Reality Bites

I was just in the middle of a great dream during my jet lagged induced nap and I heard a phone ringing. A phone ringing? I had not heard a phone ringing for the last twelve days while in Africa. Where I am? I instinctively reached over to my right and picked up my cell phone and said hello.

“Mom?” It was Carter !!! Oh no it was Carter at camp, where she does not have access to a phone unless something is wrong. “Mom, I’m alright, but I fell and hit my head.” Still feeling drugged up from thirty hours of flying starting in Zambia yesterday through Joberg to Atlanta and finally home today it took me a minute to process what was going on. After talking to Carter a few minutes she passed me on to the camp Doctor who told me she thought Carter did not have a concussion, but they are taking her for an x-ray just to see how they might need to modify her camp activities.

I asked to talk to Carter again since I am now an expert at telephone diagnosis when she falls. This fall did not involve a horse, thank goodness, but just a low ropes course and a group of tires. Carter did not sound confused or disoriented in anyway, but just getting to talk to each other after two and a half weeks of camp induced silence did make her sad for us.

There is nothing worse than being away from home when you are sick of hurt. Mom and Dad are really the best medicine. Two years ago when Carter went to Taiwan during the summer and lived with a family and went to school she got a stomach bug and was sick for a day. Russ and I happened to be in Seattle celebrating our twentieth anniversary and got a call from Carter halfway around the world. Of course she was fine by the next day, but at that moment she just wanted her Mom and there was nothing I could do about it but reassure her that this too shall pass.

Five weeks away from Carter is a long time for me, but she wanted to do these three back-to-back camp sessions so badly and she is at the age where she wants to spend more time away from the family than with the family. So while I had her on the phone in this vulnerable, head injured, I wish my Mom was with me state, I asked her if she wanted me to come and see her Saturday when she had the break in camp sessions. “Could you do that and bring Daddy too?”

“Of course. I’ll call camp tomorrow.”

“Are you allowed to that?” she asks, having been living in the rule following world of camp for the last two and a half weeks.

“Yes.” I reassured her.

No easy re-entry back into real life. Our perfect vacation, really the best trip I have ever been on in my life is over. We got home and the house was fine, only my vegetable garden took a beating from lack of rain, Shay was excited to see us and I got four really happy letters from camp filling me in on Carter’s first session. We unpacked our tiny suit cases and put all our safari wear in the laundry, happy not to half to wear khaki. I went to the grocery store and bought nine different fruits knowing that the scale will be unhappy with me in the morning, but I would not change a thing about our trip. We saw so many amazing animals and birds, met the most fun and interesting people, we ate really good food and now it’s back to reality. It bites.

Too Many Hot Dogs

Carter is at camp and we are leaving for Africa so I wrote a few letters to Carter that my friend Christy is going to mail every couple of days so that Carter does not go forever without and real mail at camp. Writing letters to camp is hard enough when not that much is going on at home, but writing in advance is next to impossible. Maybe I could have predicted what might go on in the world, but I decided that was just too weird, even for me, a person who writes something weird everyday.

Instead I decided to pull out the book I made for Carter with all the great quotes she said when she was two and three. I guess I was smart enough then to write the wonderful things she said down to share with Russ, who was on the road a lot. I’m glad I did because as far as I’m concerned two and three are when kids say the best stuff.

Apparently hot dogs played a major role in Carter’s life as is evident in these two little stories:

In November our Ukrainian babysitter said, “I gave Carter two sausages for lunch.” Carter interjected, “you mean hot dogs.”

“In my country they are called sausages.”

Carter replies, “God says, in our country they are called hot dogs.”

Following along the same theme:

A babysitter says to Carter, “I have a little tummy ache.”

Carter says, “O.K., I am a doctor. What did you eat for lunch?”

“A hot dog and fries.”

“Well, a hot dog is O.K., but you need to ask your Mommy before you eat French fries. That will be $500 please.”

Based on the obvious large hot dog consumption in our house back then Carter said the following to me one day:

“My heart takes good care of me. And I say, ‘Good Luck!’”

Good luck indeed. Thank goodness we hardly ever have a hot dog around anymore.

One of my very favorite things Carter ever said was a month before her third birthday:

“It is so great in my world, when the sun is up or the sun is down.”

I hope it is great in your world. Don’t eat too many hot dogs and if you want fries, please save yourself $500 and ask your Mommy first.

