for a “Scooby snack.” (or in our case, a “Ralphie or Josie snack”) Undoubtedly, there is some clock in our house or in our cars, that we forgot to change and that will throw us for a loop. That will mean that I’ll be late getting my daughter to tennis practice or I’ll end up at a place of business that is already closed for the day. I’ve already prepared myself for the inevitable time confusion. It’s happened before. It’ll happen again.

Some states have refused to participate in DST. Arizona and Hawaii are looking like really appealing places to live, for me right now. Of course, their citizens will have to start doing the annoyingly confusing time-change math in their heads, if they are setting up web meetings or telephone calls with the rest of us crazies. Did I also mention that Ben Franklin invented the urinary catheter? I think that he may have had a mean streak.

Laughing Is Recommended

I think one of my favorite things about my family is how much we laugh together. Yesterday, I spent a beautiful (and increasingly rare, as our family grows up and out) day with all of my family members and some extended family members, too. The common theme and thread of the day, no matter what we were doing whether it be eating, or talking or playing games, was laughing. We crack each other up. We’re silly. We’re teasers. We laugh hard. We laugh loud. We laugh together and often.

Laughter has been proven by science to decrease stress hormones, lower one’s blood pressure, increase the release of endorphins and strengthen the immune system. Some studies suggest that if you laugh often, you may even increase your life span by a significant amount. Laughter really is the best medicine. Honestly, though, even if I found out it were bad for me, I wouldn’t stop laughing. It feels too good. I am so grateful to be surrounded by loved ones, who find life and those who live it, to be as amusing as I do.

“A good laugh is sunshine in the house.” – William Thackeray

“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.” — W. H. Auden

“As soap is to the body, so laughter is to the soul.” — A Jewish Proverb

It’s a Feminine Saturday

Yesterday I made a point of saying “Happy International Women’s Day!” to every woman I came across. I was having routine bloodwork done and the woman at the lab and I, did a little dance together after I said it. My clerk at the Walgreens gave me extra coupons as we smiled at the proclamation, celebrating us. My barista at Starbucks gave me a high-five and told me that they were only playing female recording artists’ music all day. She said that she was going to try to negotiate with the manager to keep that going for the week. My daughter and I hugged when I gave her a funky little string of pink flamingo lights. It was a lot of fun and camaraderie!

I got to thinking, “Why aren’t we women this supportive of each other all of the time?” Sure, we’re nice to our friends and family, but then we seem to eye other women suspiciously. It feels like our competitive hackles come up more than they do when we are with men. It seems like we are quicker to judge and to mistrust and to blame other women for things than we do to men. I’ve mentioned this before, but in my first “real” job after college, I asked a female manager what was the hardest thing about being a woman in the work world and without hesitation, she said, “Other women.”

I hope with all of these movements going on, trying to progress society that we really make sure that we empower each other. I read a sign that said, “Empowered women, empower women.” I also saw one that said, “Real Queens fix each other’s crowns.” Yesterday, I really felt part of a sisterhood that went beyond the small circle of women in my life who I know and who I love. It felt really good. It felt right. It felt joyous. It felt like progression.

“There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women.” – Madeline Albright

It’s a Feminine Friday!

“A woman should be two things: who and what she wants.” – Coco Chanel

“Here’s to strong women. May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them.” – Unknown

“When there is a woman, there is magic.” – Ntozake Shange

Happy International Women’s Day!!! Happy Favorite Things Friday!!! New readers, I keep it on the surface here on my favorite day of the week. I list three favorite items, songs, animals, foods, whatevers and I tell you why I like these favorite things. I encourage you to add to the list of favorites in the Comments section. Please also check previous Friday listings for other favorites. Without further ado:

Frontgate Pagoda Lantern – My very cool, interesting, intriguing, NYC dweller Great Aunt Alice loved a touch of Asian in all her decorating. I think that rubbed off on me. I love my foo dogs, my lucky cats, my three legged toads and my Frontgate Pagoda Lantern. Every time I look out at my pool area, I see the curly roof and the tall spire and it brings a little bit of glee to my heart. I have had mine for a few years now and it holds up well to the hot pelting Florida sun, and the torrential Florida downpours. Worth every penny!

