To the Woman at the Grocery Store

I raced from one place to another today, trying to get fourteen things done in a time slot that would fit only three. Not unusual, and it was relatively stress-free; nothing on the list was terribly pressing with the exception of finding the ingredients for dinner and making sure the puppies get a good run before the afternoon sun turns things into a premature winter's night. 

After finding the shallots, discovering that lettuce is on the "safe to eat" list again, and picking up things to pack in lunches (how could I have forgotten the cookies????), I stood and waited for Dylan to pack up some chicken for me. Dylan is slower than a frozen river, and I am convinced his schedule is made once his managers determine when I will be shopping. Need some brats or burgers? Dylan is there every time...testing my patience. He is very, very nice. I know because I chat with him for long periods of time while he painstakingly wraps my dinner and fumbles with the tape. He is actually quite interesting to talk to.

Being Real

Meghan is up in Alaska, where right now it gets light out at 11am and then the sun goes down around 2 pm. Her husband is in the military and is getting set to deploy soon, which means he will be gone for a year or so while she and their infant son keep things rolling at home. She has recently decided to take up cooking and baking, and is really quite good at it.

Susan struggles with dementia and is worried that her "mind is erasing itself," as she put it the other day. She is sad she can't remember the history shared with her husband, and listens to him tell her stories about when they were younger, smiling at pictures of them, not recognizing herself. Back in the day, she was an exceptional cook, and is distressed because she can't remember how to make a  Thanksgiving dinner anymore. It was delivered to her home this year, which makes her feel both happy and sad.

Tom is a shuttle driver for a car dealership and faults himself for his own misfortune. He looks back and admits he was lazy and never did what he needed to succeed. It is a hard realization. Now, at 50 years old, his mother drives him to work each day so he won't get robbed on the bus. He needs another paycheck in his pocket to afford a car of his own, though that will have to wait if he needs to buy groceries before the end of the week. His mother still cooks him dinner, which he feels lucky about, because she can make the long day's work melt away with the smell of dinner in her oven.

Jocelyn is a teen who goes home every day to her grandmother's house, where she helps her grandmother prepare the evening meal for her entire family. Her parents live there as well, both on long term disability for various reasons. Her brother was unable to get into the military (as he'd always dreamed of) because of a head injury that caused permanent damage. He helps Jocelyn make dinner from time to time, though he is very messy in the kitchen and she only lets him chop the vegetables.

At the end of each day, these four people all sit down to a meal with their families. They are all from different parts of the world, they all have realities that take courage and strength. And for a short time late each afternoon, the troubles of the day are forgotten. Laughter replaces worry, smiles light up the room. Warm food, uninterrupted time together, and remembering that despite any difficulty, there is much to be thankful for are just a few beautiful details of family dinners.

Share a meal with the people you love. It changes your world.

Pulling Positive Out of the Shadows

Drama was meant for theatres...not for every day life. I think my threshold has almost reached capacity. For example, the driver behind me at the light this morning: FYI, the reason I didn't GO this morning right when the light changed had to do with the oncoming car from the left who appeared to be (and was) running a red light. Perhaps, Impatient Driver, next time you're behind someone who doesn't go from 0 to 70 in .23 seconds, you might recognize the fact that had I been urged on by your honking instead of paying attention as I am supposed to, I would have been plowed over by a maniac from the left. 

The drama created all around us on a regular basis is wearing everyone down. I know because it's wearing me down, and I'm usually one of the last to go! Time for a no-phone, hot bath with pizza and champagne night.

Narrow it Down

2018 has been a year for reviewing things I already have rather than just plowing forward into something new. It is a practice I planned to form a habit around and have it become a part of who I am. Of course that could all go out the window at any time....I am constantly challenged with reminders that this is actually a "thing" I am working out internally, and it happened again last night.

In fact, I heard the reminder coming out of my own mouth. The listener was taking it in and actually paying attention (it was one of our children, so he was stuck with me at the dinner table). And as I heard myself saying it, I thought "ohhhh yeah, that's actually really good advice across the board. Hm." We all learned some basic lessons when we were younger (for some of us that goes back a few decades, for others, well...you are a few years closer to young), sometimes they come back around and smack us in right in the face. This particular lesson I was reciting was picked up back in English 101 as a basis for creating credible and cohesive research papers.

