Same Work, Different Rules

Remember when self-employed meant you owned your own store or landscaping business? In the days after the industrial revolution people got themselves a job and ticked off the time until they got that gold watch to celebrate 20 years of dedicated service. The recessions of the 70s, 80s and 90s coupled with a steady decline in America as a manufacturing nation saw a change in how people planned their careers. People no longer expected to stay at one company for 20 years. People changed jobs based on career opportunities, available jobs with better pay somewhere else, or the chance of working for a more stable company in a time of instability, basically staying a step ahead of layoffs.

Now we’re mired in another recession; a long and scary one. Recovery hasn’t been quick or easy and many of the unemployed once sat at a lofty salary level. These successive recessions have steadily eroded the landscape of the corporate environment, well that and the escalating distrust of corporate leaders. I watched some of the health insurance hearings the other day and heard one person, the president of a health insurance company, calmly tell the panel that her base salary was $1.1 MILLION dollars per year, she received a $73,000 bonus for 2009 and she also has stock options. Does she need that much money? She’s a rock star at that salary.

But what is the answer? Contracting. I think that may be it. Basically you’re working for yourself. Imagine the freedom of signing on for a project not a life. You negotiate the deal. Maybe not every company will accept your terms but if you have enough to offer they just might. Imagine being able to say, “I only work Mon-Thu unless there is a pressing project-specific need for my time on a Friday, that time will be billed separately above the fixed project cost”, or “My business is closed July and December every year”. In other words imagine being your own boss. The requirement is that you deliver the project on time and within budget, beyond that you make the rules.

I don’t know that corporate America is quite ready to lose control at this level but if the displaced middle-managers of recent layoffs have found that they enjoy having a life more than being a corporate slave then companies may need to loosen up a bit to get the talent they need. There are benefits for the corporations as well but corporations tend to be control freaks and may not embrace the benefits just yet.

Let’s start with the sky-high cost of office space; contractors will most likely want to work from their home offices meaning less need for ever expanding offices with ever-escalating facilities fees. Reduced costs of benefits, contract workers carry their own healthcare benefits and as far as holiday pay goes, if a contractor closes for a holiday it’s on them not the hiring company to pay themselves (so budget carefully worker bees).

Here’s my personal favorite, less need for those awful all-day “teambuilding” events. Let’s face it, the fewer full-time employees the less need to hold pep rallies for them. The cost saving on this alone should make investors and the board of directors pretty pleased.

There’s even a potential for reduced HR intervention. If a contractor isn’t fulfilling the terms of the contract there is usually a 30-day clause whereby the contract can be terminated in writing by either party and the contractor and company go their separate ways, no need for delicate HR discussions behind closed doors.

Let’s not discount the benefit companies get for using minority owned businesses so every female or minority contractor is a minority business just waiting to be tapped.

In the “traditional” structure the company holds all the cards. They say how many sick days you can take, how many weeks of vacation you get, what hours you’re expected to be in the office. Doesn’t really seem fair does it? You no longer get very much in return for that type of servitude. There is no guarantee that job will be there for you in a year or even a week so why should they hold all the cards?

You may say, “as a contractor, if I don’t work I don’t get paid” yeah, but you can charge enough that those unpaid days don’t cut into your budget, you work out your pay, after all you’re the boss. So if you’ve got a contract for 10 months for $200,000 you can put it into a corporate account and then pay yourself out weekly or bi-weekly based on a salary you and yourself have agreed to.

Ahh and one of my personal favorite upsides to the whole “contracting” gig; NO DRESS CODE! I know that seems small but think about the clothes you have in your closet that you only own because they meet your company’s dress code. Certainly you’d need a couple of meeting suits and a couple of business casual outfits for the times you need to show up in an office but you’ll no longer be going to an office 5 days a week adhering to a closely monitored business casual code. Oh yuk, toss those pleat-front khakis NOW.

Most companies would also probably work more efficiently if they broke down their work to projects and then had specific project managers and the work was clearly laid out. When you have people on staff you actually need to have work for them all the time even if it isn’t work they want to do or work that even needs to get done. Contracting means people get paid for the work that needs to get done and then they go away or sign on for another project.

What’s your specialty? Are you the project manager? The one that lays it all out, parses out the budget and assigns the tasks? Then advertise yourself that way. What if you have a different specialty? Do you have a project specific task? Are you a technical writer of some sort? A training expert? Put it out there and keep growing your skills.

It isn’t much different than owning a landscape company or even the corner luncheonette. You start out that landscaping business knowing how to work a lawnmower and you have good people skills. You get a chance to do a little more than mowing lawns, you start trimming hedges, someone asks if you would plant the mums they just bought at the market and suddenly your resume grows but within the field you chose to work. Now you don’t just wield a mean power mower you can start to add landscape “design” to your credits. A neighbor sees the work you did and asks for your business card. Nice.

