Rising to the Occasion of The Choice to Give

Today, on the way home, I pulled into my local Publix parking lot like usual.  It was 40 degrees and damp and cold out.  I had just driven in from Jacksonville.  There at the end of the island was a woman holding a child with a snow suit on.  A man stood beside her with a sign that said, "Help my family and 3 children".  The sign was made with cardboard mounted on styrofoam.  They stood, with him holding the sign and her swaying with the child who looked heavy.  He should have held the child and her the sign.  First doubt.

I proceeded to the parking area where I usually choose to park.  As I exited the car, I turned to look at the family on the island.  I was contemplating buying them a Publix family dinner.  But, after I grabbed my bags, I stood upright just in time to see the adults running and then stopping to click open the van and jump in.  The man ran back to pick up a Publix sack, then back in the van and they squealed off.  I couldn't tell if it was because he Publix staff had just walked out.

I saw a very similar group at the Fresh Market.  A woman holding a child with a sign and the tenish year old sitting in the grass just staring at the parking lot.  Her sign said simply, "Help Please".

I did give the Fresh Market lady $5.00.  But, when I saw the trio at Publix flee the parking lot, another scenario popped into my head.  It was the warning of my friends and many websites: Don't fall prey to the Gypsies!

Lain Mckell photo on modern day gypsies Huffington Post

When we were in Paris, the Gypsies were the pick pockets, the fleecers, the ones that would take what is yours without sound or feeling.  They also have good tricks.  In an earlier blog I described the ring on the ground as the "catch" to get you distracted, interested and then ask you for money - all for the very valuable but too small gold ring.  It was a very good trick.

There was no trick at Publix.  There was no trick at Fresh Market.  And I don't know who these people are or where they went after they disappeared.  They are clearly not the Tallahassee homeless people that I have seen in the past.  Most of the time the men by the interstate have one sign on cardboard and it may say "help a vet" or "why lie, I want a beer."  Before I say anything  that is construed as stereo typing, I know that homeless people come in all varieties single, families and just unlucky.  I also have met two families that thought it was okay to sit in front of the Publix and ask for organic handouts.

I am not judging the decision or desperation or whatever puts people in this situation.  But I am looking at it differently.  The Gypsies and their tricks gave me a new perspective.  People who ask for things or beg are not all crazy.  They are not all destitute.  Though begging is not a life I would want, surely it could be a choice just as much as the life of tricks and petty theft.  For some people it may actually be a choice.  For me, I can tell you it would be a very desperate situation where I would prefer to stand outside holding a child in the freezing cold, when there is a Publix that could provide shelter 100 feet away.

I did not buy the chicken dinner for the three people.  I wanted to though.  I wanted to help, which is precisely what they wanted me to feel.  I am now more skeptical.  More leary.  I am not proud of this, but I am not proud of the people who were taking advantage of those feelings with a child on curb in a parking lot.

I don't feel indifferent, but I do feel like the trick may have made it to America.

Rising to a Name

Tis but thy name that is my enemy;

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.

What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,

Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part

Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!

What's in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;

 William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet

http://www.theroseman.net/

Peggy Louise is my legally assigned name.  As a child of the 50's, it was probably a very normal name.  But, my catholic friends assumed I was really a Margaret.  After all, there was no Saint Peggy, and I am pretty sure there still isn't!

I always thought Margaret was a much more professional name.  If I were named Margaret, I wouldn't have a baptismal name different from my given name.  More importantly, I thought Margaret sounded sophisticated and Peggy sounded just fun.  Flash forward a few years, okay a few more years, I now realize the name is not what builds your character or your professional image.  Especially in the age where the cultures of the world are in every city and Indian, French, Scot, and Spanish names are all in the same room.

Since I started with an unconventional name, I did not tend toward the usual names for those I love.  I had a dog named Useless and a bird named Stitch.  My son is named Corbett, my daughter  a name that was for a car, a gun, and German, my other son, a middle name controversial in history.  Not as crazy as Moon Unit or Axle, but odd enough for their time.