The Heroine of Rocky Ridge Farm

February 7, 1867

For many women I know, one of the most iconic figures of our childhood was the feisty little pioneer girl who set out into the great frontier with her family from the big woods of Wisconsin, heading across the frozen Mississippi River in their covered wagon with high hopes and their faithful bulldog, Jack. Laura Ingalls Wilder served as our heroine and our champion, working hard to make ends meet, struggling to hold back when her sharp tongue threatened to get the best of her, and teaching us some of the greatest moral lessons of our lives. Laura taught us to be kind, to be grateful, to be resourceful, and above all, to find the silver linings that surround us each and every day, despite the circumstances.

Born in the small town of Pepin, Wisconsin on February 7, 1867, Laura and her family’s adventures spanned Missouri, Kansas, and Minnesota, finally setting in the Dakota Territory where Laura became a teacher at the age of 15, and met and married the love of her life, Almanzo Wilder.

The Grandmother of Europe

January 1, 1877

During her reign, Queen Victoria mothered 9 children...a lot by any standard, let alone for a woman who didn’t much care for being pregnant. The Queen’s children grew up (as children have a tendency to do) and worked themselves into the royal fabric of the entire Old Continent. Her great-great grandchildren include Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Queen Sofia of Spain, King Constantine II of Greece, King Michael I of Romania, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, and King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. Not a shabby lot. When she ascended the throne in 1837, she was excluded from becoming the ruler of the Kingdom of Hanover, because according to the laws of the day girls don’t get to rule things. (Hanover ended up getting conquered by Prussia about 30 years later, which then got “unified” with the German Empire a couple years after that, but that’s another story…)  Undaunted by the exclusion, Queen Victoria proposed to her husband (he surely couldn’t ask her...she was the queen for crying out loud) and proceeded to make such an impact that an entire era was named for her. Throughout her reign, Queen Victoria survived not one or two, but six assassination attempts. During the Victorian era, the British Empire included Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, and India. On January 1, 1877, the queen was proclaimed the Empress of India. Not bad for never having set foot inside the country!

Queen Victoria also had a appetite for potatoes, and had them cooked for her in any possible way a chef could dream up. Perhaps she would have liked these hometown faves:

Potatoes Fit for a Queen

2 medium sweet potatoes

2 large russet potatoes

4 tablespoons butter

Salt and pepper to taste

½ cup milk (or to desired consistency)

2 cloves of garlic, mashed with a press

If the picky ones are home, I will peel the potatoes before cubing them, but if I want all the health benefits, I just scrub them and dice them up. Boil the diced potatoes for approximately 10  minutes, then drain the water. Add the rest of the ingredients, allowing the butter to melt completely as you’re mixing it in. Be sure the garlic is mixed in well and dispersed so that no one bites a whole chunk at one time.

Mash all the ingredients together and serve immediately. Serves 4

Veruca and the Voice of Reason

My husband listens to the radio every morning during his workout. On a normal day, I get the nutshell version over coffee and school lunch making. This past January, however, one frosty, dark morning had a slightly different twist. On this day, the workout was cut short and the wooden stairs coming up from the basement creaked beneath his feet a few minutes early. The light in the bedroom clicked on and sent me hiding under the pillow.

“There’s going to be a food truck festival here in the spring!” he exclaimed, knowing how absolutely thrilled I would be. I love food. I love food trucks. I love festivals. Plans were set in motion straight away.

Run Your Own Race

I was lucky to spend this past weekend visiting one of my kids up in her cute little college town. We celebrated her birthday, went to the movies on campus (if you’ve never seen ‘The Book Thief,’ make time to – and have your tissues close at hand), did some rearranging in her room, and hung out with her friends. The culminating event for our weekend was a half marathon we’d signed up for months prior, and her roommate would be joining our adventure. I have run my share of races; neither of the girls had ever attempted this distance before.

Training for each of us was….so-so at best. The girls were on track with a lot of discipline and excitement surrounding it until spring break hit. I was my usual self, running shorter distances and totally ignoring the best laid plans. Not smart, but not unheard of in the running world.

Eat Right and Exercise

There are so many ways to diet, so many plans, detoxification menus, pros to one way of eating, cons to others, articles on foolproof ways of dropping pounds…it is enough to make a person shut off their computer and grab a bag of Doritos.