Or you bought that luncheonette you always wanted. Lots of hard work, health inspections and belligerent wait staff but word of mouth starts to spread that your omelets are the fluffiest or your soup really IS homemade and before you know it you’ve stretched a little in your own field. Sell yourself as a technical writer because you are but the more you do it the more you see what needs to happen to get the job done and before you know it you’re a technical project manager and you’re still selling the business you originally started.

There are so many positives for both the business and the employee that it’s tough to see a downside. Yes, the downside is drumming up the work but aren’t we all trying to do that right now anyway?

The more I think of this work model the less the old corporate model makes sense. There needs to be people attached to the company and the board of directors but maybe there doesn’t need to be as MANY people attached to that. We desperately need to change the way we work in this country, we need to re-ignite that entrepreneurial spirit in America and maybe we can start that with our own revolt against the corporate game. Imagine telling a company that is very interested in hiring you that you won’t work for them but you’ll work WITH them as your own boss.

Just shut up already

Here’s a tip folks, if you’re in a hospital day-stay unit try to talk softly. Use your inside voice. Oh you think that I’m not talking to YOU, but I am. I really am. I don’t want to be lying in a hospital bed waiting for surgery and finding out who’s living with whom and who’s not gonna have the grades to make it out of community college. I don’t want to know if you thought that Susie’s wedding was too ostentatious for your tastes.

You think this doesn’t happen; oh but it does. There I was lying alone in my little curtained off hospital bed reading my Tom Brokaw book and I couldn’t even focus on the depth of his feelings about the Vietnam War because of the loud distraction two beds away from me. From what I could tell it was a mom and her two adult children (a man and a woman) and boy could they yak.

Mom was clearly going in for hip surgery and to have some hardware removed from her knee that was no secret to anyone in a 100 foot radius. Then there was Steve and his issues with community college, good LORD that boy had better shape up and fast because he’s got that girlfriend movin’ in with him and she’s expecting big things from him and what he can provide.

At times I felt like chiming into the conversation since they were actually wrong on a couple of points and I felt the need to correct them but I kept my big mouth shut. I figured once I jumped into that pool I wasn’t gettin’ out without a life raft.

My nurse was wonderful, truly a saint and at one point she popped over to check on me. I motioned her over and whispered that those people were REALLY LOUD. She said they were the talk of the nurses’ station…and the nurses’ station was NOT nearby. Their nurse had politely asked them to tone it down twice and they never lowered the volume even one decibel so an executive decision was made to move “mom” to the pre-surgery holding area where no visitors were allowed. My nurse assured me that when I got there in an hour “mom” would still be waiting for her surgery but they had to do something. I can only imagine how loud bro’ and sis must’ve been in the family waiting area.

I must admit I thought this was brilliant and sure enough when I was brought into the holding area before my surgery I was there for mere minutes but “mom” was still there. They had told her that her doctor had suddenly gotten tied up in the previous surgery and they couldn’t bring her back to pre-op. I know that I must’ve gone under the anesthesia with a grin on my face.

I realize that a hospital is not exactly a church or a funeral home, BUT, even in the happiest of areas (let’s say the maternity ward) remember that you are in a public place, keep it down folks.

You just never know…

My dad is not someone I would ever consider a “world traveler”. In all the years I’ve known him I only remember him leaving the state we live in once, to drive to somewhere in New England (Cape Cod, I think) so we could have a family visit with my aunt (my mom’s sister) and her new husband. I don’t remember much about the trip except that my parents still seemed so young and full of fun. I remember that I had to stay with my aunt’s in-laws so the adults could go out for the evening. They were going to dinner and to see The Graduate and it was far too racy for little me to go see.

Beyond that I only recall him going on disgruntled family trips to the Shore where we would get up too early in the morning and drive too long to get there (or too long for a little kid anyway).

In thinking about this though it occurs to me that my dad was in the “Korean Conflict”. He went to Korea. He did. I know he talked about it and somewhere in all those boxes now in storage there are trinkets gathered from his time there. He may have even passed through Germany on his way to or from Korea.

After this realization I started to look at some of the older guys I run into in line at Dunkin’ Donuts a little differently. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that there are younger guys out there that have been to Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan but my thoughts here are not about war but about leaving the US. The generations that have come since Korea and Vietnam are of a generally more well-traveled group of people.

I never looked at my dad as someone who went anywhere because, well, he DIDN’T go anywhere. I also never looked at my friends’ dads as having been anywhere. I sometimes wonder if my best friend’s dad ever leaves a one mile radius of his house, I’ve never seen him further from home than that. But I’m pretty sure that he, too was in an overseas war.

Think about it, that sweet old greeter at the local Wal-Mart just may have been in Korea or Vietnam or who knows where courtesy of the US Armed Services. People didn’t travel globally the way we do now so for many people the primary way to see the world was because they joined the Army. I’m fascinated by this concept. I want to start conversations with strange men waiting in line at 7-11 (if they meet the age demographic profile) and find out where they’ve been in the world and why.

