Picture Perfect

With our plumbing problem finally resolved last night I was able to get the house in order before going to bed. We arose around 3am to webcam with our children and grandchildren as they opened their gifts in London. It was as wonderful as it could be, short of being there in person, to be able to watch and hear the excitement of our little granddaughter as she squealed with delight over her gifts, to see our grandson sitting like a little angel in his bouncy seat, to know that my daughters were enjoying each other's company, and to see our son-in-law stealing kisses from his wife. It occurred to me that a bit of our traditions were still alive, but with a twist. Our oldest daughter giving us the wakeup call, just as she did when she was young, anxious to begin the celebration. Sipping coffee and Baileys as candlelight flickered bright then dim around us, bathing us in memories of Christmases past. The Christmas stockings now hanging not only on our mantel but on theirs as well, filled with tiny treasures and treats. The silly red and white Christmas hat perched atop my husband's head for no other reason except to make his granddaughter smile. For about ninety minutes we were able to transport ourselves into their living room, gather around their tree, and join in the wonder of the morning. Then we said our goodbyes and Merry Christmases, extinguished the candles, and went back to bed.

When I arose again around 7:30am I went quietly down the hall, leaving my husband to sleep in as late as he wanted. There seemed to be no reason to wake him since the best of the day was done. We had our own gifts to open but there was not much excitement attached to that prospect since we really already knew what we had gotten for each other, or rather what we had gotten for ourselves from the other. There was only one big box for me and a smaller box for him that was actually a surprise. I contemplated lighting the candles again and decided against it. I popped open a soda, put on some Christmas music and settled into the rocking chair with the book I have been reading. Somehow the rest of the day didn't seem as if it would be much different than any other weekend day. Eventually my husband got up and joined me in the living room. I started the coffeepot for the second time and plopped down on the sofa, half-heartedly asking if we should go ahead and do the gifts. So I passed out the gifts and we laughed as we pretended to be surprised, oohing and ahhing in fake admiration. Finally I handed his one true surprise gift to him and waited my turn. I envisioned a set of cookware inside my box or perhaps some glassware. I could not have been more wrong. My husband, who at times is so involved in his computer and video games, football and tv that I sometimes feel invisible, gave to me a gift most precious. Inside that box was a very nice digital camera, with assorted wide-angle and zoom lenses, tripods, carrying case, spare batteries, eveything I need to get started with the photography I have been dreaming of for quite some time. Above all, inside that box was the knowledge that he really had been listening and was giving me a gift of the heart. I was moved to tears. Maybe now he will get his recliner.

Plumb Pudding

It's Christmas Eve day and I have the next two days off work. I should be in the kitchen cleaning and baking but fate has struck another nasty blow. Our kitchen sink is clogged, evidently with something akin to concrete. My husband, the handyman that he is, has attempted to unclog the drain, to no avail. What he did accomplish is to etch interesting patterns on the dirty silverware that was lying nearby on the counter as he plunged through the sulfuric acid-laced water. So what will be on my Christmas list for next year? No, not a new husband, takes too much time to train a new one, but perhaps a new set of silverware will be in order. I hauled all the dirty dishes to the bathroom and washed them in a very large mixing bowl set into the bathtub. The drainboard, piled high with dishes, is perched precariously across the stainless steel tub caddy. I just hope no tiny food particles made their way into the jets of the tub or we may be bathing in a stew the next time we use the whirlpool. I am adjusting our traditional Christmas dinner menu to allow for the absence of a usable sink. I suppose we will be dining with disposable plasticware and paper plates. And maybe we will just drink the wine straight out of the bottles! Even better, I may just use Christmas gift wrap as a table cover then when we finish our meal I can just lift the whole mess into a bundle and pitch it in the garbage. Voila! And done! Now that's the Christmas spirit! Hope yours is a happy one. Cheers!