Years later, when my daughter received a cat that was unsanctioned by the apartment owners, I told her she could not name him.  He would be referred to as 302 (similar to an inmate) till he was re-homed. He still is called 302. And not re-homed.

302 and Pitch Dog

302 attacks the feather toy

Recently, we were involved with a dachshund mix that is adorable and again, needed to be re-homed.  I dubbed her shrimpy and my husband named her stumpy, and we ended up calling her wiener - short for wiener dog.  I am still optimistic about the re-home thing.

Dach sun wants home

Our dog Pitch (perfect pitch or pitch black) is a product of a litter from our first family dog, Dixie.  My daughter named her first batch of Labrador puppies after North Florida counties: Bay, Calhoun, Franklin, Leon, etc.......  The second batch was random, but we ended up keeping Pitch - the black male.

So the point is that names do not improve your profession nor can they deter the attraction or affection that one has for pets.  302 was never an inmate, he is just a cat with a number for a name.

Titles are also another expression of names.  It really, truly doesn't matter what your position is, if you don't rise to fill the duties ascribed and do it with conviction.  You can be labeled Queen of First Impressions, but if you are always eating tuna at the reception desk, your title may be an inconsiderate employee.

Many companies reorganize or downsize and change a  person's title. If you are in the situation where your title is changed, (maybe your duties are too, but not always), don't let that affect your contribution and your work efforts.  There were many years in government that I was called "Senior Management Analyst 3" or "Government Operations Consultant Manager II".  What ever do those titles say about what one does?

I choose to use my position and my person-hood to define my job.  Not my title.  For surely, it is obsolete as the work changes and without the redefinition  of my position on a continuous basis, it cannot reflect my efforts.  In lieu of a dynamic working title, I make my pronouncement with certainty and steady embrace of the things that I know I can do; and I try very hard to let go of the things that might be better accomplished by another.  The name isn't what really matters, its your performance and your attitude.

Naming the cat 302 no more made him unloved, than naming me Peggy made me less professional.  Naming Pitch didn't stop the grey from growing into his  black fur.

Security is who you are, what you can do; how you can present that information is all up to you.  Professionally, personally and with your animals.  I wish you a secure and prosperous new year, no matter your name and no matter your title.

Rising to the New Year's Resolve

I awoke this morning ever so thankful that I did not have a headache or other ailments related to over imbibing, as many others will do.  I did actually stay up to see New Year's Day this year.  Usually, I am in bed by ten.  But I stayed up to ponder as the entire neighborhood was launching firecrackers small grenades and sleep would not be forthcoming.

I thought about all the things I want to do this year: renovate the house, plant a new garden, finish the cottage at the farm, save more towards retirement, help the kids with college, travel back to Normandy France and maybe Italy.

cottage being moved to the farm

I thought about the personal goals: lose weight, eat fewer processed foods, drink less, exercise more.  Meet Peggy Ball (there is another one).  Learn something new and get involved with a community group.  Probably one my mother in law would not approve of, League of Women Voters and one she would, the Senior Center (gosh they have a lot of classes to choose from!).  I would really like to keep up my French learning as well.

Put work in perspective.  While work is important, it is not the reason I am here.  My work contributes to the work of others and is supportive.  I am not the rocket scientist, doctor or IT person, but I am the one who makes sure the rocket scientist has the tools they need.  Budget, purchasing, contract management, finance, investments, 401k's, credit cards.  Not the stuff of legends, but the grease that makes legends happen.  I want to contribute, but I don't want to be consumed.

Lunch with family

Lunch with co workers

As usual, my Publix Grocery Store provides opportunities to meet friends and old friends.  Ran into a former co-worker the other day and we chatted up retirement, traveling and getting together for lunch.  I want to do that.  I am going to work on not just saying, let's do lunch, but actually doing it.
My friend Caroline is the best at trying, even when she doesn't get accepted.  Go Caroline!