Ten years ago I had no intention of going anywhere. Instead of joining the military I joined a global corporation. I needed the job just like those guys probably needed the military benefits. I didn’t really think they’d send me away so often or so soon but they did. I bet when some young kid sees me on line at Dunkin’ Donuts on a Saturday morning they don’t think of me as a world traveler. They don’t envision me walking through downtown Tokyo on my own or watching a dog follow its owner into a porn shop in Zurich. I probably look like any other middle-class mom (and I’m not even a mom) standing in line for my iced coffee and whole wheat bagel.

You just never know where people have been but I think the most surprising ones are those sweet old guys who let you cut in front of them in line at the grocery store or suddenly offer to buy your cup of coffee for no reason. Those guys who never left the lower 48 again once they ended their military service 30, 40, 50 or more years ago have a whole stockpile of stories that I’ll just never know and some of them would probably prefer to forget those times anyway, such a shame but it’s their memories to cherish or forget.

But next time you see some sweet old guy handing you the sale flyer at Wal-Mart, or for that matter then next time you see some average looking middle-aged woman in line at Dunkin’ Donuts, take a minute to wonder where in the world they’ve been and what in the world they’ve seen, I bet you’d be surprised.

Shhh, let’s keep this one between us

You need to keep this on the down low. There’re a few little quirks I want to share with you, the subject of said quirks may not be happy having them hung out for the world to see. Let’s start with food rules. I don’t mean food RULES! I mean rules about food. Don’t get me wrong, in my little world food DOES rule! I like food, food is good and tasty and we need food to live. However other than my self-imposed dietary restraints (I’m too vain to be a fatty in my declining years) I don’t have a lot of food rules.

I like omelets for dinner sometimes. Who hasn’t happily indulged in cold pizza or pasta for breakfast? I can go through phases where I want to have French toast every single day until I’m tired of it. I’m not here to talk about MY food rules; I don’t have many of them. I’m here to talk about someone else’s food rules and if he reads this he’ll know who he is (and then get very angry at me).

Did you know that you can’t store a leftover roaster chicken vertically? That’s a food rule in my house. It’s true. I made a roast chicken a year or so ago. We didn’t eat nearly as much as I thought and I was too lazy to pick the meat off the bones so I took the whole thing and put it into a tall round container. Wow, looky that, it fit perfectly and it even took up less room in the fridge to store it vertically than if I had laid it out horizontally. Well awesome me.

Yeah, until my darling hubby came across the VERTICAL CHICKEN! I heard a groan from the kitchen. I went to check that hubby hadn’t succumbed to some horrible kitchen ailment, no gremlins in the blender or anything along those lines and found him staring at the remains of the roast chicken resting comfortably in their vertical container. He shook the container and its contents at me and asked what it was. I explained that it was leftover roast chicken to which he sighed, shook his head and looked at me pitiably. Clearly he had to explain to me that roast chicken is stored HORIZONTALLY, not VERTICALLY. There is no such thing as vertical chicken.

Breakfast foods cannot be for dinner; or even for lunch. If you’ve made it to 11AM without having your bacon and eggs then it’s time to move on and have that ham and cheese sandwich. Lunch comes with two side dishes. I don’t mean at the diner…I mean EVERYWHERE. You can have a sandwich and soup and chips or you can have a sandwich with soup and salad or a pickle and cole slaw but lunch comes with two sides. Go figger. I thought lunch was whatever you could grab and eat to stop being hungry until dinner.

Dinner comes with many rules. My house could be the textbook model for a 1962 home economics class. For all you young ‘uns out there home ec was this cute little course of study that taught girls how to be great wives, and I don’t mean by earning equal or more than their husbands but by getting stains out of white dress shirts and making sure dinner was on the table every night.

Dinner is a meat, a starch and a veggie…and LOT’S OF IT. I’ve tried to argue against the starch at every meal but it falls on deaf ears. I’ve tried to convince him that corn is a starch but that falls flat as well. The interesting part of the argument is the part where he says, “but this is how we grew up, it MUST BE RIGHT” and I respond “but we’ve learned more about food and nutrition since we were little kids, shouldn’t we go with more current knowledge?” Sounds so reasonable, right? Nope. The world came to a screeching halt sometime around 1966 and that’s where our food habits will remain.

To recap; breakfast is served until 11AM and consists strictly of breakfast foods; eggs, bacon, hash browns, French toast, or cereal. Lunch can start at 11AM and go until around 3ish. Lunch consists of a sandwich and two side dishes such as soup and chips or cole slaw and a pickle. Dinner is sometime after 5PM and has meat/fish/chicken, a starch and a veggie. Meats can’t repeat two nights in a row which means if there’s beef on Monday there can’t be beef on Tuesday; if there’s chicken on Tuesday then maybe there’ll be pork on Wednesday, ya gotta rotate this stuff out.

I can’t stress how crazy this is. I always thought the whole idea of growing up was that I could do crazy stuff like eating French toast for dinner eight nights in a row if that’s what I wanted to do. I wanna know who the food police are that are gonna pound down our door and make sure we’re not having French toast for dinner and what the penalty will be. That’s my big question, what is the penalty for eating French toast for dinner or having beef two nights in a row?