Professional Complainer

Tonight in a rare, but very enjoyable night time Mah Jongg game the talk at my table turned to an eating establishment that all the players frequented and some bad choices and worse excuses for the choices they had made. Now I am fond of this place, so don’t ask me to name it, because I am sure they will turn this current situation around.

As I described in detail the mistakes and my conversations with management my friend Carolyn commented that I was thorough in my complaint. ‘Carolyn,” I responded, “don’t you know I am a professional complainer.” She acted as if in the 18 years I have known her she had never heard me complain.

Perhaps she had never heard me complain because she has never done anything wrong, at least to me, but I find it shocking that she was unaware of my professional status. I am a tough customer, but I am also an ardent supporter. So if I find something lacking in the customer service arena I try and constructively point out why it makes me unhappy.

I know that not all people who I complain to are thrilled I am doing it, but consider the alternative. First, if I have encountered something wrong I am probably not the first person who has felt that way. Second, most people don’t bother to complain to the person who is actually in charge, but just leave unhappy to never return again and worse tell ten people how unhappy they were. Third, I always offer evidence-based complaints with positive suggestions on how to grow the business.

My professional designation was earned when I was a sales and marketing consultant, but had been honed for many years before that as an armature tough cookie. My father has mentioned on more than one occasion that he is surprised some businesses had stayed open after I received very poor customer service from them more than once. See, if my direct confrontations of poor service don’t improve after a reasonable amount of time then I go right for the juggler. But at least I returned to the business to see if they even tried.

The difference between a professional complainer and a whiny unhappy person is that the professional will praise and frequent great establishments all day long. A whinny person is never satisfied. I may be demanding, but I will never whine about anything.

The Secret to Anti-Aging

Even with a boat load of anti SPAM controls somehow my computer still puts “Anti-aging Secrets” into my You-Better-Read-This mailbox. Erectile dysfunction, balding, You Won the Irish Sweepstakes, Our Time Dating and extended warrantees for cars that we got rid of long ago all thankfully get trapped in my junk box, but not anti-aging. I guess my computer knows I am a woman, am happily married, sold the Dodge Durango and will not fall for the sweepstakes scam. But my computer knows I am aging. Not a big leap of some coder’s intuition. We are all aging.

Here is the real secret, we are all aging and at exactly the same speed. The answer to anti-aging is no secret it is death. Since I have been inundated with these pitches I looked more closely at them to see if they were for some kind of assisted suicide and thankfully they are not. The e-mails are for some strange fruit or all natural injections that claim to stop the clock, or make you look as if it has been turned back many years.

Since my computer is not getting any smarter I would like to register in the spam hall of records that I do not mind aging. I am not looking for Dr. Oz to tell me how to look as young as someone who could be my child. Aging is a privilege that is given to the living. I am not interested in being one of the dead right now.

Using sunscreen to prevent cancer, eating right to be healthy, working out to have a body that functions well, wearing lipstick so my lips don’t sting from being chapped, all about function not form. So hawkers of crazy ass products stop calling them anti-aging solutions and tell me how they will make me feel better as I do the inevitable and that is get older, wiser and hopefully more loved. And no, I don’t need Our Time Dating or Meet Senior People to do that.

Speaking of being loved, I would like to thank all you nice readers who sent me kind messages and a bunch of WooHoo’s yesterday. So much for my quiet moment, as well as so much for reaching my goal — I got on the scale this morning and was up two tenths of a pound. I promise not to proclaim when I lose that weight!

Big Fun Father’s Day

I am the one who made my Dad a father. I am the first-born. My Dad was young when I got here. Despite being what I would consider now too young to properly raise a baby he seemed to figure it out well as he went along.

The advantage of having my young father was fun was always close at hand. I was lucky that I was an only child for the first three and a half years of my life and then there were just two of us until I was over eight so my father treated us like playmates in those early years.

One of my earliest memories is of being at the Dayton Country Club when I was about three and my father would be standing in the water encouraging me to jump off the side of the pool and swim to him. I know we have a picture of me with some kind of Styrofoam bubble belted to my middle so I was not going to drown, but my Dad knew I should learn to swim as early as possible. I bet I only wore that bubble a very short time.