Opposite Attraction

Friends come into our lives in such random, unexpected ways. For me, at the age of five, I never thought I would become best friends with the neighbor who lived across the street. When we first met I knew we could not possibly have anything in common. She wore a crisp pinafore over her pale blue dress and white ruffled anklets with her shiny black patent leather shoes, a bow in her hair, brushed back into a long, bouncy pony tail. I, on the other hand, in the backyard playing in the sandbox, wore nothing but shorts and T-shirt, bare feet covered with mud, freckled face smudged with dirt, hair cut short to keep it out of my face. As this neighbor's older sister introduced her to me I was already dismissing her in my young mind, thinking to myself that this prissy girl could not know how to have real fun, not seeming to be the type to get her hands dirty, to climb skyward into trees, to swing a bat, or catch fireflies. She was the youngest of three girls in her family, I was the fifth of six children, and just a year and two years younger than my two brothers. I was a tomboy by default. I remember thinking that I would like to push her down to see if she would cry. The meeting was brief and I went back to my play. The next time we met she came dressed to play, still a bit prissy, but not so intimidatingly girly. To my surprise we actually had fun together. Our friendship grew over time and we became inseperable, playing every day after school and on weekends. At my house, brimming with kids, there was excitement and chaos, rough and tumble play, messiness and noise. At her house there was privacy and a quiet atmosphere that I came to love as we played with dolls and games, a doting second mother who always seemed to have fresh cookies in the oven, and best of all, no brothers teasing and taunting. We each brought to our friendship what the other lacked. With our brown hair, blue eyes, and left-handedness, we sometimes dressed alike and thought it was funny when people mistook us for twins. She had a tandem bicycle that we rode together all over town, although she would always lift her feet from the pedals when a dog would come chasing and barking, leaving me to pedal furiously to get away without falling over. I had home-built go-carts and motorized bicycles to challenge her bravery as we flew around the oval track that my brothers and their friends had created in a field. During the summertime we spent our days together taking horseback riding lessons, gymnastics, and other activities through the Girls Club. We pretended to be spies while sneaking into neighbors' garages and yards, snooping on the mean old man around the corner, sure that he had something to hide. With a lunch bag in hand, we would crawl into the fire escape tube at the Junior High, climb to the top and eat our lunch, then go sailing down the tube on waxed paper, flying out the bottom like spitballs through a straw. At the theater she would sneak to the balcony if I went to the lobby for candy, then chuckle as she watched me trying to find her in the darkness. We made each other laugh hysterically to the point that we could not make eye contact without erupting into fits of giggles. My brother taught us to drive in his Volkswagon, on country roads on Sunday mornings when we were supposed to be at church. We spent countless hours at the local parks, swimming and watching baseball games. Boys and parties eventually replaced spy games and adventure but we remained close, sharing secrets, hopes, and dreams. Then came husbands and children and our lives took us in different directions. We still got together frequently, with children in tow, and our friendship remained strong. Throughout the years we have shared our lives with each other - the heartaches and grief, the love and the joys, the challenges of raising families, the successes, the disappointments. We have gone through busy periods of our lives when we didn't see each other often but then we were able to slip easily back into that comfortable closeness without missing a beat. She is and always will be my best friend.

Out Go the Lights

I knew there was a short in one of those strands of lights. Right in the middle of the tree. I just hope the rest of them stay lit, at least until the 25th. Hope your Christmas is merry and bright!

The Blame Game

When I hear all the debates going on about the bailout of the automotive industry I can't help but wonder if we are sometimes missing a piece of the puzzle as to why our American manufacturers are struggling. We may be able to point our fingers at the executives making huge salaries and even bigger bonuses for letting a company be run into the ground. We may also point to the unions that have tied the hands of American industry, giving our foreign competitors an unfair advantage. The same goes for the EPA for mandating costly environmental restraints that also give our foreign competitors the edge. We may be able to point to the general managers, plant managers, supervisors, and foremen for their failure to operate their facilities efficiently and effectively. But let me state that each and every worker on those lines should look within themselves and ask if they contributed to the mess that their companies are in. What did they do to help or hinder the productivity and profitability of the company that is paying their wages and benefits? Do they come to work each day and give a respectable day's work for the pay they receive? Do they look at the big picture and realize that a company's success begins with them, that they are the front line and if they fail to do their jobs it creates a domino effect that will eventually bring the company to its knees?

