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What’s for Dinner?

Random thoughts, Work Life April 4, 2014 Leave a comment

Thoughts on dinner have been trending in my mind. My son, now the primary cook in our house due to his culinary interests, has been involved in other things these past few days meaning that I am coming home after work and fending for myself. At Toastmasters earlier this week the Table Topics were all about tables and invariably dinner was part of it too. And I have been remembering my changing role in dinner activities over my lifetime to date.

The 50’s cliché was the male breadwinner coming home to sit down to the family dinner cooked from scratch by his lovely wife all dressed up including pearls. I’ve experienced some of this ideal in different ways and can see benefit. When I was growing up mom and dad both put high importance on having a family evening meal. Mom did the stay-at-home thing which included dinner from scratch for most of my childhood. She didn’t have much interest in cooking per se, but she did have enough interest in healthy eating. Her forte was conversation, the exchange of ideas once we were all at the table. Even once she was working and going to school, we managed to keep the family meal going.

One of my son’s most recent creations.

I became a stay-at-home mom cooking the dinners from scratch, ready when my husband came home and before we had to head back out to whatever event or practice my boys had going. I had a greater interest in cooking than my mom had shown, along with an equal interest in the exchange of ideas while we ate. Feeding our minds and bodies, as well as feeding the family bond.

Even after becoming a single mom working a full time job, I felt it was highly important to keep up the tradition of a sit-down, scratch-cooked dinner. The actual cooking part wasn’t so important, but the shared experience and time together was something that I could give my boys.

And now I would be hard pressed to find the energy and mental capacity to whip up a dinner every night. I am happy to leave this task to my son who is caught up in the magic of creating maximum flavor experiences with food. When he isn’t otherwise occupied at dinner time.

Being a ‘foodie’ is trending now along with an interest in fresh, sustainable ingredients. The shared familial experience, the flow of talk and ideas doesn’t seem to have the same esteem though. Dinner might just be another meal that we squeeze into our day, perhaps not one that even two people in a family have at the same time.

How do you feed your mind, body and the family bond these days?

Glitchy

Random thoughts, Work Life April 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Sometimes a computer just gets balky and glitchy and needs a do-over – hitting restart can shake whatever temporary demon is creating difficulty out of the programming. Well, a day or a meeting or your brain can be glitchy too – you know what I’m talking about.

Glitch (Dictionary.com)

noun

a defect or malfunction in a machine or plan.

2. Computers. any error, malfunction, or problem. Compare bug¹( def 5 ) .

a brief or sudden interruption or surge in voltage in an electriccircuit.

verb (used with object)

to cause a glitch in: an accident that glitched our plans.

I like what Dictionary.com has to say about the word origin:

Glitch

1962, Amer.Eng., possibly from Yiddish glitsh “a slip,” from glitshn “to slip,” from Ger. glitschen, and

related gleiten “to glide.” Perhaps directly from Ger.; it began as technical jargon in the argot of electronic hardware engineers, popularized and given a broader meaning by U.S. space program.

Glitch sounds like what it is – something that tripped up what was supposed to happen.

If a computer can purge a glitch by restarting (sometimes several times), how do we humans get a do-over when we have glitchy moments? Ah, not so simple.

photo credit: Wikipedia

A big game, a player gets the ball and becomes confused and heads the wrong way – a glitch for sure – he or she can’t take it back. Teammates, the coach and fans are furious. A very public oops moment. The player can only go forward and learn to take the ribbing every time that moment comes up again.

Computers don’t have to worry about the embarrassment factor. If the computer that holds your most important presentation decides not to get going just when your presentation is due to start the computer won’t feel stupid or inadequate.

Humor helps in these moments, for humans not computers. (Though I hear that Siri has a sense of humor.) Shared laughter can get us past the glitch, ease any tension. Sometimes it’s the closest thing we have to a restart.

Here’s hoping for a glitch free day. Human and machine.

What Has Your Comfort Zone Done for You Lately?

Random thoughts, Work Life March 24, 2014 Leave a comment

It’s comfortable, I know. But there needs to be more, yes really. Now, I’m not suggesting something outlandish like going camping with nothing more than a tarp and a book of matches. (In fact, I’m not suggesting camping at all, there are limits to going outside of your comfort zone.) We don’t have to endanger our lives to shake up the limits of our comfort zones.

c1907 camping, photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

How many people do you know just keep doing something that doesn’t particularly fill them with joy just because it is familiar? The evil that we know, as the saying goes… If that something is a job, or a relationship maybe it will just take a bit of thought about how to freshen it up a bit.