Why can’t the rules change?

Oh Jen, won’t you be my friend?

The media needs to grow up. I know this seems so painfully obvious but I have to put this out there. The media also needs to move on. They’re like a 15 year old girl who can’t move on from her first boyfriend. The media, the tabloids, the paparazzi, TMZ and Access Hollywood all need to move on from Jennifer Aniston. Not in a bad way, they can still report how beautiful she is at 40 or how cute her new movie role is (does she have any new movies? Eh, who cares?)

I’m divorced (twice, but who’s counting), Jen is divorced. Newsflash for the media…I’m pretty sure she’s not sitting in her beautiful Malibu home pining over ol’ Brad. Seriously folks. He’s not *all that* anymore. His looks have faded faster than a bouquet of grocery store flowers and frankly the reports of his lifestyle sound like many things but appealing isn’t one of them. If I were Jen I’d be sitting around that swanky Malibu beach house with a crisp, cold glass of Chardonnay and my loving dog Norman by my side and laughing at how pathetic tabloid media is that the best they’ve got is to speculate what went on backstage at the Haiti relief benefit. Relax, kids. I’ll bet they passed in the hallway and said “Hi” and moved on. It happens.

She’s an A-List celebrity with gobs of money and good looks and yet every newsstand sports headlines of her pining away for Brad or some secret phone calls between them with no let up in sight. It’s been years since the divorce…five years, I believe. The headlines shout all sorts of things about her craving a baby or a family or who knows what. Really? Do you folks really know that stuff? I’m thinking not. I’m thinking none of you have sat around with her in any unguarded moments and laughed with her about her ex. Guess what, kids, that’s what we do. We sit around with our girlfriends and laugh about how icky his new beard looks or how awful it must be to be globetrotting with all those kids in tow. Do any of you people who read US Weekly actually believe that Jennifer Aniston is still sitting by the phone waiting to hear Brad’s voice on the other end? Please people stop it, JUST STOP IT.

Jen, you’d have fun with me and my friends, most of us have been divorced just like you and all of us have moved on pretty quickly and quite well. We could dish about moving on from our ex’s, we could talk about how much better off we are in our current lives. You could share the relief of being 40 and childfree and I could nod and tell you that I remember that same feeling and it has stayed with me all these years later.

I could speak to the media for you, Jen and dispense with all the rumor and speculation as well as getting right to the heart of things. Let’s cut the crap folks. She’s OVER him. Stop painting this sad, pathetic picture of this rich, beautiful woman. Good LORD people. The media is setting the woman’s movement back decades based on how they cover this one person. Jen, I’ll be there for ya. I’ll be the one to laugh in the face of the p’razzi as they jump in your (our) face and ask who you’re dating now.

Hello news media…are you out there? Let me update you, its 2010, yes it is. Women, especially wealthy, beautiful women, move on from heartbreak. We’re resilient, we bounce back. I’d be willing to bet that ol’ Jen will be much more heartbroken when her beloved Norman passes away than at the demise of her relationship to Brad Pitt.

So Jen, next time you’re on the East Coast look up this blogger. I’d be happy to take ya out for a glass of wine and dish about ex’s. Let the p’razzi snap away as long as they start to get the story straight. Oh yeah, and feel free to bring Norman along we’re dog friendly here (and thanks for choosing a rescue dog).

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Practice, practice, practice.

Yeah we’ve all heard this joke before. Sure it helps to have some kind of natural affinity but I’ll bet that even if you’ve got tons of natural affinity for something you still need to exercise that ability if you want it to grow and develop and increase in value (even if the only value is your personal satisfaction).

You might be reading this right now and saying, “well, DUH.” Hey, don’t pick, it’s my revelation and I’m enjoying it. Where did this come from on this fine Sunday morning? Did it fall out of the sky? Yeah, it kinda did fall out of the sky. It snowed yesterday. I took more than 300 pictures of the dogs in the snow and I never even left my backyard. I sent a few of them out and about via e-mail, and was excited to get comments about what a great photo one of them was (it was my favorite as well). Now I’ve always complained about my lack of photographic skills. My husband takes GREAT photos, my best friend; she’s got that artist’s eye as well. But here’s the thing, I never PRACTICED taking photos. I wanted to pick up a camera and somehow the subject would be framed perfectly, the picture would be focused beautifully and the emotion of the shot would shimmer and shine. It just doesn’t happen that way. Digital photography has provided me (and probably millions of others) with a luxury we didn’t previously have; the ability to take THOUSANDS of pictures to find the one or two that are just right.

I never liked film photography because it didn’t satisfy my need for instant gratification. I could shoot roll after roll of film but then forget to get it developed or not have enough money to get it developed. By the time I’d actually see the pictures I would have forgotten what the point was of even taking the damn things as well as not remembering what I did right or wrong to get a certain shot. There was just too much distance of time between the experience and the outcome. Digital photography provides that instant gratification I crave. I can see them immediately on my camera or run inside and download them to my computer. I can edit them and crop them in the moment without going through extensive technical processes. It’s brilliant.

