Things I Don't Have

I know we're going to gather together in a month or so and sit around a table and say why we're grateful for what we have. I've had a week full of unexpected happenings, most of which were not pleasant, and I am compelled to write a list of things I'm grateful I DO NOT have.

• cuts, bruises, sprains, broken bones
• offers to be taken in by lottery scams
• fist fights with siblings (or with anyone else, for that matter)
• headaches and other neurological difficulties
• change of season flu or cold
• trouble with the legal system or police department
• trouble on the job
• big debts
• child custody issues
• a shortage of people who love me

Trying to begin the weekend on a positive note. Hope you can too!

Failure, Put into Context

It is incredibly painful to be socialized with fear of failure. It is paralyzing. No logic to it. Something that is ingrained in us since we are very young. We may have been so young that we even forget who or what put it there. Embarrassment, loss of face, inability to go out in public...however you put it into words it can be devastating to experience even minor incidences of what one perceives to be a failure. And it is not enough for us, it seems, to allow our own failures to have this effect upon us. Anyone closely associated, such as a spouse or a sibling, or a child that you've reared, heaven forbid, will reflect upon you if he or she is known to have suffered a failure.

Now how do we define failure? Some examples: loss of a job, breakup of a romantic relationship, dropping out of school, behavior that is publicly deemed immoral, bankruptcy, pregnancy out of wedlock, or maybe even entering into a biracial or bicultural or homosexual partnership. If we find ourselves in such a situation, sometimes it is our own feeling about it that triggers the failure mystique, and very often the "what will people think" factor carries much more impact. Sometimes "what will people think" is the only reason we feel we've failed. How cruel to be comfortable with one's lot in life, but to feel shunned because it is not acceptable to society at large.

What we seem not to have been given, when socialized, is a set of tools to DEAL with a "fail" situation. Hanging our heads in shame, or burying them in the sand, and listening to the reproach of others is what we expect to do. Looking in the mirror and shaking our heads at the pitiful image is not going to help. Saying "I don't care anymore" and letting every other aspect of life go down the tubes is a complete abdication. So then, what WILL help?

It's scary that I hear, way too often, "things just can't get any worse." Of course they can!!! Even if you're homeless, you're still alive. If you're not homeless, you could be. If you have anyone in your life who cares about you, you're ahead of others who don't. If you know where your next meal is coming from, congratulations. If you're not imprisoned or enslaved, take a long walk and celebrate your freedom. Failure of any kind may suggest that life has become desperate, but it needs to be put into context.

Let's see failure for what it really is: an opportunity to take stock and think about things. Should you leave a particular job, relationship, home, activity, circle of friends, etc.? How can you set the stage for improving your life? Just about everyone has room for improvement. It is fairly rare to be minding your own business and be gifted with a major improvement in your life; most of the time we have to do something to make these things happen. But one thing is certain: if we just sit around and don't take any particular action, misfortunes are much more likely to happen to us. Success usually just doesn't "happen to us" as misfortune does.

So many times I hear people place blame for their misfortune elsewhere. Who cares why you're in a bad situation? Will the finger pointing and complaining do anything to drag your butt out of the quicksand? Nope. There has to come a time when you decide that you're going to grab the oars, jump into the lifeboat, and rescue yourself. Doing nothing may mean that you're going down with the ship. This might seem brave when viewed from one angle, but the result is that you'd be the captain of your own demise. Since you own the result either way, why not do better for yourself?

Leaf Me Alone!

Here's a pun to usher in autumn. It was the Cryptoquip in the October 14 edition of our town newspaper.

That guy is oddly obsessed with gathering leaves. It's what he thinks about every raking moment.