Orvis Wine Barrel Lazy Susan – My mother taught me the value of a round table. It makes conversation flow so much better and no one gets “stuck” in the corner. My mother-in-law taught me the value of a Lazy Susan. I didn’t come from a big family, but she has five kids, so the first time I was introduced to a Lazy Susan was when I had dinner at my in-laws. You would never get the chance to eat hot food in a big family, if you were constantly asked to pass the salt, pass the mustard, pass the pickles, etc. The Lazy Susan eliminates the need for all of the pass requests. This Orvis model is particularly high quality and you can get your family’s name engraved on it, which makes it very special.

YogaToes – I’ve had many inspiring yoga instructors over the years, but one wise older woman really sticks out in my mind. She said that we must place particular care and attention to stretching our feet. It does seem that I know a lot of elderly people with a lot of feet issues that I would prefer to avoid in my elder years. She had an exercise where she would make us pick up pencils with our toes. She also recommended these toe separators to wear on occasion to make sure our feet don’t become deformed in our old age. They hurt a little when you wear them for a long time, but a little soreness beats foot surgeries any day!

I hope that you noticed that all of my suggestions today came from inspiration and recommendations from women! Today’s a good day to reflect on all of the good wisdom every one of us has gleaned from the beautiful women in our lives. Happy Friday! Happy Weekend! Just Happy!

Lightning in the Bottle

In just the last 12 hours, I have experienced three truly inspirational stories. Last night, my husband and I watched the National Geographic special about Alex Honnold, the first man to climb El Capitan in Yosemite, free solo style (meaning no ropes!). Having just been to Yosemite this past summer, I cannot imagine how dangerous and terrifying that climb would have been and the fact that Alex achieved it, is almost miraculous. El Capitan was only successfully first climbed by climbers with ropes in 1958!

This morning, my husband was filling me in on a conference he just attended and he told me about one of the most inspirational speakers he has ever seen at one of these conferences. The speaker was Jon Derenbos, a former NFL long snapper, now turned magician who was a finalist and a fan and judge favorite, on my daughter’s favorite TV show, America’s Got Talent. What is truly amazing about this accomplished man, is all of the adversity he has overcome in his life, including the fact that his father brutally murdered his mother, he spent a year in foster care, and Jon has had to have open heart surgery, even though he is only in his thirties. Still, he is living his dream-life, expecting his first child with his wife, performing magic all over the world, and Jon now has a book and a major motion picture coming out about his life.

Also, this morning, when I was reading the news, I read the very emotional and thankful tribute that LeBron James gave to Michael Jordan, after superseding Michael’s all-time NBA points record. He talked about what an inspiration Michael Jordan was to him and all of his friends, as Lebron beat the odds out of poverty to become the great that he is in the game of basketball and in the calling of his Life. Donning Air Jordans with “Thank You M.J.” written on the side of them, this is what he had to say about one of the men who stirred LeBron to greatness, “M.J. was the lightning in a bottle for me, because I wanted to be like him.”

In a world full of negativity and anger vying for our attention, it’s such a great reminder that there is every bit as much positivity, beauty and absolutely stunning human achievements, happening all of the time, all around the world. I like to think that these positive feats way outweigh the negative, in their magnanimity alone. If we make the point of seeking the positive out, we are left breathless in the wake of the possibilities available to all of us, to choose to live in our passions and in our awe of the prospects of achievement waiting to happen, and to stir all of us, to our greatest potentials.

“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.” – Helen Keller

“In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision.” – Dalai Lama

The Reality of Neverland

“If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you.” – Think Smarter, Twitter

“We repeat what we don’t repair.” – Christine Langley-Obaugh

I just watched the HBO documentary featuring two of Michael Jackson’s sexual abuse accusers called Leaving Neverland. Tough stuff. My family has experienced contact with pedophiles in the past. Thankfully, our children were not harmed, but others, who my children knew, were not so fortunate. Please look up my blog post called Mama, Trust Your Gut for more detail.

I know a lot of people stand by Michael Jackson’s innocence. He is not alive to defend himself. Still, for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that these now grown men are telling the truth in the documentary and Michael is guilty of sexually abusing young boys. Both men claim to have come to crisis points in their adult lives, where they just couldn’t hide the truth from themselves or the people who they loved, any longer. They had to open up their wounds and clean the feeling of a dirty secret, out of those wounds. They both felt that this was the only way that the wounds could eventually scab over and heal to the point of being scars of the past. Interestingly, both men seemed to come to their crisis points right around the time that they started families and they had their own children. They couldn’t fathom allowing anyone to do the things that they claim that Michael did to them, to their own precious children. Their perspective of wanting to protect their own children, showed them that what happened to them as children, was so wrong and so undeserved.

