more than green

Green is not the only color around here.

All of these flowers are in the front yard. I have absolutely NOTHING to do with any of these plants being alive. NOTHING.

I don't water, weed, feed, plant, or prune any of these. They are just there.

Like many things in my yard, they live on... no matter how much I neglect them.


I had to end with yellow. Such a happy color.

February Walk

The color of the day is GREEN.


It has been raining here lately. Not enough to reverse the perpetual California drought. But it turns everything green rather quickly.








The rain also makes the river run.

Monday in my head

Every Monday I have an existential crisis. It starts at exactly 10:00 A.M.

Let me set the scene. Monday morning we have a Management/Sales Meeting immediately when I get in. (Yes, I go into work at 10:00 in the morning.) The meeting includes Enthusiastic Sales Guy and The Boss Man (a.k.a The Big Idea Guy.)

I love Enthusiastic Sales Guy. He is unfailingly positive and tenacious out in the field. Rejection just bounces off of him like those crazy, rubber balls that we used to get out of gumball machines when we were kids. He moves on to the next prospect with unabated optimism. Enthusiastic Sales Guy has been selling for a long time. Let's just say that he started well before computers were so ubiquitous. He is not very technically savvy. I am always helping him figure out little problems with his email and his laptop. I get annoyed sometimes, but I give him a lot of credit for trying to use technology as much as possible, even when it is not one of his strengths.

The Boss Man is the classic entrepreneur. He is not afraid to take risks and he is always pushing us forward. I call him The Big Idea Guy because he’s constantly coming up with new things to try and new angles to pursue. One of the main reasons the company has grown so much is that he never stops thinking ahead to what is next and pushes endlessly for us to do more.

Big Idea Guy has absolutely no understanding of how much work goes into executing his Big Ideas. We just created a beautiful new marketing piece – twenty pages of gorgeous pictures using our product along with all the calculations and pricing needed for our distributors to easily sell them. A week after we first talked about doing it, he was wondering why it wasn’t done yet. I said, “Are you crazy?! Do you have any idea how much work this is?”

We work well together. I have no problem smacking him back into reality and he’ll take a step back and let us do what needs to get done.

So first thing on a Monday morning, Enthusiastic Sales Guy and The Big Idea Guy are sitting around the table. I have only a few sips of my large coffee in my belly and the caffeine has not had too much of a chance to start flowing to my brain. Enthusiastic Sales Guy starts his report about what he has recently heard from our customers on his visits. Can we do this? How about we start that? Can we send some of those to all four hundred customers?

Big Idea Guy has a list of his own. We need to do this and that. Can we change those? Oh, and here’s a whole brand new thing that we need to do immediately.

And that’s when it hits me.

Why am I here?

How did I get here?

Does any of this really matter?

So much busyness. So much energy expended. So much of my own energy and internal resources used up... spent... depleted...

And for what? So we can try to sell more stuff that nobody really needs? Stuff that doesn't add a bit of authentic meaning or true fulfillment to a single person's life?

Oy.

I sip my coffee, take notes and plot my escape.

Mädchen im Romanischen Café (Berlin) 1911 by Lesser Ury

I was wrong

Here we go. Again with the octuplets.

I was wrong. It wasn't about religion at all. It was clearly a case of medical negligence or incompetence combined with mental illness.

Any medical professionals who were involved in implanting eight embryos into a 33-year-old woman who had successfully carried six children in five previous pregnancies should have their licenses revoked. It is not a matter of how many children she already had. It is the fact that it is a reckless, improper and dangerous act to do with a healthy woman of her age. It is completely against all standards of care established in that field.

If this were a Law and Order episode, Jack McCoy would definitely prosecute the responsible doctors for Attempted Murder using the "depraved indifference" argument that they love to toss around on that show. Good ol' Jack wouldn't let anyone get away with this kind of nonsense. Where is our real life Jack McCoy?

As for the mental health of the mother. (Sigh) What is there to say?

She says herself, "I just longed for certain connections and attachments with another person that I really lacked, I believe, growing up.” When asked what she felt that she lacked, her answer was, "Feeling of self and identity.”

Okay, so she has one child, two children, three children.

Hmmmm...am I feeling the connections that I long for? Not yet? Okay, maybe more babies will help.

She has four children, five and six children.

Still not quite feeling that sense of self? Let's just go for one more baby. Maybe that will do it.

There are just so many things wrong with this. However, she is not the only person in the world to ever have made a decision to have children for reasons that could be considered less than healthy. People have children for crappy reasons all the time. She just went a little too far - no, a lot too far and now her derangement is out there for all to see.