Or maybe it would be to take a step or two in a forgotten or new direction. When was the last time that you drew, or danced, or sang, or grew something, or biked, or, or, or? Things drop out of our lives, or interests get forgotten as we settle into our adult pattern. My dad kept his hunting gear in the bottom of his closet through move after move even though he didn’t hunt throughout my childhood. He returned to it in retirement and his eyes would light up as he told us about it. I have a picture of two camouflaged hulks standing in my kitchen from his turkey hunting adventure with my then-husband.

This picture both makes me smile and sad. Why did he feel that he had to turn aside from this activity for so many years? Finances certainly played a role, but perhaps didn’t need to be the absolute hindrance that they appeared.

I remind myself of this when I miss out on yet another Broadway in Chicago event because I couldn’t justify the cost of the experience. There is huge benefit in trying new things and revisiting old interests. I say this as much to myself as to any reader.

What is it This Time?

Random thoughts, Work Life March 21, 2014 Comments: 2

The White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland scurries into the story early on, frantic and muttering to himself that he’s ‘late for an important date’. If there is a human anywhere who cannot relate, I would love to find out the secret for not ever being late. (Perhaps it is to never have appointments or dates?)

public domain image of The White Rabbit

Well, he scurries about in my thoughts sometimes as I juggle the various parts of my life. It often seems to be the transitions from one aspect to another that are most difficult to time just right – leaving home for work, leaving work for an afternoon appointment of one kind or another. Getting to work on time seems to be quite difficult for everyone at one time or another (the disruptive weather this winter over much of the US as case in point), but for some it seems to be darn near impossible every day.

There was a teaser announcement on the news the other day that they would be doing a story on employee excuses for being late to work on a later broadcast (must have been a slow news day) and that got me thinking. As a boss I have had employees who have struggled with timeliness and as a person I have had moments of untimeliness.

I don’t think that I’ve been given any really interesting stories for tardiness from employees, nothing is coming to mind since I heard about this on the news. Perhaps it is because I’ve never demanded explanation. ‘Sorry that I’m late’ mostly suffices for me. If it becomes a pattern, we’ll talk – but it will be focused on solutions like changing your routine, possibly changing your start time, not on why. Reasoning is important, excuses are a waste.

As an employee I have had two instances that were a bit out of the ordinary and they occurred about a year apart.

The first was after my mom had died and since I wasn’t sleeping very well at that time, I wasn’t actually late just nearly so. I woke up that morning thinking of a particular photo of my mom from the previous Christmas so strongly that I had to find the picture. I could not start my day until I had that one and only that one photo with me. My responsible side argued that I didn’t need the photo to go about my work day and I could find the picture after work. But the pull was too powerful, grief demanded that I get my hands on that picture. I did find it, I put it in an envelope in my purse (I carry it still) and got on with my day.

On the morning of the second example, I was mentally ready for work – I was currently without a direct boss and reporting to the senior manager and I wanted to be sharp. I pushed the button for my garage door, it went up an inch or two and stopped. I pushed again and it went down. I pushed again and it whirred, but did nothing. Uh oh. I pulled the door up manually and it slammed back down (I found out later that the springs were shot.) Hmm. My boys were already at school. How could I get the car out of the garage? I called friends, family to find someone to hold the door open while I drove the car out. Time became short and I had to call the senior manager to explain that I couldn’t get my car out of the garage. I even thought about flagging down a stranger and asking them to hold the door open – I was getting desperate – when a friend called back and was able to come over to help.

What is your weirdest or best excuse for being late?

Patterns, Collections & Repetition

Random thoughts, Work Life March 12, 2014 Comments: 2

What is it about a certain thing that makes us want more? It makes sense that we want to categorize things, like solving a puzzle by snapping the pieces into place, we know what we need to go and find based on the items that surround the missing piece. But most of us want to create combinations of things that are pleasing. Either by shape, size, color, texture, sound, usefulness – what have you.

Patterns can also tell us when something goes wrong and help us to figure out how to set it right again. When one customer tells a company that they are having a problem with a product, it might be assumed that it was an anomaly but when the same complaint comes up again and again then the company better get busy on that pattern.