So, my home, my family, my friends, my self, and my community.

what counts

My goals this year are to take better care of me, so that I can take better care of others.  I think that is simple enough to not overwhelm, keep in mind, and with a little perseverance, actually achieve.

Rising to the Occasion of the Empty Office Halls

I love the empty office during the holiday weeks.  The halls are quiet and the well trodden carpet can absorb the little noise that drifts down the halls.


I can focus on my office and spend some desperately needed time cleaning and uncluttering the desk, credenza, table and the bookshelf ( I am sure that I had a great reason for saving this, blackmail? documenting some momentous event? cool doodles on the side?)

It is a time to look at the plant given me the week I started seven years ago.  The poor thing would appreciate a tad of fertilizer and a serious trimming.  It is amazing that it has lived this long in a little bowl with no drain and artificial light.  The rings on the desk where the water missed the bowl could use a shining as well.


The positive thing is that the coffee pot is not emptied before you get back, but the burners are turned off by the over protective secretary down the hall.  Geez, we can't have the coffee sit for too long or the building burns down? (does she know I am the fire captain for my area?) I hear her at the receptionist telling her how the coffee pot was full and no one is drinking it and it is such a waste.  The funny receptionist goes on and on about Christmas dinner and the presents her mother gave to the children and nutcrackers are still real in her family and the nuts are really still cracked and the children don't appreciate where all the nuts come from.......  The secretary leaves to get tea.  I will have to remember that strategy.

Since the phones aren't ringing and the internet is faster, I am pretty sure that the amount of real work getting done or left to do is not the issue of the day.  The real issue is that "I am here and others are not.  So, since I have made this monumental sacrifice to stay, I just get to do the office version of couch surfing when the phone doesn't ring" kind of attitude.  People aren't overly engaging, unless you are unlucky enough to run into the secretary or the receptionist.

Lovely though, is the bathrooms are clean and stay that way. And also,the kitchen is clean and sort of stays that way after I load the dishwasher.

I did get time to do the extra thinking, to watch that training video that I have put off for three weeks.  I listened to the the budget class that I paid for, but did not actually watch. caught up on the fleeting last minute to do lists that were left undone by December 23rd ( and we did not get any of that done yet still).

And the best part of the empty office is that I break out my Christmas leftovers and pop them in the microwave and eat them with aplomb.  I savor the sweet potato chipolte dish that I made and no one else liked.  I warm the feta scones that were extra and a piece of ham that was set aside (by me!). And I can eat without a phone or a person asking me something and I am actually reading and enjoying the time.

Yep, Christmas week at work, almost like an extra gift!

Rising to the Occasion of Yuletide Presents and Baking

Tonight, I pulled the two, go to, Bakers on my list for Cookies that express my feelings.  My two favorites are Martha Stewart and Joy the Baker.  And pistachios and chocolate are the things they have in common.  I love working with both of those in the holiday  baking efforts!

Planning ingredients and number of bags and tins that I will prepare, I stop to ponder some of the best gifts that I have received in holidays past.  Food for sure, there is someone who gives me homemade fig preserves every year and I love it.  But this is the "best column" that does not include gifts from children or husbands, not rings from grandmothers, or family heirlooms.

No, I mean gifts from friends or co workers that really strike a chord.

The presents that I use the most are sort of simple and so easy!  First, is an initialed  leather manicure kit that came from a mail order catalog that I normally would associate with old people ( I get to say that now!).  It is from a friend that I don't see anymore, but I think of her with every trip, when I pack the little kit. Thanks you Laura!

The next is an MP3 player with music on it.  I love that little orange thing.  And someone else taught me how to use Amazon music to download new tunes.  You have no idea how many different dancers I have been, Ginger Rogers, Christina Aguilar, Charo, Shakira or Patty Cantu.  The friend who gave me that, gave me so much happiness.  Floors have never been mopped with such enthusiasm or rhythm.  thank you Tami!
The last is the gift card.  True confessions, I give my gift cards to charity.  I am blessed with a job that gives us cards for the holidays, so I give the excess to charity in honor of someone else.  The Children's Lighthouse is just down the road from me.  I got this idea from a friend who gave me a gift from Heifer International.  How many times do you get to say someone gave you chickens in a flock for Christmas!