I will say that she seems to be out of touch with reality. She says she wants to go back to school in the fall and that once she is done with her schooling, she will be able to afford her fourteen children. She just had eight severely premature babies and she thinks she will be able to go back to school in six months?

One of her children weighed 1 pound 8 ounces at birth. Woman, wake up! Lift up your left boob. Your left boob weighs more than your human child. Does that fact sink in at all? Does the reality of seeing your eight new babies hooked up to IV's and breathing tubes and feeding tubes and monitors and incubators give you even a subtle hint as to what is in store for you in the near future?

But then again, we do not know the whole story. Maybe she does have sufficient financial means and enough sustained support from committed family and friends to do what she says she wants to do. Maybe she is not delusional, but simply a high achiever with big dreams and the gumption and determination to make them happen! Maybe we are just being judgemental and negative. Maybe WE are the crazy ones!


Octuplet mom defends her "unconventional" choices

Octuplet backlash: From celebration to boos

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Perspective

If this is the first face you see
in the morning...

...you know it is going to be a good day.

Unless, of course, this is you:

Then your perspective is a bit different.

Superstar!

Today the Starbucks lady gave me a star. Or I should say girl. I'm old now and she was a tiny, little young thing - so I get to say girl.

Today the Starbucks girl gave me a star.


I don't know what I did to deserve a star. I haven't gotten one since elementary school. I used to get LOTS of them. But then you grow up and they stop giving them to you. It just doesn't seem right.

Eight had better be enough

What on earth would prompt a 33-year-old woman who has six children under the age of eight to undergo fertility treatments?

See this article in the LA Times. She just gave birth to octuplets.

Wait - first let's clear something up. Do I sound judgemental? Well I am. I am judging her. I am judging her based on very little information, absolutely no knowledge of her as a person and no experience with having children myself. I am doing what we all do - forming an opinion based on my own experiences, my personal values and my own world view. So here I go.

I believe whole-heartedly that she absolutely has the right to make her own decisions about such things in her life. But FOR GOODNESS' SAKE, WHY?!?!? Was six really not enough? Was adoption or foster parenting ever a consideration?

I am certain that religion plays a part in this. Some religions promote the idea of big families as not just a blessing, but as some sort of obligation, and in a few cases as a prerequisite for salvation. Hey, I am one of five children and my Mom is one of fourteen. I am sure the Catholic Church's stance on birth control had a hand in that.

I just hope it wasn't a case of her feeling like she wasn't performing her duty as a woman when she couldn't naturally have a seventh child. Or that she wasn't meeting the expectations of her God, her church or her family. It would be a shame for her to think of her life as lacking, when really it was already so full.

Even though I firmly believe that we all get to make our own decisions in life, a part of me is angry at this mother of now fourteen kids. There are so many children in this country who need to be adopted. A large, loving family would be the perfect place for one of these children to be nurtured and raised. The alternative is a life of multiple foster homes, group homes and growing up with the feeling of never really having a home.

Can you imagine that in your own life? Picture yourself at age 2 or 3 or 4. Now wipe out your entire family. They don't exist. You are alone in this world. There are 130,000 children in the United States experiencing that right now. They are waiting to be adopted and many never are. (www.adoptamericanetwork.org)

I am also angry at the pervasive idea that if you can't have children of your own, that you are somehow broken or deficient and your life will have less meaning. I write this as a woman who has just turned forty and has no kids. I don't know if I will ever have children. And even I wonder if it means that there will be an emptiness in my life - an unfulfilled longing or and aching void at the center of my soul that will make me feel that my journey on this earth was ultimately without purpose.

A part of me does buy into the notion that I will be less than...lacking...inadequate. I don't want to feel this way. I want to believe that I can be fulfilled and find true peace and satisfaction without ever giving birth. That everything else I offer in this life - my love, compassion, friendship and even my struggles and pain - will add up to something truly meaningful. That it will all somehow be enough.

I don't have the answer right now. But soon enough, one way or another, I will find out.

As for this new mother of octuplets, while I don't understand her decisions, I do wish her and her family nothing but joy in their days ahead. There are eight new souls in this world and now they all have the chance to find meaning and happiness in their own lives. I wish them luck.

Justice?

Here is the outcome of the jury trial that I was almost picked for:

Gunman Sent to Prison for Normal Heights Gas Station Shooting

I'm glad I was not picked for this jury. Even if he is guilty, I would feel bad to send such a young person to prison for so long. You just know he's not going to come out any better.