Self-care can be a difficult road to navigate sometimes. Sometimes we have such fear of being or being perceived as being “selfish” that we forget how important self-love and self-care is for not only ourselves, but for the people we love and share our lives with. We are not giving others the best of ourselves, if we are not self-nurturing and working on healing, and growing from the hurt parts of ourselves.

As a parent, I have four young people in this world who I love beyond life itself. I want nothing but the best of everything that life has to offer for my children. I imagine that most parents feel the same way. I have learned to use that perspective for myself (and for my inner child). As I have grown in parenting, I have learned that children watch a whole lot more of what you model, than what you say. Children are much more intuitive and astute than most of us give them credit for being. If we want them to learn to take care of and nurture and heal and protect themselves, than we must do the same for ourselves. We, and the people we love, deserve nothing less than pure, real, kind, love.

“Memories demand attention, and these memories will have teeth.” 
― C. Kennedy, Slaying Isidore’s Dragons

“There is no one way to recover and heal from any trauma. Each survivor chooses their own path or stumbles across it.” 
― Laurie Matthew, Behind Enemy Lines

Down-Home Wisdom

RIP – Luke Perry. Too soon. So, so sad. Back in the day, my friends and I were huge 90210 fans. How fleeting life can be!

While looking at my newsfeed, I got sidetracked on another bit of news about the musician Jerry Lee Lewis. He recently suffered a minor stroke. As often happens in my course of clicking through news stories, I started researching more and then, being reminded of the movie, Great Balls of Fire!, I somehow ended up downloading a book to my kindle, written by Jerry Lee Lewis’ ex-wife. Now Jerry Lee Lewis has several ex-wives, but this book was written by the notorious ex-wife who was his 13-year-old second cousin and that marriage almost completely derailed his musical career. Her name is Myra Lewis Williams and her book that I downloaded is called, The Spark That Survived.

I am not a huge country music fan. Still, I find myself drawn to the stories of women country musicians who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and made something of themselves, despite all of the odds against them. They’re as American pioneer as a person can get, in my mind. I have read several articles and exposes about Dolly Parton. I have read more than one book written by Loretta Lynn and I finished The Spark That Survived, in just one sitting. I have found that what these women lack in formal education and “grooming”, they more than make up for, in their sheer pluck, determination, and faith in God and in themselves. They have a grounded common sense that seems to be a lacking quality these days, and I find it so refreshing to hear their honest, true voices speaking candidly about life and how they see it. These strong country women typically hold nothing back.

Here are some gems I plucked from The Spark That Survived:

On friends – “Friends understand that you dogs come first. Friends understand when you want to spit at your husband but love him dearly anyway. Friends understand your female problems. Friends are there when you go to the hospital, with a nice new set of pretty jammies for you to wear. Friends buy your lunch when you are broke. Friends listen to your troubles and then dismiss them when you do. Sometimes friends cry with you, but most of all they make you laugh and let you know that you are loved. . . We all need friends.”

On co-parenting with a jerk – “If you teach a child that their father is bad then they may very well think that since they are his child they, too, are bad. It’s a thin line to walk but trying to turn a child against one of the parents is like beating your ex over the head with your child as a weapon. Being an ex-wife is not easy and I was determined that she was not going to be an ex-child.”

On overcoming rock bottom – “I’m living proof that your past does not have to determine your present, or your future, for that matter. If you feel like nothing, that means you have the freedom to be anything you want to be. As I always say, if a naive thirteen-year-old girl could elope with her famous second cousin, and survive all of the tragedy and trouble that wrought, you can survive your dumbass decisions, too.”

On forgiveness – “I’ve realized that forgiveness isn’t for the other person, it’s for yourself. You do it so that you can move on with your life, no longer giving that other person one iota of space in your thoughts or actions. . . . I suppose for people who like to control others, that’s hard to accept. If you’re the one who’s been manipulating others, driven them away and still trying to yank their chain and they’re just not even letting themselves be connected to that chain anymore, it would seem a rude awakening.”

On the edge of despair (Myra lost a child to drowning and was very abused by Jerry Lee Lewis) – “It was as if Myra the girl melted away into that cold, damp earth and a grown woman slipped into the body that was left behind. . . . I know that psychiatrists would probably say I’m nuts, or at the very least it was a natural maturing of my ability to cope. They would be wrong. This body was now home to a new person. I suspect there are lots of people who know what I mean. Anybody who has been to that edge of desperation and despair, and somehow got back up to carry on with life, might have a sense of having died and been reborn. . . . . It was the new me who breathed the fresh morning air and knew that life must go on.”