I used to watch my mom sew clothes when I was little. There was a pattern to her whole effort; deciding what was going to be made, going to the fabric store to pick out all the needed items – which included the pattern to make the piece of clothing – preparing and cutting and then finally sewing. Some of the pattern pieces made sense right away – you could see it was going to be a sleeve or other recognizable part. But some of the pattern pieces looked quite random, they only made sense when combined with other pieces.

Collections can be useful or informative, say tools, or aesthetically pleasing. My dad had quite a few tools, some had been his father’s before him. The hand tools were made to last, worn smooth by years of use. My grandfather’s power tools were a bit scary since they were produced long before safety features had come into being. Belts and other moving parts were all open and ready to snag a finger or worse, not hidden behind plates and covers as they are now.

I think that I am in the majority in finding comfort in my collections and something soothing in repetition.

Chasing a Thought

Random thoughts, Work Life March 10, 2014 Leave a comment

I was driving a distance recently, which gives me plenty of thinking time. I brought my little recorder with me to capture any ideas for blog posts. And then, in the moment, I told myself that this one is so good I am bound to remember it. Ha.

I knew better. I really, really did. I would be well off if I had a dollar for every time in the past I wound up wanting to kick myself for not making some note about an idea worth pursuing later. Now I’m just sitting here trying to draw the right memory back out and not get tangled in the regret of what I should have done.

There is no excuse, the recorder was inches from me, easily accessible.

Sometimes I wonder if we do this to ourselves on purpose, set ourselves up in small ways to get tangled in foolish regrets? To prove the old saying that ‘to err is human’, to keep ourselves vigilant when the bigger opportunities come along – what do you think, I’m just spinning here?

Now I am left chasing the idea of a thought. Trying to play word association – sounded like, what CD was I playing… Not even a hint at the moment. Maybe I can get it back by pushing the quest to the back of my mind. I often get solutions that way, if I can distract myself with something else. I know that pushing too hard to remember something just pushes that something farther out of reach.

It feels like this happens to me all too often. I can be in one room and think of a couple of things that we need at the store and by the time I get to the kitchen where I keep the list, the things that came to mind have kept on going. So I find myself chanting them with every step.

How about you, what thought did you recently misplace?

The 7 10 Split

Personal Growth, Random thoughts, Work Life March 7, 2014 Comments: 3

The pins are as far apart as they can be and still be on the same lane. It is still your turn, and mathematically speaking you can pick up this spare. But it takes skill, calm and a confluence of several factors. Bowling as life lesson, not just beer swilling league fun.

public domain clip art

I bet if you start to think about it, you will remember one and then another and another instance when you had two elements that were supposed to be working together or part of a larger whole in some way that were far apart and working independently to inhibit the larger goal. (Passively, as in the case with the pins, or less so.) There are ways to get these elements back into the larger plan, but it could take cunning – at the very least it will take time and effort on your part to figure out a solution and implement it.

I bowled on leagues on and off for years and I’ve been involved in volunteer groups, training sessions and plenty of office situations and only just this morning had the realization that there are parallels in these set ups. From a higher level strategic point of view, there are similarities in the solutions. I, or you, have to figure out the trajectory that will bring the elements together and keep the game going. Now in life we probably don’t want to violently knock one element into or against the other – particularly since quite often these elements will be people. Co-workers, vendors, colleagues, partners.

Sometimes the straightforward, ‘hey where are you at with your part of this project’, approach works like a charm. Sometimes a bit of cajoling and sometimes it is a grueling game of inching the parties closer together. It can be an endurance test for us, a question of keeping up our energy and resolve – keeping our eyes on the intended end. Mentally testing out different solutions for alignment and success.

Then stepping up to the lane, ball in hand, squaring our shoulders, positioning our feet, eyes set on the pins at the other end. Stride up, swing the ball and let it go.

Determined, Stubborn, Obstinate

Random thoughts, Work Life March 5, 2014 Leave a comment

I’ve been called all of these things. I think sometimes it was meant to be unflattering at best. I remember one conversation when I was told that I am rigid and I said if the word disciplined were inserted instead, I would accept the charge. The accusation was wielded by someone who had a more unstructured method of approaching life than I.

Determined I accept and include in my own self-definition. It is a trait that I am proud to claim, one that I cultivate on more hesitant days, in uncertain moments. Figuring out how to call it up in moments of need is almost like discovering a super power. I picture determination like a muscle – we must all have it – but as we who are over a certain age have found, muscles must be regularly activated or they go soft. (But there are always exercises to revive them.)

