Tag! You're It!

Tag, you're it! Okay, the point of being tagged is to get you to post in your blog. So copy these questions to your blog, then answer them. Happy blogging!

Four Jobs I've had in my life:
1. Go-cart track ticket salesperson.
2. Mystery shopper at a department store.
3. Horse sitter.
4. Cocktail waitress at a luau.

Four movies I would watch over and over:
1. The Godfather.
2. Phantom of the Opera.
3. Ghost.
4. Gone With The Wind.

Four places I have lived:
1. Atlanta, GA
2. Alpharetta, GA
3. Sarasota, FL
4. Anna Maria Island, FL

Four TV shows I love to watch:
1. Lost
2. American Idol
3. The Apprentice
4. The Sopranos

Four places I've been on vacation:
1. San Francisco, CA
2. Ireland.
3. Jamaica.
4. US Virgin Islands

Four websites I visit daily:
1. Yahoo! 360
2. Blogger.
3. MTDaily
4. Weather.com

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Chips and salsa.
2. Ravioli.
3. Spicy garlic shrimp.
4. Anything from Mama Fu's!

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Sleeping in a hammock in a rain forest.
2. On a yacht in the Carribean.
3. Any beach anywhere.
4. Ireland.

parallels

parallels. as i sit and think and feel and judge i realize that all of the things i see that need correcting also apply to myself. reverse projection. mirror reflection. misplaced truth. this could get long.

i invited my little sister to go shopping with me so i could buy something for her new baby girl. she agreed to come. i expected her to come. she didn't come. i thought first of all, 'how rude,' then, 'she missed out,' then 'some people make it really hard to do something nice for them.' somewhere in my daily musings and beings God spoke to me. something along the lines of 'now you see how it feels,' or 'yes, i know, i get that all the time.' how many gestures of offering does God have to make before we take time out of our busy day to accept them? how many, many times have we missed out on a blessing much better than a shopping trip because we went our own way, either purposefully or by allowing ourselves to be distracted? God has great things for us; we just have to be available.

another parallel: i get exasperated with one of my daughters because she is at that exasperating age. her modus operandi is 'question all authority.' she has a fundamental need for reason and has difficulty accepting things just on faith in authority or tradition, whether it be her parents, school, society, etc. my stance as a parent is you obey, then you may question. i expect to be given that respect simply because of my role as mother. uh oh. how does that correlate with my own relationship with God? do we have absolute faith in Him? do we obey Him because he is God or are we weak in faith and pick and choose the commandments we will follow? are we as guilty of selective hearing as our children? i'm beginning to suspect that being a true child of God entails more of an all or nothing approach. we need to believe in His authority, believe in His love for us and believe that what He wants is truly best for us, even if we as willful children want to go our own way.

parallel 3: a friend asked me for prayers. there is a need in her household for peace, love and understanding. i have been praying quite a bit for their situation. today as i sat on my front porch i was gently reminded that i needed to pray for them. as i prayed for God to cover their home in peace, love and understanding i realized that this is a universal prayer that would benefit all of us. we all need peace, love and understanding.

New Survivor Challenge

Six married men will be dropped on an island with one car and 3 kids each
for six weeks.

Each kid will play two sports and either take music or dance classes.
There is no fast food.

Each man must take care of his 3 kids, keep his assigned house clean,
correct all homework, complete science projects, cook, do laundry and pay a
list of bills with not enough money.

In addition, each man will have to budget in money for groceries each week.

Each man must remember the birthdays of all their friends and relatives and
send cards out on time.

Each man must also take each child to a doctor's appointment, a dentist
appointment and a haircut appointment. He must make one unscheduled and
inconvenient visit per child to the Urgent Care (weekend, evening, on a holiday
or right when they're about to leave for vacation).

He must also make cookies or cupcakes for a social function.

Each man will be responsible for decorating his own assigned house, planting
flowers outside and keeping it presentable at all times.

The men will only have access to television when the kids are asleep and all
chores are done. There is only one TV between them, and a remote with dead batteries.

Each father will be required to know all of the words to every stupid song
that comes on TV and the name of each and every character on cartoons.

The men must shave their legs, wear makeup daily, which they will apply to
themselves either while driving or making three lunches.

Each man will have to make an Indian hut model with six toothpicks, a
tortilla and one marker and get a 4-year-old to eat a serving of peas.

Each man must adorn himself with jewelry, wear uncomfortable yet stylish
shoes, keep his nails polished and eyebrows groomed. The men must try to get
through each day without snot, spit-up or barf on their clothing.

During one of the six weeks, the men will have to endure severe abdominal
cramps and backaches and have extreme, unexplained mood swings but never once
complain or slow down from other duties. They must try to explain what a tampon
is for when the 6-yr old boy finds it in the purse.

They must attend weekly school meetings and church and find time at least
once to spend the afternoon at the park or a similar setting.

He will need to read a book and then pray with the children each night
without falling asleep and then feed them, dress them, brush their teeth and
comb their hair each morning by 7:00. They must leave the home with no food on
their face or clothes.

A test will be given at the end of the six weeks, and each father will be
required to know all of the following information: each child's birthday,
height, weight, shoe size, clothes size and doctor's name. Also the child's weight at birth, length, time of birth, and length of labor, each child's favorite color, middle name, favorite snack, favorite song, favorite drink, favorite toy, biggest fear and what they want to be when they grow up.