Yes, yes...go ahead and say it - Don't do the crime if you can't do the time. I know. I still would feel bad.

Quakers believe that there is "an inward light, a spark of the Divine, that of God in every person." If that is true then this young man, in spite of what he has done, deserves compassion.

I'm with the Quakers on this one.

(Quote from American Friends Service Committee)

Yesterday's raindrops

Click on pictures for larger view.

My Favorite Interventionist

I watch Intervention on A&E. Obsessively. But it's not like I'm addicted or anything. I can stop any time I want. But I won't. (And you can't make me.)

My favorite interventionist (and the one you should call if I ever start to hit the crack pipe) is Mr. Ken Seeley. Oh, there are other interventionists on the show, but Ken's the one for me. And not just because of that raspy voice or his neatly trimmed sideburns.

Candy Finnigan has that no-nonsense attitude mixed with healthy dose of maternal concern. She won't take any crap from you, but she manages to make you feel like she genuinely cares the whole time.

Jeff VanV has the ultra-laid back attitude. He seems to be thinking, "Hey, I can get you into a treatment center that will rescue you from the hell that you have been living and save your life. Or I can just go get a sandwich. Either way. Doesn't matter to me." Jeff does care about the addicts and their families. He's just got that mellow, low-pressure approach.



But Ken Seeley is not fooling around, man. He has an unceasing intensity about him every moment of the intervention. He's staring down the addicts with a somber intensity and every molecule of his being is pulsing with a ferocious concern for their lives. There is a tension in his body. Like he knows that he has to sit back and let the addict make his own choice, but he really wants to jump over the cheap, hotel coffee table, grab the addict by the shoulders and scream, "Don't you see what you are doing to yourself?!?! Look at what you are doing to your FAMILY! WAKE UP, MAN!"

But he doesn't. Like the other interventionists, he relies on the family and friends to speak to the addict and hopes that the power of their love can reach the person behind the addiction. It is a very intense and emotional show. Isn't it a shame that it takes such a crisis in their lives for people to be able to share their deepest emotions with the people they love?

Weather, Walk, Work and Tempeh

It was 80 degrees here today. Went for a walk in the park this morning and saw some deer.


Sorry, I haven't been blogging lately. I worked 40-45 hours this past week. Tough life I have, huh? I had been working about 28 hours because the economy is kicking our ass and we had to cut everyone's time. If our sales don't increase soon, we'll have to lay off a couple more people. But I'm an optimist. I think we'll make it.

This week I worked extra hours because someone was out with a back injury all week and I had to fill in for her. But also because I got absorbed in some of my projects and just kept going. I do that sometimes. I'm such a good worker bee. It's a little bit obsessive.

I realize that when I work a full 8-hour day, I just don't have the creative energy it takes to blog. Yes, I know. You people with multiple children at home must really be feeling sorry for me right now.


Today I am going to try to make Herbed Bulgur-Lentil Pilaf and cook up some Tempeh to go with it. No meat gloves needed today.

According to Tempeh Info Website, tempeh is "a fermented food made by the controlled fermentation of cooked soybeans with a Rhizopus mold (tempeh starter)." YUM!

I've had it before. It is good. I swear, one of these days I'll become a vegetarian.

WWYD

WWYD = What would YOU do?


Ethical dilemma #1

I buy my shampoo and conditioner from this online store - Folica.com. Hashem, the guy who cuts my hair (my stylist?) got me hooked on this Italian brand of hair care products - Davines. I know, I know.... you wouldn't look at me and think that I buy fancy-shmancy European shampoo, but I do. Just one of the many contradictions that makes me who I am.

They were having a big sale so I bought a bunch of shampoo and conditioner at once. One of the plastic conditioner bottles cracked and leaked all over the box when they shipped it. I called them and they told me to return the broken bottle. I returned it with the packing list and filled out the information on the back to let them know that it was damaged during shipping. I checked the box on the form that said I wanted a refund instead of an exchange, because I didn't need them to ship me another bottle.

The packing list that I sent back showed a quantity of four, which is the original quantity that I ordered. But I only returned one broken bottle. They have credited my credit card for all four bottles, instead of giving me a credit for just the one that I returned.

Should I call them to let them know that they made a mistake?

I could rationalize that it was the company's error and therefore not my problem. If their employee made a mistake and entered my return incorrectly, that is their issue. Why should I have to expend any energy to correct it? I didn't do anything to actively try to deceive the company, so it isn't stealing, right?

