What if you give a party and no one comes

Some days are just so blech.  Even starting with the best of intentions, no one is pleased.  So dear internet, please understand that on days like that - like today - I know that I'm the only one here, but I do wish there was someone there.  I wish I was in dialogue instead of monologue.  I need a friend on days like today.

Savor little surprises

When I was in fourth grade, I always took a Mom made sack lunch to school.   It was almost always the same, a peanut butter sandwich on Wonder Bread, a piece of fruit, and something for desert.  Lucky would be a cookie or a brownie - unlucky would be some raisins.

I'll never forget the day I thought it was one of those unlucky ones. There at the bottom of my bag was that waxed paper pouch of raisins.  These were the days before plastic zip lock - waxed paper was the wrap of the day.  I was going to give the raisins a pass - but I was hungry and decided to give in and eat them.  I grabbed a couple - tossed them in my mouth and stopped in shock.

The warm smooth flavor of chocolate spread through my mouth, along with those tangy sweet raisins.  Mom mixed chocolate chips in with the raisins. JOY!  NOVELTY! FUN!  Oh happy day - all because of a few chocolate chips.  I even went home and thanked my mom for the lunch.

Everyday, there are little surprises that lead to joy - we just have to be willing to open what seems ordinary and savor the flavors of the day.

Mean Mom

Most of my adult life, I have the icky task of being mean mom.  I am the rule setter and enforcer.  I don’t like it.  Why can’t the others set their own rules?  I first discovered this was my task when I had my first two year old.  The terrible two really start about 18 months when kids find that they want to wander but need boundaries.  If you don’t set some - they act out - a lot.  That’s the whole premise of that TV show about the nanny who fixes families.  Kids want rules.  Adults want rules.  AND they want someone to rail and rant against for making those rules.

I was reading a blog about saints - Ask Sister Mary Martha.  She was talking about mean saints - and she wrote the following:

St. Benedict was so strict with his rules that the other monks tried to kill him. A couple of times.  Ironic as his rules are based on balance, moderation and reasonableness. On top of that, the monks that tried to poison him (twice) had begged him to be their abbot and he had refused over and over again until he finally said yes.
Be careful what you wish for, monks, you might have a saint on your hands.
Perhaps you are confusing discipline with meanness, a common modern practice.

Maybe - just maybe - all Mean Moms are saints in disguise. . . .  just in case, I’m going to ask Santa for a little halo polish!

Life in 3D

My grandkids were off school today, so I ducked out of work for a couple of hours and took them to Wreck-It Ralph in 3D.  They are 4 and 11 and great fun.  I hadn't been to a 3D movie in years and years.  First off the glasses were much nicer than I remember - more like ugly sunglasses than the flimsy  paper ones I last used.  Then the effects were actually fun.  I often lost tract of the plot of the movie as I watched the effects.

I wonder how often that happens in every day life.  We lose track of the plot - or meaning - of our lives as we get lost in the dazzling special effects.  Warm family relationships are plot.  A big house is effect.  I don't want to get lost in the 3D of life and miss life.

Links to my sanity

A short list of some of the interesting things I wander to on the web:

Gratefulness dot org, is one of my go to sites for many reasons.  I can find inspiration, solace, remembrance, and peace all in these pages
http://www.gratefulness.org/index.htm

Spirituality & Practice: Resources for Spiritual Journeys - a great resource for finding information about many paths - so much information
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com

Everyday Zen
http://www.everydayzen.org/index.php

The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley - happiness documented by science!  
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu

The Contemplative Mind in Society - a really nice representation of Contemplative Practices
http://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/tree

Everyone has a story that matters.  Here is a site collecting them all.  If you don't want to share your own story, maybe you know someone who's story you think is interesting.
http://storycorps.org


The Unseen Sea - a beautiful time laspe video of San Francisco and the bay created by Simon Christen
http://vimeo.com/15069551

An interesting collection of articles and information on Mindfulness
http://www.mindful.org

Exploring

The world wide web and I go way back to ARPNET.  I used to use a teletype terminal to log into MIT to chat with the sysop there when I was a bored teletype operator for a commodities company in San Francisco in the early 1970s.  I used to play a text adventure game on line where you go into the forest, find a cottage, enter the cottage, take the lamp and the key.  Then you go find a cave, light the lamp and start to explore.  You couldn’t save your game, so I had to hope for large lumps of time with no orders.  Playing sure did speed up my typing as I raced to complete the steps I knew so that I could adventure on.

Life is a bit like that old adventure game.  There are some steps that are so familiar that they become rote.  Sometimes I race through those steps so that I can get “to the good stuff;” the new and unknown.  Mindfullness suggests that we enjoy all the parts of our life, the familiar and unfamiliar both.  We should savor each day, each action, each person we encounter.  Just as the internet has evolved, so too has my life.  It is richer and fuller and for this I’m thankful.  

As I take the lamp. . . .

Staying Positive

Life seems to go along so much better when I stay in a positive frame of mind.  Each challenge that comes along isn’t directed at me personally - it is just a bump in the road.  When I don’t take it personally, I have a much easier time trying to find solutions.  

For example, today our ice machine decided to take a break.  We are in a new plant, so there are lots of adjustments to be made.  Learning how this ice machine works is one of them.  We need the ice to keep our product and orders very cold.  We put our orders in ice chests surrounded by ice.  This keeps the fish at its best.  We work on Saturdays, so we need ice!

We tried and tried to figure out what was going wrong.  We called a repairman, who said he’d be out between 2 - 4.  The repairman showed up at 4.  He didn’t know how our machine works, but looked it over.  While testing it, the machine started making ice again.  The really nice repairman said he didn’t do anything to make it work and he didn’t charge me any fee for coming out.  Now I’m sitting waiting for the ice bins to fill up before I go home.  

A long day - but I’ve got ice!!