They must clean up after their sick children at 2:00 a.m. and then spend the
remainder of the day tending to that child and waiting on them hand and foot
until they are better.

They must have a loving, age-appropriate reply to, "You're not the boss of
me."

The kids vote them off the island based on performance.

The last man wins only if...he still has enough energy to be intimate with
his spouse at a moment's notice.

If the last man does win, he can play the game over and over and over again
for the next 18-25 years...eventually earning the right to be called Mother!

Musical Inspiration

At the beginning of the evening I wondered, "What was I thinking?" How did I think that Mike and I taking FIVE girls to a symphonic band concert would be fun? Then I remembered that fun never really entered the equation in the decision to go. We received a notice about the concert and since Laura plays percussion we thought she'd enjoy it. Then we decided to invite her best friend Kirsti since she plays percussion also. So of course we had to allow Alison to invite a friend and ended up with two more, Abbey and Maggie. So I patted us on the back for being such cool parents to let our kids invite their friends and expose all of them to a little culture. They are all good girls and Mike only had to use his "teacher voice" a few times. I reminded them of what behavior was expected of them once we got there, and they all agreed. Then we crashed a wedding...

The concert was at Riverside Military Academy in a part of Gainesville I am unfamiliar with. We drove down a street of beautiful stately homes, and when we came to a large building with cars filling the parking lot and the sides of the street we thought we had found it. We parked and went into a beautiful spacious, light-filled lobby and followed the other "concert goers" down the hall. As we approached what I thought was the auditorium I noticed the other patrons were well dressed, extremely well dressed, as in beautiful shimmery ball gowns, designer suits and tuxedos. We were dressed more in keeping with a high school band concert - me in khakis and a sweater, Mike in jeans and a polo, Laura and Kirsti dressed in boys clothes (another topic for another time), Alison and Abbey in denim capris and Maggie in her shorts paired with Ugg boots. "Oh no," I thought, "Why didn't we know it was more formal?" As we stood in line I noticed a table that looked suspiciously like a wedding gift table, beautifully decorated with pastel tulle, and a table alongside with a guest book. Wait a minute! This is not the concert...this is a wedding reception! No wonder people are talking behind their cocktail glasses and glancing sideways at us. Are they wondering if we are the black sheep of the groom's family or if maybe the bride forgot to tell about her hillbilly cousins? We laugh and say, "Oops, wrong party!" and head back out. Too bad we didn't get to sample the buffet first.

On down the road to the real Riverside Military Academy. It is an impressive campus, sparkling clean and regal, all red brick with striking architecture. Clean-cut, uniformed cadets greet us at each doorway as we buy our tickets and find a row of seats that will accomodate all seven of us. Mike and I decide to flank the ends; zone defense is our only option when we are outnumbered. Overall it went well. I only had to tell four of the five girls to get their feet off the seats. I only had to shush them half a dozen times. I used the "pssst...pass it on" method when the offender was four seats away from me. They quickly learned that the eyes in the back of my head also worked laterally. The music was wonderful. There were several guest conductors, a clarinet soloist and a rousing, pounding percussion section that really did sound as if the walls were tumbling down in their rendition of "Jericho." Towards the intermission I noticed that the two youngest girls were getting fidgety but they controlled it well...perhaps because they were the two sitting closest to me. We let them off the hook and decided at intermission to quit while we were ahead and leave. It was late and I was tired from my constant vigil, plus we could beat the traffic out. As they ran, whooped and hollered their way to the parking lot we knew we had made the right decision. We dropped our guests off feeling satisfied that they all had a good time and that for at least two of them it was their first concert. Yeah, we are cool parents. I hope when our kids look back on their childhood they'll remember times like these.

Me, myself and I

Laura and I were just chatting the other day when she told me that she finds herself talking to herself sometimes. I told her a lot of people do that and that lately I have been surprised to find that when I have my "internal dialogue" I refer to myself in the plural sense, using "we" instead of "I." She thought I was kidding, but we weren't.

The Grass IS Greener on This Side

I received a mental blast from the past the other day. While cleaning out the basement I found a complex grid from GE Capital, where Mike and I worked for over 10 years each, explaining how to compartmentalize your employees into one of two categories: "The Team Player" and "The Individual Contributor." It brought back memories of how different the corporate culture is from what we do now, how we were concerned with totally different things and how much emphasis was put on pleasing the Management, performing according to standards such as answering the most customer service calls, having the shortest resolution time of customer complaints or locating the most missing payments. All well and good if you are the customer and a company is trying to be successful, but working in a call center is a highly stressful job. You have pressure from above to reach certain imposed goals and even have an display on the wall showing how many calls are holding, how long they have been holding and what percentage are hanging up. That light is like the cheese at the end of a mouse's maze as you go this way and that way with your verbal and technical skills trying to get the light to say "0," zero calls holding so you can breathe and if you're lucky, maybe even take a potty break. At the same time you have pressure from the customer whose problem you are trying to solve. No one ever calls their credit card carrier's toll-free number and says, "I just wanted to let you know how happy I am with this card. You guys are doing a great job!" Never happens. When a customer calls they are at best confused and at worst irate or irrational, or both. And those calls come through in rapid-fire succession. GE went so far as to install a phone program where you could not even control the spacing between the calls. When one caller hung up, another was immediately on the line. It is such an artificial and contrived environment, and I am so very, very thankful that I don't have to work in such a place anymore.