The other theme that surrounds my father is that he is big and everything he ever does is big. Couple big with fun and my Dad was a kid’s dream. When we used to go to Pawleys Island for the summer other kids would get an inflatable raft or regular ‘ole car tire sized inner tube to play in the waves while their parents sat in chairs on the beach. Not my dad. He would take us into Georgetown Tire and Rubber Company and buy the biggest tractor tire inner tube they made and get it inflated, tie rope around it so we had a way to pull it around in the water and drag ourselves up onto it.

The multiple rope handles came in handy when we tied it to the car roof of our navy blue Ford Country Squire with the brown fake wood paneling and drove the giant inflatable back to the beach. My cousins and sisters and I could all ride that inner tube on the waves at the same time making us a danger to anyone in our path.

Pulling that big inner tube back out over the waves was never a problem because my Dad was always willing to be out in the water with us. He taught us all how to body surf and jump headfirst ducking into the waves so that the powerful water did not throw us around. Of course thanks to my Dad we all were good swimmers.

Somehow we never seemed tired on those vacations at Pawleys. My Dad and my Uncle Wilson would make us stay up until is was really dark and then they would put on the biggest fireworks show even though it was not the fourth of July. After what seemed liked hundreds of rockets with big balls of red, green and white sparkling balls exploding from them were set off we would eat popsicles and fall into to big sleep in our beds. We would wake up early to my Dad cooking a big breakfast with a new fun plan to go crabbing and ride our inner tubes down the backwater to the inlet as the tide was going out.

And although he taught me all the important stuff about working hard and being good to people today on this Father’s day I am most happy for all the fun I’ve had with my Dad. I’m also thankful that he had me so young so that I’ve had him for so long. So happy Father’s Day to my Big Fun Dad.

Shop In My Garden

This spring I planted my vegetable garden with the mind that I was not always going to be around during peak harvest time. I put in Arugula and lettuce. The lettuce has been wiped out by some tend leaf loving varmint, but apparently said rotten animal has an unsophisticated pallet and does not like the spicy greens. The good thing about the arugula is that it is a fast growing crop even though I started it from seed so I have been able to enjoy it.

I was planning on having a salad for dinner since tomorrow I am splurging and going out for afternoon tea as my main meal for the day. I have written extensively about my love of afternoon tea as the best meal ever. The only problem with tea is that it is probably the most fattening fare I ever encounter. Tea sandwiches, scones, pastries and cakes — nothing healthy on the menu, with the exception of the actual tea.

Tonight as I pulled in the driveway from picking Carter up at work we barely had enough time to run into the garage before the heavens opened up and dumped baby swimming pool amounts of water from the sky. So now I stand hungrily looking out the window at the garden waiting for the deluge to stop so I can go out and gather my dinner. I could have planned ahead and cut my greens earlier in the day, but somehow they wilt in my house, even refrigerated. I am not sure how grocery store greens keep their crispness, when my fresh picked can’t.

As happy as I am to get rain for my garden I hope this very heavy rain does not knock all the blossoms off my squash, cucumbers and eggplant. Those blossoms are needed to get pollinated and turn to fruit. If I lose this first round I probably won’t be around for the second round to come to fruition and turn to vegetables. Sometimes gardening is heart breaking and I feel for farmers who are at the mercy of the weather.

For the past week and a half I have been watching my cherry tomato plants grow more and more green globes, but am wondering when one will decide to turn even the slightest shade of red. The green bean plants have some thin tender beans. I have to keep an eye on them because they can go from too thin to though and old very quickly. The pepper plants are always the last to give any hint of producing a crop. I can go away for a month and come back and they still will not show any signs of deciding to birth a baby.

If this rain does not stop soon I might just run out with an umbrella and cut off a few basil leaves to eat with a farmer’s market tomato I have sitting here. Thank goodness for the success of real farmers because if I had to depend only on my own crops I would be very hungry, hey maybe I would be very skinny too.

Rule Followers

I stopped by the needlepoint store today to turn in two ornaments and pick up fibers for four more projects as I plan out what I am taking to Africa. The stitchers table was full of all the regulars, including my friend Elizabeth from Greensboro who I am in an ornament contest with this year.

Elizabeth is a far superior stitcher to me as well as a very prolific worker. At the end of last season she asked me how many ornaments I had done and since it was a good, no, great many she decided I was a worthy opponent and she challenged me to see who could finish the most ornaments this year. So far I am winning because I only make ornaments and she does belts, pillows, larger framed pieces as well as a giant kneeler for her daughters’ school chapel. That being said, she still has all most three months and could easily bypass me in the end.

