Mayor Marsha, Banquet After-Bask, and The Rubinator 2.0

"Ignorance is bliss."
Last year, before the pitiful pinewood performance.

Yesterday while running, I thought: “Maybe, if I can train myself to be more numerically minded, I could become mayor. I’ll shoot for age 50!” (These are the kinds of crazy thoughts I think when I run. These and lots of other, more productive, practical thoughts.) I came home and reported my fantasy to Tom, who said: “Many mayors don’t think numerically.” A likely assessment from the human calculator.

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Five days ago was the biggest night of my work year, our annual fundraising banquet. Besides the unanticipated tedium of centerpiece placement (my fault—in my “creativity,” I had incorporated about 12 elements into each centerpiece) and a technological crisis the night before (again, my fault—overconfidence in my PowerPoint creation skills—hallelujah for the rescue efforts of a faithful friend the morning of), it went very, very well. So well, in fact, that we exceeded our goal of $46,000. This relieves and inspires me greatly. (Spoken in true British reserve. I’m a Bolton, after all.)

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Now that the banquet’s over, we’re on to the Pinewood Derby! This Saturday, my son’s car must achieve one goal: Outpace last year’s abysmal performance. After Reuben’s well-painted but poorly designed car placed dead last in every run for which it was eligible (which turned out to be not many), he recruited Mom to help him improve his chances. I ordered a “Pinewood Secrets” book right away (the market is flush with this stuff) and started studying up about 2 weeks ago. My good friend Jack generously donated his earnest wood-working efforts (read: mediocre, but better than mine!), and I’ve made several shopping trips to gather the necessary supplies. Reuben has helped design, sand and paint his Pokemon-themed car. And today, we test it!

I would post a photo of The Rubinator 2.0, but I don’t want to give anything away before race day. Check back on Saturday.

Rockette Apparition

Filling out a picture order form just now, I started to write the home address of my parents, the place where I grew up but where I haven’t resided for a decade and a half.

http://www.paranormalplus.com/new_page_9.htm

This mistake might have something to do with the fact that, earlier this evening, I saw myself on stage as a girl nearly two-and-a-half decades younger — in the form of my eldest daughter, Vivian. In her first scene, as a “Rockette” in the A-Town Middle School production of Annie, Viv resembled my younger self so much that I gasped when she appeared, like an apparition from my adolescence.

In another time-travel moment*, Viv’s best friend Shannon appeared on stage wearing the very same tan calico romper dress that I had worn as an orphan in the same show, on the same stage, in 1989.

I know, I know — “it’s not about me.” But sometimes there are these moments, while raising kids in one’s hometown, that time seems warped, and experiences seem timeless, and it’s hard to remember which decade we’re in.

*that’s for you, Leena ;)

Honking in the graveyard

In the spirit of Leap Day, rare-ish day that it is, I departed from my usual village routes and went for my run (okay — walk/jog/slog) at Mount Albion. 

While I was there, I saw someone stop her car at a gravesite and honk. Yep, honked — right there in the silent cemetery, like 5 or 6 times. I realized I was witnessing something seemingly unusual, but it made perfect sense to me. It’s a small community and I’ve lived here a long time. Even from about a football field away (yeah, we measure in football lengths here in A-Town), I thought I recognized the honker, and if I’m right, the grave was her child’s. What warrants extreme acknowledgement more than that?!

So on Leap Day, she stopped at the cemetery on her way to work and honked. As if to say: “Hey! You lived because I lived! I’m still alive! Where are you?! Time for school! C’mon! Gonna be late! Honk, honk, honk, honk, honk! (sigh…shudder) Guess I’ll have to let you sleep today. Again.” (Did she hope that this extraordinary day would bring a different answer?)

Oh, gut-wrenching grief! You are why I run. Because I don’t know how else to bear witness to such pain, and live.

…love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. – Song of Solomon 8:6b

'Time for a Liddell something...'

There seems to be a direct correlation: When I run, I write. Something about putting one foot in front of the other in the open air gets my mind moving, as well as my muscles.

“Waddle on, friends!” I heard John Bingham say this morning. (I really was waddling.)