Or I could say that it just isn't right that I got something that I didn't pay for. I have the three other bottles of conditioner and I should pay for them. It won't take that much for me to just call them up and let them know their mistake.


Ethical dilemma #2

I went to Target to try to find something to better organize the top of our desk. I found a wire organizer that I thought would work well. Then I noticed that it was damaged - one of the corners was bent out of shape. It couldn't be fixed, but it was still perfectly usable. I asked an employee if there was a discount on it because it was damaged. He said that you usually get 10% off and they would ring it up at the register.

I brought the organizer to the check-out lane, showed the man at the register the damage and told him that I was told there would be a discount. I deliberately did NOT say that the other employee told me it was a 10% discount. He looked up the price and saw that it normally sells for $19.99. He said he could offer it to me for $9.00. I said sure!

Was it wrong of me not to tell the guy at the register that the other employee had told me 10% off?

The Target employee in the aisle told me that the discount for damage was usually 10%. He did not say that it was always 10%. Obviously the employee at the register is allowed to exercise some discretion about how much he could charge me for the damaged item. Either one of those employees could have been wrong. It was not up to me to speak up so that I get the smallest discount if Target's policies are not clearly defined, even to its own employees.

But should I have said to the employee at the register that the other employee had told me 10%, because that it was I believed to be true when I decided to purchase the item?

Shades of gray

I consider myself an honest and ethical person and I would imagine that most of us feel that way about ourselves. There are certain things that are easy to define as right and wrong.

My pocketbook was once stolen out of our booth at a trade show, while we were all right there in the booth. It made me so angry. How could a person do that and live with himself? The sympathetic, liberal in me was squashed by my inner, right-wing nut job who wanted to exact revenge on this person. I imagined all sorts of horrible outcomes for this loser who had stolen from me. Maybe he'll use my money to get a taxi that will CRASH AND BURN! Maybe he'll buy some gum and CHOKE ON IT!

I once dropped my wallet out of my car as I parked in front of my apartment in San Francisco. Later, it was returned to me by a prostitute. One of the "ladies" who frequented a nearby corner at night actually took the time to ring the buzzer to my apartment to try to find me and return my wallet. (Ah...how I miss Lower Nob Hill.)

In these two examples there is clearly someone doing the right thing and someone doing the wrong thing. It is easy to distinguish between right and wrong when confronted with big issues. Don't kill. Don't steal. Don't hurt others. Simple, right? But what about the little things that arise in our daily lives? That is where we get into shades of gray. We all draw the lines in slightly different ways to suit our own ideas about what is honest or what is fair.

I would never steal money from a person, even if they were dropping hundred dollar bills as they walked in front of me. I would also never walk out of a store with something that I hadn't paid for. But in my two dilemmas, will I let myself get away with things, just because I can? Will I let myself off on a technicality?

Discuss amongst yourselves. I'll let you know my decisions on another day.

Bug of the Week!

(Okay, so it's more like Bug of the Month, but it took me a long time to do this picture with the words and the weird font with the different colors and I'm not changing it!)


tiny, out-of-focus spider suspended above the leaves
motionless and quiet
I am tall and shaky
How can I capture your stillness?

Classy Broad

My boss gave me a bottle of champagne for New Years. I wouldn't know a good bottle of wine if you clunked me over the head with it. He collects wine, so I assumed that it was a high quality bottle of champagne.
It was Marie Stuart Champagne. My many years of French classes have finally paid off because I could translate these words on the label - "Produit de France." It means Product of France. Monsieur Lawrence would be so proud.

I wasn't planning to stay up until midnight and drinking makes me sleepy, so I decided to open it early just to have a taste. The whole cork in a cage thing was a little scary and I thought about requiring protective eye-wear for all members of the household, but I didn't think I would be able to strap a pair of goggles on the cat, so I just went forward and managed to open the bottle without maiming anyone.

Josh said, "Aren't you supposed to chill it?" It had been sitting on the counter all afternoon. He was right.

But I was too impatient. I only wanted a taste and I wasn't about to wait around for it to get cold. So I grabbed a chilled beer mug out of our freezer.

This is how we drink fine champagne in our house:

Happy New Year!

Blog filler

Some people have complained that I haven't been posting frequently enough. If you insist on quantity, you will be sacrificing quality. You'll get useless filler posts like this one.

This blog entry has no nutritional value at all. You will get absolutely nothing from reading it. Nothing in your life will change and this will have zero impact on your physical, mental or emotional well-being. Enjoy.