Needle pointers tend to be rule followers. If you are doing a certain stitch you need to do it one way or it is a different stitch and that is a different rule. I like to work on one project at a time because my rule is to finish. Elizabeth has a rule of five, which means she can have only five different projects she is working at the same time. Today Elizabeth announced that she was going to work on her counted piece until three o’clock and then switch to the kneeler because she has a deadline for that piece to be turned in.

In our stitching group Kate is the rule enforcer so when three o’clock rolled around she altered Elizabeth it was time to switch projects. That was when Elizabeth evoked her codicil, which is her way of changing her mind and breaking her own rule. She said she would change projects when she finished the section she was currently working on.

I jumped right on that codicil idea. As a creator and follower of rules I love having a way out of my own self imposed restrictions, but then I really got to thinking about it. I have lost weight this go-round, by myself without the aid of a professional weight loss program by creating some sound rules and following them. I realized that when I have gained weight in the past it was because I had codicils to what I knew were the eating rules I needed to follow.

One failed rule I created was the “one bite rule.” I allowed myself one bite of anything. Big mistake! It is amazing how many calories there are in one bite of many different things. That rule started as a codicil and ended with seventy gained pounds.

The rule of rules for me is create a rule, measure it’s success and improve the rule. Then every once in a while cut myself a tiny amount of slack and just break the rule just to keep from becoming an uptight pain who no one wants to hang with. We all have our own ways.

Summer Mothering

After a two-day break from school Carter started today with her full-time volunteer job that she has to do everyday she is home and not at camp or on vacation with me. She is working towards getting the Mayor’s award, which is given to kids who volunteer at least 100 hours during their summer break.

Working 100 hours for free is harder than you think. First of all most non-profits don’t want the liability of teenagers so they don’t take young volunteers without adult supervision. I don’t blame them because I am sure there are some parents who might want to drop younger kids off at a non-profit and use it as a babysitting service.

Carter has years of work experience from working at her barn so she was able to get a job at an animal rescue organization. She is the kitten room specialist and front office helper. Turns out it is still work for this mother because I have to get up and drive her to work and pick her up at the end of the day. Her driver’s license can’t come too soon. I am hoping some days her father can take her.

I was proud of Carter when I dropped her off, not exactly certain what her day was going to be, but going in willing to do what it took. I expected a text early in the day, but did not get one until she took her lunch break to let me know what time to pick her up. Turns out her love of organization and order are a real bonus in her job.

Apparently the care of kittens is very strict and Carter learned how to dissemble the three cage tower, clean it and reassemble it ensuring that the exact color coded towels go back in the right spots along with the heating pads and bowls. She also got to play, feed and clean the kittens before going up front to do the jobs she says she was born to do, alphabetize and file.

Carter says she liked the mother cats the best because they love to snuggle. I guess that it is Carter’s summer mothering job. She already is recognizing the perils of having offspring too young. I think this is the best lesson any teenager could learn.

 To the Rescue

I had a big bag of fresh spinach that I needed to cook today so I decided to make a spinach soufflé that could serve two purposes, dinner and a blog entry. As I was just squeezing the water out of the spinach I had cooked and chopped my cell phone rang. “Hi Andrea,” I said recognizing my friend’s name on the phone.

“I’m up at the pool and I’m calling you because Pokey has a needlepoint question and did not want to bother you.” After talking for a few moments I told my friends that I would just run up to the pool to help them. For years when Carter was younger I sat under the awning at the pool watching swim team and I have missed the daily reason to get a chance to just sit and talk and now needlepoint. True to afternoon swim practice form it started to rain as soon as I arrived.

I arrived to find a few of my new needlepoint students working away on their projects. Kim proudly showed me her belt and was happy that I declared it a big success. Pokey had a very minor problem, which I was able to fix and show her how to prevent from happening again.

As soon as the stitching problem had been remedied the kids the started gathering around their mothers wondering what they should do having been shoed out of the pool. Then the rain stopped. One young one looking out over the golf course announced there was a huge rainbow and sure enough there was. A mother declared I was a needlepoint super hero and brought the rainbow. Another added I needed a cape and a theme song. All I need is a good pair of scissors and some strong reading glasses to help solve most problems.

