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.