I know they are simple, but simple counts.  Especially, when needing a set of jumper cables, which is not something that you contemplate when it is an emergency.  And my brother is the jumper cable King.  He gave them to me and all of my children in a nice little bag for our cars.  And actually taught me how to use them as well. Gifts that keep on giving, I can tell you, I have loaned them more than used them. Thank you Charles Bawl!

Not knowing the people that I am baking for (my husband's co workers), I am forging ahead with my Martha Stewart and Joy the Baker recipes. Because I don't know this crowd well enough to know that they would like a monogrammed anything.

My thought is to try your best, keep it simple and then stand back and let the season happen. the  beauty of the holiday is that it passes and no one says, "oh no, it is not time for cookies".  

I have a correction to make.  While the yuletide spirit of recognition for Mike giving me the Heifer gift was indeed my memory, it is incorrect.  Mike gave me a local food bank gift.  I had the thought right, but the gift wrong.  So thank you Mike.  and Thank you Heifer.  I am still buying chickens for the people in Ecuador...  And you inspired that.

Update, I used the other gift that keeps giving tonight, the Christmas measuring spoons. Pistachio smoked salt dark chocolate cookies and of course those Chocolate Pistachio biscotti!

Update Two: those Christmas measuring spoons give again with the feta scones!

Rising to the Challenge of the new Intimacy

The very nature of the modern world is to be anonymous to most, known to a few, and understood by fewer.  Or at least is what it used to be.  Now, I think intimacy is changing to reflect the technology and the way we communicate.  We can be intimate and outrageously public at the same time.  We can reveal in an un revealing way.  Conversely, some levels of intimacy and its opposite, anonymity are quite the same. 

Recently, I hired a Ted Talks speaker for an event and the speaker requested a car transport from the airport.  I assigned my assistant to be the chauffeur of the day and concluded that we were all set.  Wrong wrong.  The speaker said no, that would not do, as work needed to be done privately, so she would need a hired driver and car.  

(This is an ad with credit to the creator so hope it is fine).

At first I was offended, after all it was my assistant, and she is loyal and dedicated.  And then I started to ponder why this is so critical. On the surface, the speaker knows neither the hired chauffeur or the assistant.  But the assistant has a relationship with me, the one paying the speaker.  So there is an implied intimacy, that might require conversation between them, or more stressful, the assistant hearing conversation that the speaker did not want shared with the payer.  So if true anonymity is the desired affect, the having the implied intimacy of my assistant is not acceptable.

This made me think of the intimate moments on elevators.  You cannot get much closer than a packed elevator, and yet our intimacy is usually shared with silence, heads down, eyes trying to avert.  Touching and trying ever so hard not to touch.  Breathing and hoping not to smell anything or anyone.  We want to be anonymous. Not intimate.  So what makes a moment intimate or anonymous?  How do we look at the communications and tell?  Starting with the traditional definitions, Intimacy conjures up images of mothers and babies, lovers, secrets, secret lovers, pillows, diaries and so much more...

in.ti.ma.cy   is defined as: 1. The condition of being intimate. 2. An instance of being intimate. and then there is intimate, which is a verb and an adjective...  as you will see in the link to the definition.  But for our purposes (this is not a grammar lesson), we shall address intimate as the adjective....

intrinsic, essential belonging to or characterizing one's deepest nature

• marked by very close association, contact, or familiarity
• marked by a warm friendship developing through long association
• suggesting informal warmth or privacy 
• of a very personal or private nature

So the two descriptions work together as one describes time and one describes action or substance.  Intimacy can be a one time car ride (as can anonymity) or intimacy can be a long term sharing or revealing.  I tend to think of intimacy as a revealing of an private or personal matter, one that I hold dear, but that is an old fashioned view of intimacy.  For the moments on the internet and the theatre screens that I have cried over someone's joy or tragedy were just as intimate, but the other party does not know that.  Just I do.  Which brings me to the internet as an intimate forum.