Needlepoint is an art and some people like everything to exact and consistent and others are happy with progress. There is no one way it has to be. It just has to make you happy. Learning how to do it the way you like takes a little time and a little help from your friends. Like all things in life it takes a little practice, patience and not being afraid to ask for help. If I was a superhero and could have one special power it would not be to be invisible or be able to fly, but to make sure everyone is having a great time doing what ever he or she are working on, that way nothing ever feels like work.

The Official Rubber Stamp

I’m sure you don’t know this but it is incredibly hard to type while trying to flap my upper arms and walk on the treadmill at the same time. No, this is not a new variation on my regular exercise. I’m way behind on steps today because I just spent the last three hours going to get four vaccinations I need for Africa and the nurse told me to keep moving my arms to help disperse the liquid she shot in me.

Apparently Russ and I both need a very official yellow card showing we are up to date on vaccines and most specifically Yellow Fever to get into Zambia. As the nurse was filling out our cards I asked her if there was some special seal she would have to adhere to the yellow card. She said, “absolutely.” I about fell out of my chair laughing as she pulled out of her desk drawer the regular ‘ole rubber stamp that read “OFFICIAL VACCINATION NORTH CAROLINA.”

Based on my years of world travel to places big and small I can guarantee that the government worker we encounter in Zambia, no matter how long he has been on a boarder enforcement job, will have no idea where North Carolina is. I guess for most of the world a black rubber stamp is as high tech as is required. Not that I think anyone wants to lie about having gotten a yellow fever vaccine. Really the only person you might be hurting is yourself if you come down with the deadly fever.

Between malaria, and typhoid and any other number of insect borne illnesses it is a wonder that I want to travel at all considering how much mosquitoes like me here. Our travel nurse sold me a can a spray to make our clothes bug repellent. I can hardly wait to smell this stuff that I am going to douse all our garments in.

After the medical prevention the nurse gave me the talk about not eating fresh fruits and vegetables unless I can peel them. The thought of going two weeks without a salad is going to be tough. I am so conditioned to only eat fresh fruits and vegetables that it will be interesting to see how I deal with the restrictions to keep me safari able and not tied to a bathroom. You know what I mean.

If I had not already been to South Africa and know it is my favorite place on earth I might think twice about all this painful preparation. I am concerned about the amount of exercise I am going to be able to get, or not get. First there are the many days of flying, which means sitting in my seat and not walking the aisle of the airplane like a crazy woman. Then there are the camps we will be staying at where we are not allowed to walk outside without an armed guard since we will be right in the middle of the park where the big 5 live. I guess I am going to have to download a hotel room exercise program that I can do in our tent. At least my arms will be healed by then from all these shots.

Not Enough Studying Time For Me

As Carter is busy studying for exams I am dreaming of school ending and a life of carefree days.   Then I went and did something that has suddenly added hundreds of things to my plate. I booked a trip to Africa for me and Russ to go on while Carter is at camp. So much for free time, I hardly have enough time to get ready.

I have a new camera that Russ gave me for Christmas and I scarcely understand half of it. Russ even got me a “compact field guide” to learn how to use this powerful machine and I don’t understand almost every third word in the book. Now I need a crash course in my camera and I need to rent a bigger lens and learn to use that. So add to the list of things to do, research lens rental companies as well as figure out which is the right lens for wildlife shooting that is not too heavy for me to carry. Sounds like a first world problem that I should not be whining about.

The next problem is figuring out clothes to take to Africa and finding pants for Russ to take. We only get to take one small roll-a-board suitcase each since we will be flying on tiny bush flights. There is no need for anything fancy, but we do need good hiking shoes and warm clothes since it is winter there. Being winter the bush will be down so we need to wear “blend-in-brown” clothing, not something I own much of. This is no “Out of Africa” –trunks full of flowing gowns type trip.

I am so thankful that I am a smaller size because searching for “safari wear” is difficult at best for me and almost impossible for Russ. Apparently no one over 5’ 10” buys safari type pants because most of the inseams available for men are in the 30”-32” range and he needs 36”. Safaris are not the time you want to wear floods because you are trying to protect yourself from bug bites.

Speaking of bugs we have to go Monday to the travel clinic and get all the yellow fever and malaria type shots and pills. I like to be prepared for all possible illnesses when visiting other worlds, but given my very limited luggage situation I am going to have to be judicious in my anti-getting sick, or pro-getting well medicinal supplies. It’s not like I am going to have a CVS nearby.