In the late seventies my husband and I worked for a manufacturer, on their production line, and saw firsthand what the working class can do to a company. There were over 800 employees working three shifts seven days a week producing mostly plastic soda bottles. I would venture to guess that at least half of these employees spent a good portion of their day conspiring to avoid working. They assumed the jobs would always be there and it didn't matter. They would only work at the slowest pace necessary to meet minimum production goals. In their minds, if they were able to produce more and did so regularly, that would become the new standard and then they couldn't slack off when they wanted to. I saw people come to work high on drugs or under the influence of alcohol. These were the people who operated machinery capable of killing their coworkers. Others thought it was perfectly acceptable to steal from the company that put food on their tables and clothes on their backs. Tools, supplies, plastic resin, anything they thought they could use outside the plant would somehow slip away, past the security gate and into their cars. Didn't matter, the "company" had deep pockets, right? I saw them trash the break rooms that were provided for them, it was someone else's problem to clean it up. I saw them cheat on the maintenance reports, documenting work that was never done on the machinery. So what if the equipment failed and the lines were shut down. They thought it was great to get an extra break, it didn't matter if the company missed a production deadline. Why should they worry about it? Why? Let me tell you why. That company I worked for was losing money and losing contracts for failure to deliver on time. They had to lay off most of their employees and cut benefits to those who remained. The union couldn't really save those people then because it was either take that or shut the doors permanently. With a 9% unemployment rate in the small town there were no other jobs to go to. Who was crying then? The company is still in business today, but with a workforce of only about 100 people.

I see this same attitude everywhere I go. Employees on their cell phones, on company computers for personal use, stealing what is not theirs to take, bitching and moaning that they are overworked and underpaid and they just aren't going to exert themselves any more than necessary. This self-serving attitude is putting our economy in the toilet. So don't just point the finger of blame at someone else, look in the mirror and see if the blame also lies within.

Silver Spoon

Today was one of those days when I wished I could just crawl back into bed and sleep away the day, hoping for a better tomorrow. From the moment I walked in the door at work until I walked back out it was hell. Crappy patients, crappy policies, crappy attitudes. I have such a low tolerance level for stupidity these days. Just once I want to be able to look a patient in the eye and tell him/her exactly what I think. The same goes for my employees, who seem to think that they can come to work and spend the day on the computer or their cell phones with no consequence. Don't even get me started about the service excellence team who thinks that we should be able to smile our way through the day while doing the juggling act of getting everything done in a timely manner. God forbid if someone complains that they weren't treated like a princess or they had to wait , gasp, forty-five minutes to see a doctor. "OMG! I know Mr. Bigwig so-and-so and you must kiss my f...ing ass or I will go whining like a bratty teenager and then you will be sorry and I don't care that that patient you took ahead of me was having a heart attack. I am more important. See my silver spoon stuck up my ass?" As I forced myself to be pleasant I was fighting the urge to just get up and walk out and not look back. I worked in the ghetto for seventeen years and I dealt with so much crap in that job but in retrospect I have found that I would much rather be working down there in the trenches. Where the patients at least appreciated the fact that the doctors and staff were willing to provide care to them no matter how long they had to wait to be seen, in a neighborhood where the druggies and alcoholics, the criminals and the insane were wandering the streets. I am not and have never been a kiss-ass kind of person. That is not to say that I don't understand the importance of good customer service. It's just that sometimes the customer is not always right. I now work in an affluent area of the city and it is far worse than the ghetto. By stroking egos and bribing our way out of customer dissatisfaction with freebies and gift cards, false apologies and compliments, we have created an environment where we are sure to fail in our efforts to please everyone. What these people really need is to be told to shut up, sit down, wait their turn like everyone else, and to quit acting like spoiled brats. Money sure doesn't buy them manners. At least when I left the office this evening I was able to reconcile some of the bad behavior of these patients today because hanging low in the dark night sky was a giant yellow full moon. The crazies were out in full force! They were just better dressed than the crazies in the ghetto.