Despite how much I love music, and I do. Music is the foundation of who I am. My world is only noisy when there’s no music playing. I never learned to play an instrument, never learned to carry a tune. I’m pretty sure I’d never be riffing on the piano like Dr. John or ripping through a guitar solo like Clapton but I’m willing to bet that if I’d just tried I would be able to pick my way through a few tunes beyond “Mary Had a Little Lamb” (and I don’t even remember that one anymore). I have more than a few friends who can play guitar just well enough not to embarrass themselves and the way they got that way was sitting alone in their bedroom picking their way through a few chords every day of their angst filled adolescence. I never did that. I picked up a guitar late into adulthood and after a few lessons was frustrated that I wasn’t suddenly a prodigy. I wanted a magical moment to happen where I would just “get it”. Look I’ve been WATCHING people play guitar for YEARS, I knew what I should LOOK like when I played I just didn’t take the time to get there.

I’m not a patient person. I’m that annoying American that wants to have what I want when I want it…and I want it NOW. I sound like Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka, don’t I? I didn’t know this about me, honest, I didn’t. I controlled it well by not pursuing things that I wanted if it would take more than a quick blink of the eye to get it. In my career I’ve been praised for being innovative and I’ve humbly shrugged it off by saying, “oh, I’m just lazy, I look for the fastest, most efficient way to get it done and move on.” Now that might sound like an “aww shucks” attitude and that’s how it always came off, and I basically built a career (or two) on that attitude but the reality is that it prevented me from taking the time and having the patience to chart a course and stay the distance. This may seem contradictory to an earlier post about the ever annoying “5 year plan” but this is different, this isn’t a 5 year corporate plan of “in 5 years I want YOUR job”. This is different, it’s personal.

Plain and simple.

Technology has given me more than an outlet for my photographic urges, it’s allowed me to build a niche career as an innovator in some more traditional fields. It relieves some people from the pressures of interacting in an area where they aren’t comfortable and has allowed me to rise up the corporate ladder. The problem is that I’m not really happy. I want to be surrounded by other innovators, I want to have “ah-ha” moments with my colleagues.

Damn, so now I find out that patience really IS a virtue. Is it too late to yell “DO OVER”?

And then he kissed me...

Conflict is the key ingredient when writing something for readers to embrace. This is the overall understanding in the writing world. A reader wants to have something to cheer for and if things are going smoothly and the “hero” doesn’t have to traverse through any forests peppered with rodents of unusual size (RUS’s) then the hero is just some insanely lucky person that a reader can’t possibly identify with because let’s face it, life sucks. Everyone has something about their life that they believe SUCKS. I know, hard to believe but it’s true and we want what we read to be just a little close to real life, of course in real life things usually suck more than on the written page (or eBook) but that’s why we read or watch TV or see movies, we want the ending that we can’t guarantee in real life.

So I wrote the following quickie piece (and by “quickie” I mean I wrote it as fast as I could type it so please be kind) as a joke to a friend of mine about what dating would be like in the perfect world (just to be clear, neither of us are “dating” both of us are in permanent relationships)….

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Sara stopped in a flower shop on a whim walking home from work and while there a handsome man in a business suit breezes in the door and engages the shopkeeper in friendly banter while Sara stealthily gazes at him under shaded lids. He picks out a cheerful array of seasonal flowers while Sara thinks wistfully of how lucky his wife/girlfriend is to have him. Just outside the door he accidentally drops his credit card/wallet/iPhone/blackberry/something-that-personally-identifies-him and Sara picks it up. She finds his business number and he just happens to work nearby. She calls and leaves a voicemail at his office figuring he'll be relieved to hear it first thing in the morning but much to her surprise her cell phone rings 20 minutes later and it's HIM. He checked his work voicemail to see if anyone had found his [insert item here] and wanted to arrange to meet her to get it back and reward her for her efforts. He asks if she’s available to meet for coffee in 1/2 an hour at that cute little cafe near the flower shop. She agrees to meet him there while wondering what his wife/g'friend will think about him running back out after just coming home with the flowers. She fluffs her hair and changes into something cute but casual like this type of thing happens on any given weeknight then she sets out for the walk to the cafe a short 4 blocks away. As she’s walking there she notices the shoulders of a man in front of her, he's cutting a fine figure in his casually hanging Levi's and denim shirt on this unseasonably warm March evening and Sara’s happy to enjoy the view while wrapped in her own thoughts until she notices that he just turned into the cafe where she’s headed. She walks in a few paces behind him and realizes it's that guy from the flower shop. He takes one look and says with a twinkle in his eye "lemme see, an iced caramel latte and cinnamon biscotti, right?" How did he KNOW that? It's her absolute favorite treat when she wanders over here doing evening errands. Sara nods her head and grabs the table for two by the window as he comes up behind her. The conversation is immediate and easy and it's as if they've known each other since childhood, laughing and talking and sharing little life tidbits. The question of a wife or g'friend doesn't come up but the hour is getting late, she’s nearly forgotten to hand over [forgotten item] and she comes across it as she rummages in her bag for a few dollars to give him for the latte and biscotti. She takes the [forgotten item] out and giggles as she says, “oops I nearly forgot this was why we met up tonight”. He takes it from her and thanks her again for so kindly finding him and returning it and waves off the offer of money. He tells her that he doesn't think a latte and biscotti is enough of a reward for her efforts but he doesn't want to impose on her life to request another evening out, this time over dinner. She tells him she'd generously give over another evening to him if he was offering to pay for dinner.