“…throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles…” the ancient words I learned as an adolescent often come to me when I run (“…with perseverance the race marked out for us…”)

The to-do list intimidates me less. Anxieties fade away with each steady puff of breath … in-n-n-n, out-t-t-t, in-n-n-n, out-t-t-t …

I remember something cute my sweet son said a few weeks ago. I keep meaning to write it down, and now I finally am:

Tom took the kids to the circus – the older three. Reuben, age 7 ½, observed his 6-year-old sister and her friend laughing heartily at the slap-stick antics of the clowns. He turned to his dad and said knowingly, “The young children are really enjoying this!”

I suspect that what my father said is true: Exercise is the fountain of youth. And, I would add, vitality. For as long as I live, I want to really live. I relate to the runner-missionary Eric Liddell: “When I run, I feel God’s pleasure.”

Happiest Moment in 5 Minutes or Less

The premise of this post is yesterday’s Facebook status update (this reminds me of Mr. A, my 7^th grade social studies teacher, who criminally taught his students to write “The purpose of this essay is…”):

So this morning on the way to school, my eldest child (age 12) asks, "Mom, what was the happiest moment of your life?" YOU try answering that question on a 5-minute drive before 7 a.m. ... before coffee!

SF responded: So? What did you say?

LB: "Right now. Because you cared enough to ask." That would have stopped her in her tracks ;-)

BE: Too many to choose just one? : )

First, I told Viv that I would probably need a full week to ponder all the possibilities (including in my ponderings the definition of the word happiest, as compared to most relieved, excited, elated, joyous, etc.) before I could determine how best to answer the question.

Then, I said that of course there are the obvious times: Our wedding day, the birth day of each child, the day I got my braces off…

But, to satisfy my daughter’s query, I came up with this one, top of mind:

Viv was about 2 years old, and I was utterly overwhelmed by life. I was working full time, enrolled in grad school full time, and still foolishly attempting to fit into my mental mold of what an All-American wife/mom/superwoman should be like.

image from mommytracked.com

After many months of trying to juggle it all, and several weeks of crying myself to sleep each night, I went to my boss and said: “Look, I can’t do this anymore. I need to try something different. Could I possibly cut back my hours, just temporarily, until I can catch up?” My speech was longer than that, and delivered with extreme care — mainly because of the tremendous effort required to prevent myself from breaking down into tears, but also because I still needed the job. I was, after all, the main breadwinner of the family, and we were thoroughly invested in that community, 30-year mortgage and all.

My boss was a man who had juggled and accomplished a great deal in his life, even though he himself was still quite young. He listened very intently (likely also willing me to spare him the discomfort of a weeping woman in his office) and then said this: “Finish out your current project and then take six weeks off. Come in once a week to check email and take care of any necessary correspondence. But your main task for the time off is to get back on track and return a healthy, happy employee.”

He stopped short of urging me to see a physician for clinical depression — advice I also needed at the time. But a friend pointed me in that direction not long after this “happiest moment.”

That night, I went to sleep smiling. Reflecting on it, I remember the saying: “Always be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle” (which, based on my Internet research just now, appears to be an amalgamation of sayings from Plato and the man who invented Peter Pan). 

Most of us don’t have the power to grant a stressed-out person a 6-week leave of absence. But we do have the power to be kind in lots of little ways, which can make a huge difference in the bear-ability of others’ everyday lives…and our own.

So, that’s my “Happiest Moment in 5 Minutes or Less” What’s yours?

An Addendum to My Aspirations

This morning I awoke with a burst of creative energy, neurons firing madly. My first thought: Better lighting! Improving our household lighting should be another aspiration for the new year...

Ah, the delights of double entendres (the clean kind)! Because a little while later this morning (yes, I'm writing this at 7:30 and referencing "a little while later" -- hey, I'm an early riser), I read the enlightening blog of my fellow Christ-follower Melanie, a new friend in the past year. You can read my response in her Comments section, but I'll also post it here, as a confession of my heart's deeper desire:

Even as I wrote my own somewhat-silly entry on the new year's aspirations, I too thought of a surrender song: "All my ambitions, hopes and plans / I surrender these into Your Hands..." and also: "All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to His Blood." Beyond my surface "dreams" for the coming year, I mostly and truly yearn for "A Closer Walk With Thee." Thanks for the much-needed reminder.