To Tree or Not to Tree

This is the time of year that drives my husband absolutely looney with my indecision. The season tends to render me helpless to my emotions. I often wish I could skip the whole thing and pretend it just doesn't matter. But of course it does so I am better at flip-flops than a politician. I am not going to put up the tree this year, oh, but maybe I will just put up a tabletop tree. No, no tree at all. I can't deal with the hassle of dragging out all the boxes and putting on those irritatingly difficult lights. Oh, but I love the glow of the lights in the quiet hours of the night when everyone else is sleeping. No, I can't do it. It's settled. I am going shopping instead. Wait, you say there was a weather alert about the slick roads? Maybe I better just stay home. If I am home I may as well drag out the tree. No, maybe I'll have some cheesecake and think about it for a while. Ahh, that helped. Okay now what do I do? I have some of the other decorations out and that should suffice, shouldn't it? But what if I wait until Christmas and then decide I should've put up the tree after all? Oh shit, I may as well see if the lights are working. Now which box are the lights in? Oh crap, I forgot, I got lazy last year and just threw all the lights in a tangled mess into a gym bag. It's okay, I am a rational adult. It won't kill me to stand here and untangle these without throwing a fit. Careful not to tear the bulbs out of the sockets there Sparky! Whew, I need to rest after all that. Maybe a drink will help. Honey, where is the rum for the eggnog? No more rum? Whiskey it is then. Okay, I'm ready now. Plug this strand in to make sure it works. Wow, it works, kinda. Maybe twenty bulbs in the strand need to be replaced. I'll bet the bulbs from the thick outdoor strands will fit. Here goes. Yeah, they almost fit perfectly. Okay, I have twelve strands of lights plugged in and they all work. But didn't one of those strands have a short? Seems like I lost light to half the tree last year. Leave them plugged in to warm up before I use any of them. I have to shape the tree branches anyway. Look, the instructions in the box show how to attach the lights so it will be pre-lit for next year. Let me sit down and read this. Honey, will you fix me another drink? Okay, now for these lights. It says to zigzag and wrap, then pull straight back...what the hell? How am I supposed to do that with this big wad of lights? Oh, forget it. I will get a prelit tree next year. Let me just get these damn lights wrapped around the tree so I can get this done before midnight. I hate Christmas! Why didn't I just go shopping? Shut up, you don't have a right to comment because you are not helping me. If you think it is so funny you get up and do it. That's what I thought. You better find some Christmas music to get me in a better mood, quickly. Okay, I'll settle for that Carol King concert on PBS. Thanks. That's better, it's moving along now. I'm almost finished with the lights. Now where are the hangers for the ornaments? You can't find them? I know I bought some last year? Are you sure you looked in all the boxes? Okay, go get me some paper clips. I am going to get this done tonight! Can you turn off those lamps so I can see how this looks. Is it evenly lit? Are the ornaments spaced out right? Do you see any bare spots? No, I am not obsessed. Just shut up and have a Merry Christmas.

Donation Location

Before you do your online holiday shopping consider this: if you go to Goodshop.com you can shop online and the site will make a donation (sometimes as much as 30% of your purchases) to the charity of your choice. It doesn't cost you anything more. It is a painless way to do something good. The donations come out of the profits generated by the site from the advertisers.

Now they have expanded the concept to include a penny every time you use their search engine, Goodsearch.com. You choose the charity. I think everyone should get on board. It's a win-win and so easy.

In the same vein, I wanted to mention the secret charity exchange idea that I came up with last year. When your family gathers for the holidays this year, why not draw names for a gift exchange? Here is how it works: each person entering the exchange writes down his/her name, his/her choice of a charitable organization, and a weblink or phone number for that charity. Then everyone draws a name. Over the next year you will do something for the charity of the person whose name you drew. It can be as simple as a monetary donation or participating in an event. You can do as much as your time/wallet allows. You can be creative in your fundraising efforts, especially if the charity chosen is not in the area you live. When your family gathers for the holidays next year you will each reveal whose name you drew, what the charity was and what you did to help. You can also tell what you learned about the charity and the work they do. You might want to develop a few key questions for everyone to ask of the charities they are working for, such as what is the main focus of the charity, what percent of the donations go directly to services or research, etc. The result of this exchange is that you have a year to do something to honor the person whose name you chose, you learn something about the charity you worked for, and perhaps you will gain some insight into what is important to the person you chose, all while keeping the true spirit of the season.

Happy Holidays!