One diet plan allows you to eat fried chicken, candy bars, Coca-Cola, etc., as long as you only eat a little bit of it every three hours. Or try the Atkins Diet, which has you eating protein and giving up flour and sugar. There is the Blood Type Diet, the Cabbage Soup diet, the Skinny Bitch Diet, or the Caveman Diet. You can use the Fat Flush Plan to cleanse your liver. You can spend time measuring your Glycemic Index, eat grapefruit with every meal, ditch your aluminum pans, regulate what you eat based on your hormones, purchase prepackaged meals, find your yin-yang balance with regards to food intake, spend days removing toxins, pair your food better to maximize your digestive system, restrict your calories, drink olive oil and sugar water, go completely vegan, replace the bad carbs with good carbs, increase your fiber intake, keep track of points per item eaten, eat to make changes in your insulin production…have you stopped reading this paragraph yet?

Kaizen and You

The Japanese theory “kaizen” has been applied to many situations from business models to governmental policy to personal development. The Japanese word “kaizen” is literally translated as meaning “change for better.” Without putting you through information overload, I will tell you that Toyota has successfully used this theory to take their company from the lower end of the spectrum to the giant it is today. It has been incorporated into what is known as “The Toyota Way” under the translation “continuous improvement” (there is no Japanese word for “continuous,” so it has clearly been Westernized but is most certainly accurate).

Celebrate Your Gift

Some of my  favorite Time-Wasters (you know, the things we do throughout the day that entertain us for a brief moment while we check out of reality) are those silly little quizzes you can take which result in some description of your personality. I have loved them since pre-internet days when you had to wait for the next issue of Seventeen Magazine to come out, hoping someone had been clever enough to create a new version of what was ultimately the same thing with a slightly different twist. 

The internet (and BuzzFeed) have exploded this whole phenomenon into being a Time Waster with the potential to soak up every waking moment, get you fired from your job, and give you carpal tunnel syndrome all in the same week. I am happy to report that I have enough self-discipline to allow NONE of this to happen, though I will admit I am quite clear as to which Hogwarts House I belong, what my Patronus is, how my personality impacts my life, what color my aura is, and what my spirit animal is (I had a lot of time to do quizzes in effort to ignore all the political posts over the past weeks). 

Seven Generations

I hold many beliefs...some of them so ingrained within that I would venture to call them mantras. One that I return to on a daily basis for myself is this: Always frame things from a positive perspective. Maintaining this way of being is not just important to me, it has been a game changer for my life time and time again.

Stating this is not in effort to change you or your own ways. It's not a lecture on "always being positive...blah blah blah..." It is more a tool to help you understand the place from where my viewpoint is usually coming (with the exception of the occasional rant). That being said, I feel compelled to let you know that I am also a realist. Are things always positive? No, they are not. Positive aspects can usually be unearthed, and certainly there are better ways to handle difficult situations than others, but there are rough times that simply take a lot of damn work and a ton of emotional energy. And although I always highlight the silver lining in my mind, I am fully aware that sometimes things just flat out suck. Or sometimes, although there are great things going on, there still needs to be more...it still leaves room to be better.

Such is the case, in my opinion, for the state of women's rights in America. The women of today have absolutely incredible opportunities waiting right in front of them, at veritably every turn. Picture yourselves in the middle of a beautiful city park with trees and lakes, meandering paths and birds flying overhead. This park is surrounded on each side with residential areas of all types....mansions, trailers, townhouses, shacks, condos, estates, log cabins, tents...every single option available is surrounding you in this lovely, magical park. And in the pocket of the cute little bag you're carrying is a jam packed ring of keys. On this ring are the keys to every single front door to each of the houses surrounding the park...you can choose whichever option you prefer, and it is (literally and figuratively) just a walk in the park to get there.

Perfect Measurements

One of my favorite questions to ask a group of people is this: "If I tell you that I have a couple of apples here in this bag, how many would you say there are?" Seems simple enough, right? Just a quick question, met with a quick answer. Not as simple as one might imagine. You wouldn't believe the difference in opinions throughout the country. For me, its cut and dry. A couple is two. Always, no questions asked.

That answer is not the same for everyone, and what I have determined (after years of asking this very same question in a variety of ways), is that a couple means two to me. That is my definition based on my own experience. In reality, the word "couple" is extraordinarily vague to many people. It sits in a gray area, and is rarely agreed upon. To some it means 3. Others would say 3-5. Another would say "more than one." And many will argue their position with vehemence.

Imagine, then, the variety of answers to define the word "success." Talk about living in a gray area! Just thinking about the individual members of my family brings forth six, maybe seven different definitions. To some it means wealth. Others would say job title. Another would base it on the number of friends and acquaintances. Many will pass harsh judgment on not only your own personal definition, but also your position in life according to THEIR measurement. 

