Loving the Elevator

I come from an office where everyone is convinced that they will lose weight by taking the stairs instead of the elevator. While in general and especially if you work, say on the 18th floor I would agree with this theory, the truth is that even though I work on the third floor and can easily make the trek, I love the elevator too much to give it up. I love pressing all th buttons like that scene in Elf. I love that no matter what it arrives in thirty seconds or less to my floor. I love the dings and zings and truly, I don't think I weigh a pound more for not giving up my daily ride. Riding the elevator does not negate the breakfast burrito. It makes my day more interesting and fun. If only they would put a carosel in the basement and miniature golf on the roof.

Compulsive Blog Spying , Connect

New technology brings with it new ailments. Carpel tunnel syndrome is a direct result of computer overuse. I confess that due to this blog I have found a new ailment. CBS. Compulsive blog spying. Here is how you too can get this easily treatable disease. At the top of this blog is a button labled "next blog". Hit it. Once. That's it.
It will take you to a randomly selected blog somewhere in blogsplot land. I love this. The randomness, the amazing knowledge of a topic I didn't even know that I wanted to learn about. I can find recipes for asian food dishes I didn't know existed, a woman's breast cancer diary, a college student's tales from a trip to Germany, fashion tips from a crafty girl in Austrailia and baby photos from a new mom in Tenessee. There are art blogs, poetry blogs, religious blogs. The possiblities are endless and exciting. It connects me with my belief that we are all connected. We all have something to share. We are all human and despite the fact that you grew up in a hut in Jamaica or a mansion in Connecticut that there are human experiences that defy any other thing that we do not have in common.
Yesterday I was picking up some pottery in a store I hadn't been to in months and met two new friends. After an hour I was laughing, they were laughing and we were each looking at the world a whole new way. I believe that it is these small interactions that really make the grand impact. It connects us to each other and to the greater world. We all matter. We all have something worth saying. We just need to share and listen to each other. We need to dare to connect.

My Vacation Self

My husband and I returned from a blissful, relaxing vacation. It was a caribbean island. Warm people, cold drinks. We spent all day in the water. Ocean to pool to shower to pool. It is amazing how much you can do when you don't have to do work all day. Unbelievable. I find that I was full of energy, waking up at 6am just dying to go try something new, learn to do some dance, make some craft, meet some new person.

After three days I feel like a whole new person. I don't use profanity. (it does help that there are no jughandles here). I am relaxed person who is mellow and calm. A person who doesn't worry about work or what chaos will ensue in the office (let's face it, the chaos will surely outlast me). I am swimming and laughing and learning to sail.

I eat strange tropical fruits for breakfast and spend each early evening watching birds fly by or the sun set. We eat outside and walk barefoot on the sand. We make lots of new friends.

I want to be My Vacation Self all year long. I will make a dedicated effort to not let the grouchiness of my clients wear off on me. I will try to smile more and drink more fruity tropical drinks all year round.

Simple Things

In this time of spending carefully I find it nice to know that there are plenty of simple pleasures that don't break the bank. My husband and I went to Five Below and bought a tone of fun things including a hula hoop and a set of badminton rackets and birdies. While it was mildly embarrassing to learn how bad we are at this simple game, we enjoyed just being outside, swatting at a plastic birdie and watching the purple sun set behind the trees.

Sometimes I catch myself becoming "too" adult. Here are a few signs.

If you buy the Sunday newspaper but haven't read the comics you might be losing your childish edge. If your dinner comes with a free desert and you refuse it, you might be getting up there in mindset. If you have access to a pool and don't go in because the water is below 79 degrees, it is time to reevaluate. If you can't remember the last time that you laughed just remember, this is not incurable.

Take off your shoes. Play in the grass the sand the puddle. Draw with crayons, markers, chocolate pudding (on plastic of course). And smile. Swing on a swing. Pet a kitten. Wear fun colors. Ride a bike. Really live every sweet moment.