Sara still isn't so sure about that wife/g'friend. Through the hours of chatting as the cafe filled and emptied around them he talked about his career and his education and his hobbies, where he was from and where he lives now but wife/g'friend didn't factor in. She feels that she must bring up the flowers and blurts out, "so do you often frequent flower shops on your way home from work?" His eyes cloud over a bit and some of the humor drains out of them and she thinks, oh lord, here it comes, the sickly wife at home or the demanding wife that never thinks he's good enough or the g'friend who's pining for an engagement ring but he just can't commit to her. When their eyes meet up again he says that his dad had recently passed away and his mom and dad had been together their whole lives and his mom is just wilting with the loss of her best friend, her lover, her other half and she was visiting him for a week and he brought her the flowers to try to brighten her day. She'd be moving on at the end of the week to stay a week with his brother up in Boston; coming from a big family had its advantages when it comes to keeping mom's mind off the loss of dad. He apologized for bringing things down but that was the reality of it and after all she did bring up the flowers he bought. Just as quickly he tries to switch things back to the happy place they were at a few moments ago. He asks if Saturday night for dinner would be too much to request of her time, it's just that his mom would be leaving Saturday morning and that would be the best opportunity for him to relax over dinner with her. She doesn’t want to seem to desperate as to be available on a Saturday night but since she told him she was new in the area it wouldn't seem too pathetic so she accepts his Saturday night offer and then he asks for her cell phone and enters his name and phone numbers into her contacts and offers her his phone to do the same. She takes his iPhone hesitantly and enters her name and numbers. They stand up together and without even noticing it he is helping her shrug into her worn old denim jacket and the two of them head for the door together. She heads towards home and he walks along next to her as they lapse back into a steady conversation. She realizes that he's walking her home and looks up at him and he says, "well of course I'm walking you home, didn't you realize that we only live a block away from each other, AND my mother did raise a gentleman, you know?" There's no awkwardness at her door, he waits for her to let herself in and says he'll call on Friday afternoon, to finalize the Saturday night plans. She tells him she’s looking forward to hearing from him, and she really is.

Friday comes and he calls just as promised. He's made reservations at a wonderful bistro owned by a friend of his. They serve eclectic food and he's sure there’s something on the menu she'll enjoy. He tells her to dress casual and he'll pick her up at her house. Saturday goes quicker than expected, doing errands, getting a mani-pedi in town, dropping off dry cleaning picking up the cat's meds. He's there on time and looking casually handsome. Dinner is great and his friend showers excellent but discreet service on the two of them.

By Sunday morning she’s convinced this guy is too good to be true. He calls around noon and says that he usually takes his dog to the park on nice days to play some Frisbee and was wondering if she'd like to join them. She agrees but mostly to get to the bottom of "Mr. Perfect". He pops by with his big mutt of a dog who's happily toting his Frisbee in his mouth. At the park she exhibits her own expert Frisbee skills and laughs and has too much fun to approach the subject of why "Mr. Perfect" is wandering the streets of suburban Maryland unfettered and free. On the way home he asks if she'd like to stop at the nearby burger joint with outside seating so that the dog can join them. With no other plans on the horizon and hours of running around and playing Frisbee in the park having worked up a hearty appetite she says, "sure, I'm starving". Finally over dinner she lays it out there, "hey, you're a little too good to be true, what's the deal? You wanted on murder? You already have several wives across the country? Spill it mister". He laughs and tells her that he isn't THAT perfect. He was almost married once but she got swept off her feet by a job offer in another city and he was entrenched in a job in the DC area. They tried to keep it together long distance but she ultimately moved on. Since then he's dated but knows that when he marries it will be for life because of the great foundation he had from his mom and dad. He tells her that he found her interesting and honest that first evening over coffee and he hoped the two of them could see what would come next for each other. He explained that it wasn't all as easy for a guy as it seems since he's in his 40's and never been married women think that he’s possibly too damaged (which he isn’t). Also, he doesn't come with a lot of baggage, no kids (lots of nieces and nephews scattered across the US but no kids of his own). His career has finally settled into a healthy pattern where he doesn't need to be there 15 hours a day. He asks for more details about her and she tells him about her ex-husband and the job she just left behind and how she’s now paving her own way in a new place and new home. He laughs, tells her that he likes her and asks if its okay if they both wait and see what may come of things. She agrees that she’s having too much fun with him to turn down that offer.