Definitions and Questions

The internet is full of opinions on female confidence. Fulfilling your Inner Self. The Confident Woman. "Do You Have What it Takes?" And there is little evidence as to whether or not the traits listed hold true...because the actual Confident Woman doesn't spend time much effort or time reading and assessing the articles, questioning whether she is or is not as confident as she thinks. She just is and she's already well aware.

Should you choose to skim a few of those articles, you would find things like "confident women don't gossip." Instead, they spend their time discussing their own goals and visions. Confident women don't hold back, they set the trends, they are not people pleasers and they don't worry about much. They follow the QTIP rule: quit taking it personally. They welcome comfortable silence. Confident women don't glorify how busy they are, in fact, you'll rarely hear them speak about it. They are focused on their priorities and rarely allow themselves to get the point of being overwhelmed. Confident women are not defeated by failure, and peer pressure is not in their vocabulary.

As with all good internet articles, some of that is pretty on target...some of it might not be. Most of it gets too wordy to bother with, and a bit of it ends up pretty convoluted anyhow. And so, what is it we are really talking about here?

Confidence: (kanfedens) noun. a feeling of self-assurance arising from one's appreciation of one's own abilities or qualities. 

A.K.A.

February 2, 1848

Mexico won its independence from the Spanish Empire back in 1821 during the Mexican War of Independence. In 1845 (during his last weeks in office), President John Tyler signed legislation that authorized the annexation of the Republic of Texas, a move that was viewed by the Mexican government as an act of war; Mexico never viewed the Republic of Texas as an independent country. The United Kingdom and France both tried to persuade Mexico to stay out of war with the United States, but to no avail. In April of 1846, Mexican forces attacked Americans near the Rio Grande (in close proximity to future President Zachary Taylor's camp) in a raid known as the Thornton Affair. Within a month, Congress passed (and President James Polk signed) a declaration of war. By July, Mexican Congress had done the same.

Georgia State of Mind

January 2, 1788

Although we tend to think of American Civil War stories when discussing the  history of the State of Georgia, there was a lot of action in the Peach State during the American Revolution as well. 

Georgia Patriots raided the magazine in Savannah in 1775, dividing the stolen powder with South Carolina. After driving out the royal governor, James Wright, following Savannah’s Battle of the Rice Boats in February of 1776, Archibald Bulloch was named commander in chief of the militia. Delegates were sent to the Philadelphia convention in time to sign the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. 

Ten...Nine...Eight...

January 1, 1908

In 1904, Longacre Square in New York City was renamed Times Square in honor of (or at the urging of) the New York Times. “Lobster Palaces” quickly gained popularity, spots like Rector’s on the corner of Broadway and 44^th, allowing NYC’s middle class to enjoy the delicacies and grandeur only known to the upper echelon until this point. 

Six Grandfathers

October 4, 1927

Before the Great Sioux War of 1876, the mountain we know today as Mount Rushmore had a wide variety of names. The Lakota Sioux knew the land as "Six Grandfathers." The route was part of an annual spiritual journey for Sioux leader Black Elk as he headed for the top of Harney Peak. White settlers knew the mountain as Sugarloaf Mountain, Cougar Mountain, Slaughterhouse Mountain, and/or Keystone Cliffs. Charles Rushmore, an attorney from New York, visited area with a group of fellow prospectors in 1885; the group included David Swanzey, who was the brother-in-law of American author Laura Ingalls Wilder. The mountain was named (obviously) in honor of Rushmore, and is a part of the Black Hills of South Dakota where gold had first been discovered in 1874.

Journey's End

September 23, 1806

Thomas Jefferson announced the signing of the Louisiana Purchase agreement to the American people on July 4, 1803. Plans were made to send several missions to the west, including the Corps of Discovery. The goal for the Corps was to find a direct water route to the Pacific Ocean across the newly acquired territory. President Jefferson also instructed Captain Meriwether Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark to declare US sovereignty along the way.

Farewell to the Nation

September 19, 1796

George Washington's Farewell Address to the Nation has been referred to as one of the most important documents in American history. President Washington, with the help of his friend and colleague James Madison, wrote the original draft of his letter in 1792. He planned to be president for one term only.

Concerns over foreign affairs convinced Washington to run for a second term in office. The divide between the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party was growing rapidly, and President Washington set the letter aside for another four years in an effort to provide stability for the newly formed nation.