Tea'd Off

Okay, so I had a bad day. And for a fact I know that I am not the only one. A short list includes the darling woman at the Nordstrom Cafe that took my pear and bleu cheese salad order amid a crazy rush, the lady that does traffic on my radio station because she said she was, and the guy changing his tire on the shoulder in a suit in 100 degree humid hot ickiness. But I have to tell you about my experience in Tea Hell.

My friend J.P. has a birthday coming up. Now J.P. has fine tastes so I love shopping for him. I usually end up in a high end store scoping the clearance items for a monogrammed luggage tag or something. Well this year for his birthday I outdid myself. I found the perfect gift on eBay (he won't care trust me) and wanted to add just one thing more. I know he likes this tea they sell by the ounce as if it were gold so while I was waiting for my salad I went to this Tea shop. I tasted the sample of Jasmine Green Tea mixed with Rooibis tea. It was smooth and light, and supposed to reduce stress so I had two tiny plastic cups.

The salesgirl came by and asked if I needed help. I asked if I could buy a small amount of tea. "Well," says Miss Know It All "We (as in the Tea Gods or her in her 18 year old worldly experience) don't recommend just three ounces (the minimum) as it only makes about five cups of tea. You can get two half pounds ..... " She went into the detailed special which included buying about $39 worth of tea. I stopped listening at this point. I bought a pound of tea over a year ago becuase the shop is two states away and has the best Jasmine Earl Grey and I have not come close to finishing it.
When I then said I was interested in the sample she made it clear (as if I was somehow slow to understand not just ignoring her obnoxious sales technique) that it was combination of two teas and I could not get the same health benefit from just one tea. I really wanted to buy three ounces of tea but I know she would have tried to sell me the empty tin can and the frequent tea buyer card. I know myself well enough to know she was worse than the salesguy in Love Actually who spends three hours wrapping the heart necklace and I would just completely lose it there in the relaxing tea shop trying to by stress reduction tea for my friend. I walked out.

J.P. got a ziploc baggie of unknown ounces of Jasmine Earl Grey. And a good laugh.

Who ever becomes a ballerina or a fireman?

The other day in church the youth group spoke about using your talents. I have to admit that hearing an idealistic teenager speak about the purpose of their future life gets me every time.What did you want to be at five years old? At ten? At eighteen?

And how close did you get?

I suppose it also matters what scale of "success" you are shooting for, whether it is the scale of how others see you or what kind of person you are and how you touch the world.

There is a song by Switchfoot that has the lyric "This is your life, are you who you want to be?"

Pretty powerful. It chokes me up every time I hear it.



When I was five I wanted to be Wonder Woman. When I was ten I wanted to be a writer. When I was eighteen I wanted to be a teacher.

I have been a High School English teacher.

I am a published author but still strive to find my voice and use that talent more.

Anyway, I got to thinking about how I got from dreams of being a teacher to working in an office with numbers and 401k's and health benefits.

Who among us becomes the exact dream that they imagined at five? How did we go from wanting to be a movie star to getting up, driving to work with one hand on the horn and sitting at a desk being um, in my own words, mediocre?

When I truly think about who I am and some of the amazing things that I have done to save myself and save others, the truth is I am Wonder Woman. Too bad I only get to wear the costume one day a year.

Good Will Savings

I credit my creative thriftiness to my father. He grew up on farm in Jersey where he worked from the age of twelve. He had three shirts in high school, one red one blue and one green. My father was smart and savvy with his money. And while I also inherited his pack-rat capabilities, it is amazing what you can reuse if you keep stuff long enough. Two years ago it was smart and quirky to shop thrifty. Now it is downright necessity. A friend of mine recently told me "forget being in the black, everyone that I know is just trying to get back from a mound of debt to a nice even zero."