Stubborn can come in handy and I have been known to warn a potential adversary that I practice stubborn quite well. I have to really believe in the cause and you had better have a really compelling argument for your position. Compromise is an acceptable end. But then again, I might just be reformulating my points that I conceded for now for another run later. I do understand that stubborn should be applied in small doses, or it can turn into this next word.

photo credit: Wikipedia

Obstinate, hmm. This one has been leveled mostly by people whose most compelling argument is ‘because’. Obstinate means “characterized by inflexible persistence or an unyielding attitude” (per http://dictionary.reference.com/). I don’t see any point in obstinacy, unless a person has no interest in learning new things. Of course, I mentioned above that stubborn can become intractable and turn into obstinacy – no for the sake of no. If I know that I am right then I imagine that can appear obstinate to my opposite.

Being determined is a good thing when tempered with an openness to new information.

Weekend Hours

Random thoughts, Work Life March 3, 2014 Leave a comment

Why, oh why do the hours of our weekends seem to dissolve so quickly into the past, depositing us once again on the cusp of Monday with so little to show for the weekend just ending? There are the regular tasks – provisioning the household takes constant effort it seems – and the periodic tasks with a bit of time allowed for leisure of some sort.

If I were to list all of the things that I have done over the two days I probably would be pleased, I had productive time; why do I feel like it just wasn’t enough? I have the constant nagging feeling that I am not making the best use of my weekend hours. Do you? Have that feeling, or are you better than I at making the best use of these two days?

Public clocks to keep us on track. (photo credit: Big Ben from Wikimedia Commons)

It wasn’t that long ago that the work week norm was considered to be 6 days with one day set aside for rest. How did they get to everything? How did they ever get the mental down time to recharge? And these days there are plenty of people who juggle 2 or more part time jobs to make ends meet – I imagine their time off is measured in hours and not days. With sleep claiming a good chunk.

Childhood weekends were filled with large boring chunks of time when the default activity became TV, with only a handful of channels to choose from to find something of interest. (If you weren’t one for sports, it was slim pickings.) I lived in suburbia which meant if I hadn’t planned my reading properly, I couldn’t get myself to the library for a refill on new books. Chores were handed out and easily completed unless we balked for some childish reason or another. A trip to the store with mom could be an interesting diversion or torture. One store had baskets set up in a way that one of us could ride underneath and the world became curious from that perspective – but it wasn’t always my turn to ride.

Now weekends seem to often be an endless round of moving undone to-do items from an old scribbled on list to a fresh list, with the hope that the item won’t have to be moved onto future lists too. Sometimes, but not often enough, I am good at planning in a little fun experience or two. This puts a squeeze on my necessary tasks, but is usually worth it from a mental energy perspective.

Well, it’s Monday again with one weekend behind and another looming in the near distance. Time to think work week thoughts.

The Unintended Time Commitment

Personal Growth, Random thoughts, Work Life February 28, 2014 Leave a comment

Do you know how long it takes you to do all the little things that you do through the course of a regular day? I think that most of us would probably be surprised at the time that can accumulate when we do incidental tasks. And the time that we spend on nothing activities while busy feeling harried and like we have no time to ourselves.

Back in my childhood my mom would have a habit of asking my dad to stop at the store – just for a minute – when we would be on our way home from a family activity. Groan. Mom would ‘run in’ and we would be trapped in the car waiting. If she ever really did come out with just the one thing that she originally went in for, I can’t recall. What I do remember would be the agonizing moment when she would come out with 2 or 3 bags of other things she realized we could use. She saw it as time saving, while we lost ages from our lives that we could never recover.

The TV is an old standby for unintended time commitments, and it has been joined by the internet. We never have to be alone with our own thoughts now, thanks to smart phones – but this also means that we might not ever be present in the moment with the person across from us at the table. But I digress.

I got the idea for this post when I had a run of mornings recently that the time on the car’s clock surprised me. I have a set time that I want to leave the bedroom, I thought I had hit that time but then somehow lost minutes between the bedroom and pulling the car out of the garage. What the?? In my thinking I left the bedroom, picked up my purse, put on my coat and went to the garage – about a minute of time. But, no, I was picking up and putting away things, looking for other things – eating bits of time here and there that I didn’t mean to do.

Famous words, “I’m just going to… before I do…”; suddenly that unintended time commitment, which was going to be a momentary distraction or a little filler, is something much larger. And dangerous.