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I’ll bet that every one of you that made it to the end of that was waiting for the other shoe to drop weren’t you? You know in your heart of hearts that something bad has to happen even if the ending fulfills all of your romantic dreams there just MUST be some glitch along the way to trip things up because that’s how life works, right? Her sister shows up a few months into things, she’s just left her husband and has no place else to turn and slowly she start to turn the head of “Mr. Perfect” or HIS sister shows up and Sara mistakes her to be some long lost lover and stops taking his calls (this ploy always irritates me in romantic comedies, really people if you’re an adult you’ll know better than to jump to a weird conclusion).

Okay there’s hundreds, maybe millions of scenarios I could paint into that scenario but no one would keep reading if they just continued to date for about 8 months then got engaged quietly at a private New Year’s Eve celebration, planned a lovely small wedding for the following June and lived happily ever after. For some reason that just ISN’T a story is it?

So does this mean that humans only thrive with conflict? I don’t enjoy conflict, I don’t like confrontation. Yes, there are times, too many of them unfortunately, that forces a confrontation. People are different, they don’t always agree, if they did we probably wouldn’t have wars. I have this odd trait that makes me always want to TALK to people who don’t agree with me. I really want to try to understand them and their beliefs better (hence the degree in psychology I suppose) but sadly many people don’t want to engage in constructive discussion and be able to agree to disagree. This is also part of the corporate world. Despite the fact that co-workers all work for the same company and in theory all are there to promote the success of the overall organization in most cases they will put their personal agenda before the corporate well being. I know I keep coming back to the corporate world in this blog but I think that most of us work in it without taking a look AT IT. We become so entrenched in our day-to-day corporate world that we don’t take the time to step outside of it and look in the windows for a different view (hey, look down a few posts to my window post). Take some time to look into the windows of your life, whether it’s your job, your home, your friendships and see what view you get from the outside. Would you change things? Would you re-arrange your life furniture? Would you want to know more about the people you see through that window or would you want to hightail it down the street? I still want to know more, I still want to talk to people and find out where their heads are at but mostly because I want them to wonder the same about me. Go ahead, ask me, you may not agree with what I say but I’ll be happy to talk to you about it. I don’t want to argue. I don’t want that crazy level of conflict, do YOU?

Yes Brunella, there IS a tee-shirt and Razoo Kelley

This was originally posted by me on Higgy Piggy's blog on 12/26/2009.

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More than 3 decades have passed since I first heard the words “me and Razoo Kelley” followed by the Buddy Holly song “Rave On” coming from my radio. They just showed up one Sunday morning and then kept re-appearing for most of the next two or three years.

This New York radio guy who was really from NJ brought them into my radio every Sunday morning. He started receiving letters from them and then read those letters to us, his devoted listeners. Now this NY radio guy from NJ did a lot more than read to us, he played music for us too and he talked to us about music and books. Matter of fact, this NY radio guy from NJ somehow managed to provide me with the best education a Jersey Girl could ever hope for.

So who were “me and Razoo Kelley”? Well I don’t know. They came to be re-named “tee-shirt and Razoo Kelley” only because “me” was always pictured in a tee-shirt and, well, someone else can’t talk about someone as “me” without causing some level of confusion to set in on an unsuspecting listener.

NY radio guy from NJ was accused of being tee-shirt and Razoo but he denied it and we had to believe him because he was the same guy that taught us about this other dude from NJ singing about showing “a little faith there’s magic in the night” so how could we doubt him?

Many attempts were made to unmask the elusive duo with no success. I understand there is one person who has met with them and knows their identity…but she ain’t talkin’. She did obtain permission to issue their missives in a compilation commonly known in the 1980s as a BOOK (the kind with paper pages and all that) which I quickly added to my collection because, ya know, I considered it a textbook in my quest for greater truth (and all that).

Tee-shirt and Razoo were always askin’ NY radio guy from NJ to send them some Brucie autographed albums (Brucie being that OTHER guy from NJ) but they never seemed to receive them, but not for lack of trying.

Flash forward to Christmas 2009 (or “The Humanistic Pagan Celebration of Festivus 2009”) and the ritual exchange of gifts between me and the man I call “hon” known legally as my husband. There, at the top of the bag o’ goodies was a shiny new copy of the “The Letters of Me and Razoo Kelley” and inside the cover was a handwritten inscription to me from the NY radio guy from NJ and I knew in my heart that “Yes, Brunella, there IS a tee-shirt and Razoo Kelley”. Somewhere out there in the big world they were still waiting for their Brucie autographed albums to arrive and I held in my hot little hand my autographed book and a little faith this holiday morning.

I Wish I May, I Wish I Might...

This post was originally written and posted by me on January 9, 2010 on Higgy Piggy's blog and is being moved to it's appropriate home.

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Corporate goal setting is such an amusing past time. Here's a favorite story about it...

It was approximately 5 years ago. I was at a mandatory training for the new corporate goal setting software. I was seated in the back row next to a buddy of mine from another department. He's a great guy. Older gentleman, funny, respectful, devoted husband, dad and grandpa.