Good Will and Salvation Army are two of my favorite stores. As a rule major chains like Target donate a lot of post season surplus so be familiar with their seasonal merchandise because then you will recognize it. I have scored pocketbooks, wrapping paper and baby gifts with the tags on at my local Good Will. I always shop February and July for men's clothing. Every single man gets a ton of shirts and sweaters for Christmas and Father's day that are not his style or size (medium, sure!) and they arrive unworn.
When we visit my brother-in-law and his wife I am always amazed at what different things are in their Sally's (what we call the Salvation Army because his grandma used to deceive her husband into thinking it was a department store). We get tons of household trinkets there, ceramic planters, shelving, etc.
My favorite thing to scope out are 1980's floral rayon dresses. I usually pay about three to seven dollars a dress and can wear them to church or work. I get tons of compliments and they are comfortable and easy to wash. And when I pay less than ten dollars an outfit, I can stretch the rest a lot further.

Queen of the May!

Happy May Day!

I have long celebrated May Day (not because I am either Pagan or Communist as some who look at those who have historically marked this day) but because it is often mentioned in British poetry.



"But I must gather knots of flowers

And buds and garlands gay,

For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother,

I'm to be Queen o' the May!"

-Alfred Lord Tennyson


I have even had May Day's where I have actually danced around a May Pole. One year in 4th Grade we learned it in gym class. I think it was because we were learning about the Renaissance but any excuse to get out of floor hockey was welcome.

Another year they had a festival in Tuckerton, NJ when I was on Long Beach Island for vacation. They had a bunch of us at the street fair join in and attempt the dance.

What I will tell you about that dance is that it must be done by professionals, when the rest of us attempt it, it tends to look a lot like what would happen if you drank a few pitchers of Sangria and tried to rig up Christmas tree lights.

To celebrate May Day I went for a walk early this morning. I saw bouncing robins looking for the worms that thrive near the water spout. I fed a peanut to the the chipmunk that lives near the mailboxes. I breathed in the morning and felt how good it is to be alive.
Then I returned home to drink tea and read poetry while wearing my May Day wreath of flowers. Most delightful.

Mediocre is the new Black

I don't know if it all started in kindergarten exactly but the truth is that I had the coolest kindergarten teacher ever. It was her first year teaching and her name was Miss Swansen. I am pretty sure she would still remember me. I was an A student right out of the gate. Whether it was picking up those paper-clipped nose fish with a magnet fishing rod or building block towers, I was an ace. I had my lapses of course, thank goodness they did away with handwriting in the fourth grade because it was bringing down my average. And mind you I wasn't one of those girls like Lisa Cookson who would argue a 98 to 100.



Flash forward 35 years and I am sitting here baffled by the fact that I am a solid C minus employee. And I am learning day by day to be okay with that. Considering that in my last job I was a solid D, I feel this is a minor improvement. The other girls in my "class" at work seem to think I know a lot more than they do but the truth is that I have made a lot of mistakes, not all of which can be linked directly to the fact that I was never really trained. It's hard complicated work that deals with details of taxes and benefits and small details that are easy to misinterpret. I asked for help via email today and the person in charge of answering sent me a four hundred page manual.



I don't want to be a D employee but I credit some of my original school success with my teacher's dedication and willingness to help. If I struggled with a subject, I learned to stay after school to get it right. Teachers were always available and willing to help.
At my current work environment when I asked a question about how to do something complicated I was told by my supervisor to "look it up on the internet."
Now in the working world, "after school help" is paid at time and half. So why is this a bad thing? We have some deadlines coming up and no one at my work seems concerned. I am keeping my mouth shut and my hand down. Mediocre is the new black.

Trial by Fire

Okay so today was my first week at the new job. I had been promised a week of training at a nice hotel which got changed to "please come in Monday to the office, we need you."