I am a firm believer that many perspectives give you a whole perspective. I have never limited myself to where I find my treasure of wisdom. I seek wisdom everywhere. In my experience, some of the most profound gleaming gems of real truth, have come from the least likely of sources. Down-home wisdom is often the best.

My Decision

“I get to decide who I am.” – Rachel Hollis

A younger friend of mine enthusiastically recommended the book Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis. It’s an inspiring, upbeat book, written by a real-life, 30-something, successful mother, wife and entrepreneur. It’s a fun, easy, earthy read that I think my younger self would have appreciated even more. Still, I found myself writing the above quote in my inspirational notebook. It is strange to be almost 50 and to still feel the need to remind myself of that fact, from time to time. I get to decide who I am. It’s an empowering mantra.

I think that we women, especially, work so hard to please the “others” in our lives, that we sometimes lose ourselves in the process. We let other people’s definitions of what the perfect wife, mother, friend, daughter, daughter-in-law, girlfriend, niece, co-worker, boss, sister, spiritual follower, cousin, teacher, customer, volunteer, etc. etc. lead us into who we think we SHOULD be. We then drive ourselves bananas, being our own hardest task masters, trying to live up to these definitions of perfection that aren’t even necessarily our own visions and definitions of the “perfect woman.”

I think it is a worthwhile reminder for all us to consider from time to time. “I get to decide who I am.” Is what I am doing right now in my life my decision? Am I being the person who I know myself to be to the deepest core of my being? Am I living up to my standards for what I want in my life? Am I abusing myself by trying to live up to impossible standards set up by society – standards that don’t gel with who I really am or what I really want in life? Am I letting other people decide who I am?

I get to decide who I am. What an empowering mantra!

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” 
― Bernard M. Baruch

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Cell Phone Fiasco

Yesterday, my cell phone went on the fritz. It locked up, it started speaking commands out of nowhere, and it wouldn’t shut down or shut up. The most disconcerting thing about the whole situation was how panicked I felt. My phone is about a year old, a new model and I really wasn’t up for getting a replacement phone. I got my husband involved with the whole fiasco and we looked up help sites and barked out orders to each other, grabbing the phone back and forth, getting grumpier by the second, with the situation and with each other. We seemed to be stuck in a quagmire, where even the old trusty “turn it on/turn it off trick” wasn’t going to work because the phone refused to turn off. We called our cell coverage carrier, the maker of the cell device, and the insurance coverage company of our cell phones, with no one having any really good advice to give to us. We spent a couple hours on this craziness, spiraling into a funnel of frustration. When I finally threw my hands up in the air and started the insurance claim, my 18-year-old son arrived home from the gym. He saw the frustration on his parents’ faces, the clumps of hair lying on the ground from being pulled out of our heads and he said, “Mom, could I just see your phone for a second? Could I just take a look at it?”

As futile as I knew that would be, I tossed him the phone so that I could get back to concentrating on my insurance claim. Five minutes later, he had it fixed, back to new. I didn’t even bother to ask him how he did it. I was too exhausted and relieved. I think my son’s generation and the ones coming up behind him have special abilities programmed inside of their heads, tied to technology, that my simpler model, retro-mind just doesn’t have programmed into it. And that’s okay. I know where to find my kids when I need help.

What Is

“Never let the memories of the way things were, blind you from the reality of the way things are.” – unknown

We all do the above statement, don’t we? We stay in relationships, friendships, jobs, neighborhoods, club affiliations, etc. sometimes way past their expiration dates, lost in the fond remembrance and loyalties, stemming from the past. When we do this, we avoid the fact that everything is always in a constant state of change, including us. Change is the only constant. It’s okay to outgrow a situation that is no longer healthy or right for us. Goldfish move from bowls to aquariums and then to ponds. Plants need to be replanted when they grow too big for their confining pots. The examples go on and on.

Right now, there are so many books and teachings on the importance of being aware and staying in the present moment. At a time in history when everything, especially technology, seems to be growing and changing at warp speed, it is even more important to take pause, take a breath and really assess what is going on in our lives, right in the present moment. Now. It is a hard concept to grasp, but the only thing that we really have is the present moment. Now is the only reality.

“The reason people find it hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.” – u.fo Twitter