Pineapple and Celery

Last night I was lying in bed, catching up on a few magazines before shut-eye. The Turkey Day recipes in one of the mags were all shown pictorially, with the recipes to follow several pages later. They looked yummy! What a letdown. The sweet potato casserole and the carrot cake called for pineapple, which I hate. Too sour, same category of foods for me as grapefruit. Yes I realize that pineapple, with its juices, adds good moistness and texture to recipes. Seems like pineapple is in so much when you hate it. LOL. So of course I find a way to substitute applesauce or mashed banana or pureed pear or plain nonfat yogurt or something else with a milder taste.

Celery is a bit of a poser, though. I find the taste of that off-putting too, although I understand its inclusion in so many soups and casseroles -- and those recipes are in full force now too, with the cold weather upon us and Turkey Day stuffings only a month away. The color and crunchiness, plus the fact that it's actually a vegetable with negligible calorie count...yes, delightfully multipurpose. I could get away with substituting onion for some of the celery, but there usually already IS onion in those recipes. Chopped broccoli stalks? If it's a soup, chunks of cauliflower are sometimes useful. Suggestions?

Anyway, I hope you are having fun with your own fall recipes!

But We Wanted THAT One!

I'm shaking my head. I have a weekly meeting with my group on Friday afternoons after lunch. There isn't much demand for conference rooms on a Friday afternoon at the office, as you can imagine, but it's also the only day of the week when all part time telecommuters in the group are on site, and our evening technician has added two hours a week to her schedule in order to join us on Friday afternoons so we are all together once a week face to face.

This morning the lovely and polite person who handles conference room reservations sent me a note informing me that the management team is having a meeting in "our" room tomorrow afternoon and I can choose any other room in the office to relocate my meeting. Any other one! Why couldn't the mucky mucks have chosen any other room? There are two perfectly good rooms which are just as large, but they had to bump us.

I'm shaking my head and rolling my eyes to the ceiling because it's ridiculous. I'm content to move my powwow into another room, of course -- and actually I'll be happy to move it outside if the weather cooperates. There are people who would go to war over this and say what a horrible place it is to work because management doesn't give a whit for the staff and how morale is in the toilet and blah blah blah. My overarching motivations are different, and I'm not unhappy, but I completely understand why the people who can't easily expel these little irritants are being driven insane.

I'm smiling. Wryly.

Stretching a Buck

This month it's my turn to shop for the local food pantry (we rotate responsibility among a group in my office and we usually each shop once every 12 or 13 months). We generally collect about $120 each month when we pass around an envelope.

I've always shopped at the warehouse clubs, but this time our coordinator told me that the gal who runs the pantry was desperate for peanut butter. The warehouse clubs have the huge jars, and they wanted the smaller jars, so they could give a small quantity to many families. It was recommended to me to go to Walmart, because they have excellent prices on grocery items. I'd never shopped for food there -- and frankly haven't shopped there much at all -- but figured I'd give it a try.

Not only did they have the small jars of peanut butter for around $1.85-2.10 depending on brand, but they had single serve cereal boxes like COSTCO does, and the prices for the store brand really were good. (No idea whether it tastes like the store brand, but if it's the difference between someone getting more food for a hungry family, let's try it.) Going off the list I was given -- very skewed towards school age kids, obviously -- I was able to purchase all of this for $122:

• 22 jars of peanut butter
• 10 jars of pasta sauce
• 18 boxes of various Rice-a-Roni
• 24 boxes of various mac & cheese mixes
• 32 single serve cereal boxes
• 4 trays of single serve snack packs (e.g. peanut butter and cheese)

So I filled a cart with the same amount of money it takes to have a decent (not extravagant) restaurant meal for my family of five. Boy did I feel great walking out of that store, and I'm sure the gal doing the pickup on Wednesday will be pleased.

That was all done with a bunch of coworkers throwing a buck in an envelope. I know the economy is awful, but I've never had to go hungry and am grateful. Ditto on behalf of my kids. Today I clicked on two charity event links my friends had posted (e.g. Alzheimer's Walk) and made small donations. I really can make a difference as a working class schnook. Can you?