My urge to flee this ultimate chaos is strong. I walked in on my first day and my supervisor was not at work. My boss was not at work. The person who was to teach me was not at work. A very nice woman named Cindy who was hired exactly one week before me spent five minutes giving me her very detailed notes on the computer software which she had just acquired.
And then I was pretty much on my own. You have got to be kidding me. Even my mother was shocked. She said to me "That's ridiculous, they just let anyone open their own business, huh?" The answer is yes, actually, they do. I have no idea what I am doing and the girl I replaced messed up 95% of the accounts I am taking over. But on the bright side no one is concerned with my computer skills, everyone in the office is supernice and my boss is not a malicious jerk.

Chinese Laundry

My husband and I did wash today and the truth is that there are few things in life that go together as well as a laundromat and a chinese food restuarant next door. Seriously. You have to wait while you do your wash and you are probably going to get hungry so how convenient is it to be able to put your wash in and wander next door for some pork lo mein?

I remember when I was first out on my own working two jobs, substitute teacher by day and waitress at um, Cordially's by night. Some days I couldn't make it to the laundromat by closing and I would wash my uniform by putting it in the bottom of the shower and stamping on (like that I Love Lucy where she stamps on the grapes) while the shampoo ran over it. And of course it kinda showed and my boss would always harp on my permanent chocolate sauce stains. Of course that was before I found L.A.'S Totally Awesome. I am not being paid by them but you will hear me speak of this product often. I believe it is actually some sort of professional grade degreaser combined with a stain remover. My friend Joseph and I actually call each other up with new uses for this cleaning product and say things like "hey, I had this old fork with some balsamic dressing dried on it and I soaked it in Awesome and it is perfectly clean." These are the things that make me smile after a long day at work

Oh, I have simple dreams, simple things I long for, like my owen washer and dryer. But for now I will be content to eat my lemon chicken while the clothes dry.

I got a job, do I want a job?

I am happy to report that I have successfully skated out of the old job early on a Friday to drive an hour and half to interview at 6pm on the night that a horrible hurricane force storm is due to arrive. I have a gift for this sort of drama I suppose. I don't understand how regular ordinary folks who don't get a ton of sick days can call out of a current job to interview without anyone suspecting. I interviewed for the current job at Totally A Jerk Company after I had a tooth extraction and had driven home, changed, overflowed the toilet (don't ask) and driven and hour. Desperation makes me prone to making bad decisions. I am sure this applies to other areas of my life as well but none more so than the job scene. Anyway, so my new boss is super relaxed and calm which seems good. He said that I would start with a full week of training on the new computers that they just acquired and I am excited about that. I am just glad to be out of the old place. I handed in my notice today and my Jerk boss actually mocked surprise and said he was sorry to see me leave and hoped I would consider staying. Oh, okay, just because you were so nice to me and always told me "thank you" for my hard work and gave me a huge Christmas bonus and... oh wait, none of that never happened, so that would be "no."

Symmetrical Muffins

Today I went to the spa. This little oasis of peace in the midst of the chaos of my life is so wonderful. I haven't been to many spa's but I am sure that this one is one of the best. They have this quiet room where you sit in a bathrobe and drink hot chocolate and tea. They have tiny vegetable wraps and chicken salad sandwiches as well as cookies and muffins. Soft new-agey music plays and it is quiet and safe.
I book my massage late in the day and often go early to sit in that room for as long as possible. When I am having dental work or am on public transportation the vision of this room is where I go in my mind. Today while I was sitting there a woman came out and rearranged the cranberry orange muffins so that they were symmentrical. It pleased me immensely to think that I was so important in this world of the spa that they thought to have a special person just to rearrange muffins so it would be visually pleasing. And then after sitting on an Alice in Wonderland sized couch and just being for as long as I wish, I get to get an hour long massage. It is nice to have gentle hands on my back after the harsh words of the world surround me during the day.