The HR cheerleader was explaining how we would be developing a path to follow for the next 5 years and beyond. Where did we want to be in 5 years? How did we plan to get there?

My buddy leaned over and said to me...I know EXACTLY where I want to be in 5 years...retired, gardening with the wife, reading by the fire, playing with the grandkids (then sending them home). We shared a chuckle. The HR cheerleader did NOT find us amusing.

My buddy wondered how anyone could believe that the path one strikes out on would follow a straight and defined course over 5 years...or even 5 MONTHS? I agreed. Life has too many bends in the road to think that we can land exactly where we planned to land in 5 years time.

Fast forward to yesterday, just about 5 years later...my buddy had his retirement party at work. I'm impressed, he actually stayed the course for his 5 year goal planning. HR should be thrilled!

Live your joy!

$5.99

I'm addicted to The New Yorker. Go ahead, hurl your nastiness at me it won't matter. I tried not to be addicted to it. I tried to break up with it during the Tina Brown blip but that didn't work, I came crawling back like the pathetic person I am. It's there for me ALMOST every week of the year except for the few times of the year when they see fit to deny me my fix for a week and I have to endure the dreaded "DOUBLE ISSUE".

Today I had an interesting revelation. I looked at the cover price. I did. I never think about the cover price because I buy my subscription in 3 year chunks; 141 issues for just $99.95! WOW!!!! What is that, like, a buck forty an issue? I can't even get my Dunkin' Donuts coffee at that bargain price.

Oh but that cover price; $5.99! I couldn't believe it. That's more than a lot of paperbacks you can buy at Costco. Now for me, I think it's worth every penny of that $5.99. I think that it's a STEAL at my subscription rate.

You may be wondering why I harbor these deep and wide feelings for a magazine. Let me tell you. My heart warms each and every time I read about a writer who's dream is/was to get published in The New Yorker. I cheer for them and their lofty goals. I think that the fictional journalist in The Devil Wears Prada dreamt of getting that first acceptance letter from The New Yorker and that deserved a cheer from me; YOU GO GIRLFRIEND!

I love it when a crusty old writer dies and (OF COURSE) he/she had some kind of legacy at The New Yorker and another crusty old writer eulogizes the dearly departed in the pages of The New Yorker. With the recent loss of J.D. Salinger I'm treated to reading a personal tidbit written about him by Lillian Ross in which she refers to him rather familiarly as "Jerry", I never even thought of ol' J.D. as having a first name other than those initials but good ol' Lil just blurts it out onto the glossy print page of The New Yorker.

I have the big gift box of discs of every New Yorker issue from the beginning of time and not long after I got this treasured compilation they came out with a hard drive of The New Yorker. I don't have that hard drive yet but it seems like a true dream date for me. Imagine how special this publication is that you can just buy the whole thing on it's very own hard drive. It's searchable! What fun to type in random words and see what was written about those things some time around 1943.

And there's the cartoons. I read those first. It's kinda like asking someone how they eat an Oreo or a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Some people start with the short pieces up front about current art installations or concerts. Some like to start with Talk of the Town. I start by looking at the cover and trying to guess what the cover title is (I've only been right once or twice) then I flip to the table of contents page and find out what the cover title is, then it's off to flip through the magazine to check out all the cartoons.

Every year I look forward to the anniversary edition which always features a new interpretation of Eustace Tilley the fopish gent who is visually associated with The New Yorker. Sometimes I like to pop in one of the discs and look back at other anniversary editions to compare to the current one (it should be out in a week or two).

I can still remember fondly some of my favorite articles like the one about calculating Pi in some apartment in Hell's Kitchen being done by some computers and two Russian brothers. It somehow managed to romanticize the whole concept of Pi. SWEET! Or an article I read about some interesting personality quirks of former President Richard Nixon; an eye-opener to be sure.

I wanted to resist becoming a Gladwellian but I just couldn't because more than being a best selling author and an extremely well paid guest speaker he's a New Yorker columnist and doesn't that make it all okay?

When I was far too young to even understand the humor of James Thurber I was already reading his books because, well, he was JAMES THURBER...of THE NEW YORKER. I was tickled to read that when The New Yorker moved offices some time ago they cut out Thurber's wall doodles and moved them to the new office space.

I'm a big fan of eMedia. I read it; clearly I write it (you're reading this blog aren't you?). I have a Sony eBook Reader which I adore. I only access my local news and national news online. I'm happy with all things "e" except The New Yorker, for some reason that glossy paper showing up every week is a thrill that can't be matched online for me. I can access it online; after all I AM a subscriber; but I generally don't access it online. I rarely even think about it as being online, it exists in a romantic paper world for me.

I'm not someone who worships all things nostalgic; I'm an "early uptake" person and all that. I don't wax romantic over EZ Bake Ovens or Mork and Mindy lunchboxes (I have a friend who does) but somehow or other I feel the need for my New Yorker to be paper.

So if you weren't convinced I was a geek during my previous GLEEK admission, well think again.

$5.99, go ahead, just try one...