I am most thankful for I-pads to “carry” all reading material. Please send me recommendations of your favorite reads so I can load up before I take off. We have 27 hours of flying there and back and there is only so much needlepoint I can do. That reminds me, I need batteries for my headlamp. It looks ridiculous, but makes stitching on dark flights so much easier. Now I wonder were my Africa plug adaptors are? So much to do and so little time.

Vegetable Mountain

There are people in my house who would turn their noses up at certain vegetables and gobble down bowls full of others. Sometimes I can get them to try something they swear they hate if I hide it with other things. Only then does a vegetable hater discover they don’t dislike something as much as they thought.

Vegetable Mountain is the perfect way to use up small bits of vegetables and get some eaten by all. The best base of the mountain is potatoes since it is universally the favorite and if it is at the bottom they have take some real veggies in order to get to the starchy base.

This mountain started with thinly sliced new potatoes cooked in a fry pan with a bit of water until soft and then allowed to crisp up a bit as the water cooks away. The next layer is oven roasted cauliflower, followed by pan sautéed zucchini, blanched sugar snap peas, green peas and topped with a bit of oyster mushrooms.

The secret is to salt and pepper each vegetables well when cooking them individually and then assemble it all at once. Vegetable Mountain can be eaten hot or at room temperature. Any veggies can be used and the more color the better. I wish I had some roasted red pepper to add to this one.

Note:  Despite the best laid plans Carter still picked out the cauliflower and mushrooms.

Do 100 Laughs and 50 Smiles and Call Me in the Morning

A friend stopped me today and asked if I had work done because the skin on face was not so saggy. She quickly corrected herself by saying, “Of course you didn’t because if you had it would have been on the blog.” You got that right, sister. If I had under gone any kind of improvement treatment it would be fodder for this space. I don’t have enough time in the day to get a facelift and come up with something else to write about.

I have to thank this friend for thinking that I might have had work, but she is right, my face is not very saggy considering how much fat has been melted out of it. To make her feel better I said that the sag in my upper arms and my thighs is dramatic. I am wondering what I am doing to my face that I need to do to the rest of me? I don’t use any special and outrageously expensive creams. I can’t even try them since I am highly allergic to most potions.

I guess that smiling has been the exercise that has tightened up my skin– smiling and laughing. It might cause some small lines around the eyes and maybe those parenthesis lines around the mouth, but laughing loud and often has been my constant in life. It is the only thing I can think of that has made my face seem perky. If I were frowning and dour I bet the skin on my face would look saggy. Perhaps I have just created an illusion of tight skin because I was smiling at my friend.

So laughing is the answer for the face, but all that laughing makes the really saggy parts of me giggle and draws attention to how loose I really am. That giggle is only attractive on a jolly ‘ole elf with a bowl full of jelly for a stomach. For me I am going to just have to keep the giggly bits covered or compressed or disguised. I guess I won’t have to revert to wearing a burqa as long as I keep laughing and smiling.

If I appear to be some simpleton know I am just doing my face exercises.

Memorial Day

As a child growing up in the 60’s I thought the news was the report of how many people died that day. The reason I thought this was Walter Cronkite always started the news by saying, “Nine died today in Vietnam,” or 12 or 34. It wasn’t until I got a little older did I comprehend what Vietnam was and that the news was not a report of everyone who died in the world.

I eventually came to hate the war, not just for the dying, but also for the tedium and the arguing that seemed to go on about it. Being a Beatles fan I adopted the “All we need is love,” mantra. I had a poster in my room that was a rusted scarecrow like figure made out of an army rifle, helmet and one of those bullet belts set up in a field of tall grown flowers. The caption under the figure read, “What if they gave a war and nobody came?”

It seemed like a logical question to me as a child in single digits. What was all the fighting about? The adults around me could not really explain it in a way that justified the numbers of dead that opened the news every night.

Today is Memorial Day; the time to honor those who lost their lives in all our wars, not just the popular ones, if you can ever say any war is popular. So thanks to those who made the ultimate sacrifice, but lets try and remember those people everyday before we get into some conflict that causes us to send young people into battle.

Let’s not get into a conflict that goes on for so many years that we can’t remember why we started fighting in the first place. As John Lennon put it, “Give peace a chance.” Let’s not add to the numbers of young men and women we need to remember on this day in the future.