Census Humor

I come from a long line of rule-followers. I missed that gene pool somehow. I am no criminal but I am more the type that will interpret the rules. Now my mother, Jane, is a serious rule-follower and will lend her own humor to this blog without even trying. See my brother John and I were talking about the Census. John is mentally ill and lives with three other men in a supervised living situation. I told my mother that John told me he got his Census and mailed it in like the responsible citizen that he is. Her response? "Well how could he mail it in already? It asks how many people will be living there on April 1st and it's not April 1st yet? I filled it out and am waiting." Now THAT is a rule-follower. She doesn't want to lie and if she has a catastrophe that renders her in hospital care it specifically states that you should not be listed so she will wait. And I bet you she will not leave that to her perfectly capable mailperson to pick up. She will drive to the office with the sweetest postal staff north of the Mason-Dixon line and trust them to take it from there. For me a Census only reminds me of the Nativity Story and how Mary had to travel all that distance very pregnant and in discomfort all for the sake of numbers and taxes. Myself, I am not a rule-follower and am proud of it. I will mail my Census but I cannot take it quite as seriously as the rest of my family.

Seeking employment

I have been hunting for a new job as the office that I work for is run by a tyrant with a serious case of what I like to call short-man complex. He is short and is trying to compensate by abusing power. He took me in his office last week and presented me with an entirely altered employment agreement with a lesser salary and not even two full weeks vacation. Um, we work in human resources buddy, are you serious? I really am a good employee. I come in on time and leave late and do the best work that I can. Clients love me because I spoil them by doing so much extra to explain things and help them out. And this is how you treat me?


How does everyone else do it? What about those people that work twenty five years for a company and don't even get so much as a donut on their way out the door after being pink-slipped? My mom used to work in an office where people got "boxed". Human resources brought you a box, watched you gather your personal items in it and walked you out to your car after your job was eliminated. This form of degradation is not only wrong but just plain mean.

I shouldn't have stayed with this employer this long but I admit that in tough times it can be difficult to get out of a difficult situation. I really feel for people that are trapped working in abusive environments. I was reading the want ad's from this weekend's paper and some of them just make me laugh.

"Managers wanted for fun company with style and flair, call Jim"
This is a front for a pyramid type job such as Amway. Called it years ago in my curious youth. The names change each week, Jim, Mary which is code to the person answering the phone as to what ad in what area you answered.


"Candidates for all opportunities must have open scheduling flexibility to include weekends, holidays and evenings." That was at a furniture store chain. Who could possibly commit to that?

This was also one of my favorites "Group home manager" (Which was confidential for what reason, so the poor people in the group home didn't know how little the staff was paid?) Supervise the daily operations of a group home for individuals with developmental disabilities. 24-hour on-call responsibility. Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience, including supervisory skills, required. Experience with behavioral issues a plus. Excellent benefits. Salary mid to low 30's. Must have valid driver's license. Fax resume to...
You may as well advertise that as a volunteer job with the potential for a huge personal lawsuit and no chance of paying off your student loans.


And my personal favorite in the "Good luck with that one" category is
Helicoptor flight instructor. X company is looking for a Helicoptor flight instructor to implement its training program. Must live in Anytown, NY or neighboring area, be proficient in Portuguese and English, have vast experience in flight training & be experienced in twin engine helicoptors. Preferably Z brand. Please send resume to...
Are they serious?

Here I am world!

Starting a blog is a bit like being born or falling in love. People who have survived it can tell you all they want about the science and the medicine involved but to true poets and romantics it is all about the unseen miracle.
I admit putting pen to virtual paper because despite the fact that I have kept a diary for over 28 years and always dreamed of being a writer, I confess to sharing very little with the outside world. I have chosen not to limit myself to one topic as you never can tell just where each path with lead. I will share bits of my original diaries but as they are somewhat lacking in interesting content I will try to keep the quotes relevant.
Whether you are a friend or a random stranger who somehow found my words through the miracle of random chance and Internet searches I invite you into my world. I wish to inspire you to live like Linda Jensen, not because I am a prophet or a saint or a visionary genius, but because I am exactly like everyone else. I am human and wish to inspire you in whatever place you are to connect with my humanity and laugh and cry about it all. Because the truth is that if I can't share it and laugh about it then it isn't really worth doing.