I am weak, but Thou art strong;
Jesus, keep me from all wrong;
I’ll be satisfied as long
As I walk, let me walk close to Thee. 


Just a closer walk with Thee,
Grant it, Jesus, is my plea,
Daily walking close to Thee,
Let it be, dear Lord, let it be.

Through this world of toil and snares,
 If I falter, Lord, who cares?
Who with me my burden shares?
None but Thee, dear Lord, none but Thee.

[Refrain]

When my feeble life is o’er,
Time for me will be no more;
Guide me gently, safely o’er
To Thy kingdom shore, to Thy shore.

[Refrain]

What do Yoda, LisaHas2Cats & Hogwarts have in common? My New Year's Aspirations!

A new year and I ask myself: To blog, or not to blog? I really don’t have the time for it. But I’m slightly miserable without a (non-work-related) creative outlet, and this one doesn’t saddle me with do-or-die deadlines or fundraising imperatives. I like that. I think I’ll keep it. (So much easier than a puppy.)

I’m not normally a numbers person (I tell people that part of my brain has atrophied since marrying Tom, the human calculator), but I can’t help noticing that Blogger tallies my entries. It shows a steady decline since I started: 131 my first year, 65 my second year, 32 in 2011. If I only log 16 in 2012, will it be worth it? To me, yes. Just to keep this option open. And that decision made, I begin the new year with a sigh of relief. (Decision-making is an arduous process for people like me. Just ask my friend Mary — she’s a personality assessment expert…and when it comes to decision-making, my opposite!)

Next: Resolutions. I’ve never been a big fan. That’s a lie. I make them all the time. I psyche myself up for major life changes at the slightest excuse for a sticker chart: New week, new month, birthday, anniversary, obscure saint’s day… I start counting the days, weeks, months it would take to achieve thus-and-such a goal. Usually weight loss. How prosaic, right? But the problem with my resolve is that it usually desolves (dissolves, that is).

So this year, I choose Aspirations instead. Another friend (who, by the way, lost a ton of weight a couple years back — okay, a 20^th of a ton, but still…) — he  quotes Jedi Master Yoda: “Do or do not, there is no try.” I realize this kind of thinking lights a fire under some people, but it makes me shut right down. I need to be able to “try, try again.” Even if it means postponing achievement indefinitely. Because, the way I see it, “Do or do not” means failure is a dead-end. And my life, demanding as it is, does not involve any light-saber duels to the death. As long as God gives me breath, I can keep experimenting and endeavoring to do and be better. It’s like LisaHas2Cats on SparkPeople.com wrote a while back:

If you forgot to brush your teeth last night, did you decide this morning to throw in the towel and never brush your teeth again? Since you're obviously a slob who doesn't have enough self- discipline to remember to brush your teeth, why bother brushing them at all if you forgot to last night? Of course not. So if you had ice cream for dinner last night, or didn't exercise yesterday, or gained a pound this week: Don't throw in the towel! Make a healthier choice for dinner tonight by eating something lean. Go for a short walk. Weigh in again next week. Just do NOT give up.

By the way, it looks like LisaHas2Cats could use a little encouragement. If you’re a SparkPeople member, consider leaving her a good word. If you’re not a SparkPerson, why not give it a try? It’s free, and if you tell ’em I sent you (I’m DeepBreath33), I get a bunch of bonus points. Which is almost as good as a sticker chart.

OK, so what are my New Year’s Aspirations?

1) Slim down a bit. If this were Hogwarts, I’d say 40 pounds slimmer. But in A-Town, 20 pounds will do. (Thirty would be nice.)

2) Scale back a bit. I’m leaving a big box at the base of our stairs and I’m asking my family to pitch in. The Goal: In 2012, we will get rid of at least 12 items per week. As in Goodwill, Goodbye. (I did an e-haul this morning, deleting 947 stale from my Gmail account — woo-hoo! I feel so light!)

3) Write a bit more. A modest goal of 16 blog entries this annum? Nah, I’ll quadruple it and aspire to 60! Five per month. (Tom did the math for me.)

Happy New Year!