Necessary Creativity

Today Carter had to study for her impending exams so for her sanity as well as mine Russ and I left her home alone while we took Shay Shay to the farm for some off leash running and some family visits. It was the perfect day for the farm with low humidity and temperate warmth. Even though it was an ideal walking day I did not get all my steps in at the farm because there were so many stories to listen to.

My father had a lot of opinions about my blog and most recently the Graduation Advice about daydreaming. He recounted a story about a speech a boss of his at Avon, Jim Clitter, gave when my Dad was a young executive. Clitter told the audience that creativity came out of necessity.

My dad took his advice to heart. So when he created a new fragrance line called “Charisma” my Dad sent, and back in the old non-internet days that meant messengering, all the Vice President’s wives a mock-up of the kind of racy campaign materials for “Charisma” that were clearly targeted at women, along with a sample of the product. He asked the women to look over the campaign and if they liked it to tell their husbands to vote for it at their upcoming meeting.

What my father knew was that women were his target audience and if his fate was left up to a room full of men he might not get their approval. He came up with the creative way to show the all-male group that he knew what women wanted in a fragrance. Thank goodness he was right and the wives told their husbands to vote “yes.” When my Dad went to the meeting to present the campaign he got a standing ovation thanks to his “wives campaign.”

Today, my Dad told me all his creative ideas happened between five and eight in the morning. All my life he has been a morning person. He used to get up at 4:30 to catch the earliest possible train into New York City to get to work first. I now understand it was a necessity because if his best thinking was going to end by eight am that did not leave much time.

I’m sure that “wives campaign” was a risky thing for my Dad to do. He was still a young guy in a new company, but I’m sure that the success gave him courage to continue to try other brilliant but risky moves. One famous one was when my Dad was working at Sprint and they had just finished building the first all digital long distance network. To help drive the point home that Sprint was way ahead of the rest of the phone world my father made a commercial of blowing up an old telephone tower without getting permission from the network guys. The ad was exciting and made lots of news, which in turn got lots of customers.

My Dad was called on the carpet and told that the network guys were mad because they could have sold the antiquated equipment to a third world nation for $25,000. The network guys had no idea how much more valuable that tower was as a symbol of “out with the old and in with the new.” They did not have the same necessity for gaining new customers that my father did, and creativity was never the strong suit of guys in “network.”

Consider these two stories a counterpoint to the daydreaming advice I wrote about last week. I know my father may say his creativity came out of necessity, but I think that being creative is just a lot more fun and he was always one who liked to have fun. My charge is for you to consider a problem you might want to tackle at five in the morning and see what crazy solution you can come up with to solve it. You might not know that you are really an early morning person because you never had to get up and catch a train that early.

Graduation Advice

Carter asked me if I would take her to the Durham Academy graduation today. I was happy to do it so I could get the lay of the land for when her graduation will happen in just a few short years.   I also really like graduation speeches since I feel like there is a lot of pressure to tell graduates something important and profound on this momentous occasion. I say this and I can’t actually remember anything I was told at any of my graduations, but I’m sure lack of sleep has everything to do with that and perhaps other celebratory reasons.

The Reverend Willimon from Duke Divinity gave the commencement address and he encouraged the graduates who have just finished 13 years being focused on learning at DA to daydream. He sighted great thinkers and inventors who had ADD and made stupendous creative achievements because they were not always focused.

I agree with him whole-heartedly. If ever I have had a creative idea it came about during a period of rest, relaxation or when I was actually sleeping. Rarely have I come up with anything close to brilliant when I was trying to. How can I encourage this in my child yet still keep her on task in school? This is the true balancing act.

The two valedictorians also spoke and I assume they did not know what Dr. Willimon was going to say, but their advice followed along the same lines. The first young man who clearly is so much smarter than I am had lots of important things to say, some of which were way over my head. One thing I did get from him was that it may seem like all the good ideas are taken, but there is more to be done. He charged his classmates with this, “Even if you can’t come up with the next good idea you can support one.”

The second valedictorian summed up his speech with these three points, “Take risks, foster face-to-face connections and giveback and say thanks.” All good advice. It is so much easier for me to recognize sage counsel this far from my own graduation. I hope that some of these smart words soaked into the young people in the audience and on the stage.

It is easy to get caught up in the minutia of day to day that we miss the big picture and that picture is so much smaller in the rear view mirror. But it is never too late to live your life bigger than you are living it now. So consider this your graduation day and go forth and day dream, support good ideas, giveback and say thanks and your life will have been worthy.