There is much ado about postings on social media and how the "youth" are revealing their inner most secrets on the internet.  And I am sure that there are many moments that one would wish that they had not memorialized on their Facebook pages.  But truthfully, those moments of sharing are not intimate at all.  In fact, I would think they are more intended to be personal, but lose the intimacy in the blatant exaggerated boast.  If the internet didn't exist, these are the kids who would climb the water tower and paint their name, or race loud cars down the road, or wear ultra tight or revealing clothing to announce their presence.

But the internet does offer the true opportunity to be revealing and intimate at the same time.  I have family and friends with real issues such as medical problems or difficult spouses or loneliness who are  truly sharing intimate thoughts and feelings with those they intend to read them, but also 500 of those peoples' closest friends.  The fact that the others see the post does not negate the intimacy of the moment. or the photo. or the feeling of the intended reader.

So does it diminish the experience for the person sharing as long as the intended has read it and responded?  No.  I don't think it does.  And here is why.  Within two seconds of seeing a post, you have figured out if it matters, if it is interesting and if you care enough to look at the whole thing.  the information being intimate and personal for another is gleaned by the reader and they are moving on if it doesn't apply to their life.  Example, my friends could be posting about a funeral of a former co worker, but if my French class buddies see it, they are moving on down the scroll.  They will not dwell where they do not receive the feed back that this pertains to them.

So, announce away your blood test results or your GRE score.  Most people won't care.  Most people, especially if you have "friend-ed" hundreds will not see it.  Algorithms changed all that. Google makes a living knowing and selling that.  Take care and post away.

Rising to the Good Doctor Appointment

Recently, I went with my mother (and father) to the doctor.  I had somehow psyched my self into believing that this would be a momentous occasion for medicine.

Turns out that it is three pills at 8:30 a.m

Inflammation that went on too long and white cells started attaching so vehemently that they started being more of a problem than an asset.

So here is my take away from the doctor visit:

Are you a doctor or nurse practitioner or pharmacist?  if not, don't freak out and search the web and come to your own random conclusion. Do perform research, do be informed. symptom checker.

 Don't panic.  I cannot tell you how many diseases my friends have diagnosed themselves with.  Even comedians make fun of their friends who have every weird disease in the book or the disease of the day.


Are you going with someone else to be the support?  Take notes.  That person will be in the more tense position.  They may not be concentrating on anything but the verdict.  So, be helpful and take notes of the peripheral conversation. And of course, don't forget to share with the patient!

Be fun.  NO, REALLY, be FUN.


The big fun at this visit was a sign that said," botox injections" at the proctology office.  (NOT HAPPENING!)  I had to ask the nurse, does anyone ever ask for botox in this office, seriously?  She turned and looked at me and said,"you can see who are patients are."  nuff said.

The nurses and doctors have a tough job, tight schedules.  When they meet you be appreciative, be a good listener, compliment their smile, patience, concern.  Sometimes, I even compliment the furrowed brow, telling them their concern is appreciated.  Notice the wedding ring or the children photos, and ask if they are or where they are.... ask how their children are.  Make it personal. Make it very personal. It is the best way to get them to focus on you and yours in a day full of the same patients.

My father doesn't like having to be the pill monitor and the dishwasher and the morning cook.  He is a 1950s husband used to having dinner prepared and served.  I am sure everyone has their own perspective on that.  But, most would be happy that their partner is there.  That they can be in charge, even if they don't want to be.  And grateful that they are able.

At least that is the discussion in my house.  I hope my husband steps up to do my medication.  And I hope I never need it.  And I hope I am there for my parents.

PS Had the follow up doctor appointment today.  Mom is a non-compliant patient, who did not take the meds as she was told.  So she is trying again.  And my father who is a monitor of sorts is once again tasked with helping her remember. Neither wants to be compliant and neither wants to be in the doctor office anymore. Geez, Louise.....