Father's Day

Dear Dad,

You have always been there for me whether I knew it or not. You always wanted the best for me whether I knew it or not. You watched me grow up, rebel, get married, have chidren of my own and eventually get divorced. You have watched me swallow some hard pills and do spectacular belly flops out in the world. And still you have never wavered from your view of me. When I am with you I feel that I can do anything, that you will listen to any story silly story or esaay I have written and you nod with wisdom when I have shared a heartbreak. And you have recently taken on the role of mother and father to us, your grown children since mom can no longer be that for us.

Of all the things you have taught me, it is through your actions that have been the biggest lesson. I see you as the embodiment of love in action; a promise given is not taken back because it is hard or frightening. You have shown me what integrity is, not by talking about it but by being it.

Thank you for the lessons you have given me, I have received them.

Your loving daughter,

A mother's Love

Most of us have had it, and most of us still want it. We give it to our own children if we have them, and to our animal friends and human friends too. How does one describe a Mothers Love? My mother ironed my shoelaces. And underwear, and baby blankets. You get the picture. This was how my mother expressed her love to me.

My mother was not a physically demonstrative person. In our family we didn't hug and cuddle each other. This is something I have not passed down to my own children. I cuddle with them; I touch them, even to their embarrassment. My own mother is in her twilight years this lack of physical closeness has affected me in an interesting way. I find that I want to keep my distance from her.

It is not that I am not there for her, I am, but in a more impersonal way. I make sure that she gets the best food, has flowers in the house and her house is kept clean. This in some ways is what she did for me; it is my version of ironing the shoelaces. I think that I am afraid to get too close, since she is leaving. My mother has dementia, and her mind is leaving this world, slowly gradually, but leaving and not coming back.

So do I take the risk and hug her and get close even though we all know what the end of the story looks like? Or shall I paly it safe like I always have? As a Project Manager I look at the risks and then make a pathway towards the goal. Being with my mother, and comforting her in these declining years is why I am here, I'm going to take the risk. I'll keep you posted.

Customer Service Anyone?

Recently I have been having trouble with my Uverse, at+t's newest offering. I live in a beautiful old house in a quiet neighborhood. I live near a large city and you would think that having troubles with your phone, Internet and TV would be a thing of the past. Not so.

I have documented over 30 calls to at+t and have had 16 specialty techs come over and try to find out what is happening. I have been told that maybe a squirrel ate through the wire. Really? Or that when there is rain it can jumble the lines. What does this mean? I have also been told that maybe we are in the shadow of a radio frequency that disturbs the fiber optics. What?

So about customer service. Every call I have made to at+t has been handled with courtesy and friendliness. They always apologize for the troubles I am having and sympathize with me. The techs are nice men and women who work hard and do their best to fix the problem. However the problem still exists, I still have dropped calls, frozen TV screens and no internet at odd times in the day. And although I am being "served" am I getting service?

Somehow at+t has separated these two, thinking that since I have been treated with kindness that I should be happy. At this point I just want the "service" to do its job with or without the nice "service agents". Were they there at 10:45 PM when I was watching Hawaii Five O last night, and the TV froze when they arrested the cute agent? No! I'm thinking of going back to the old system, forget the nice graphics and promises so I can watch a whole show or talk to my kids without having to apologize for the fact that my phone dropped their call again.
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Learning

How does one learn? I am studying Latin and am finding it very interesting and not because I can now read coats of arms or shields. What is so interesting is, understanding what part of my mind actually learns. Vocabulary has been relatively easy. Many words have cognates in English. Take "cognate" for example in Latin "to think" cognate in English means similar or comparable.

As I mentioned vocabulary has been fairly straightforward. Write it on a card read it every day for 2-4 weeks and its mine. What does not seem to stick well are the declensions, or noun varieties. I'll give you an example; the English words for this and these are hic, haec, and hoc. In Latin there are feminine nouns, masculine nouns and neuter nouns. Then there are plural of each of these. That would not be so bad, but there are six forms of each of these nouns, which end up being seventy-two if my math is correct. And most of them are unique. An example would be "that of yours” something that we English speakers don't even think about, ever.

The part of my brain that learns this type of information has had only a flicker of neural activity for years. As I wade my way through the class and attending tests, I have found that I have enlivened this area, but only by maybe three or four neurons to date. I'll keep you posted.

So what has happened by happy accident, is that my English grammar has become better, since learning Latin has forced me to learn my own language. How is that for irony? (Maybe that’s Latin too). Now before I publish my blog I always use spell check, and found that it disputed my grammar, oh well, I will keep up the study and one day will beat spell check!

Holidays and Vacations

Joshua Tree National Park, a holiday and a vacation, why distinguish the two? In Canada we say "holiday" and in the USA we say "vacation". Maybe a holiday comes from "holy days" when the only time taken off of work was on special holy days. The same does not apply in the US, to vacate means to leave or to leave empty, which has a completely different connotation.

Most of my more recent holiday/vacations have taken me to familiar places, like skiing in local mountains or going to the beach. This time I went to the high desert and found incomparable beauty and a delicate balance of nature I don't notice in the more familiar places.

Being in a new location also allowed my mind to refresh itself spontaneously. Even though the bed and breakfast (http://www.roughleymanor.com/) had all of the amenities, I occupied myself with the autobiography of the woman who had built the house we were staying in. I found peace, and quiet, ready and able to head back to work and my regular life.

Make sure you too take time even for a short while to slow down and refresh your mind and body. You will be more able to handle the challenges of work and home if you do.

Planning

I aim is to have my work life and personal life be in harmony with each other. It seems that I only notice when that harmony is not there. By my assessment when a project or my life is moving along and meeting its' milestones, keeping within scope, it is being successful. I have noticed that it is during these times of relative harmony that it is easy to become distracted or "take my foot off the gas".

When a correction is needed I am all over it coming in like a hero to save the day. I have been exploring this tendency, and am pretty sure that it is a common default. What would it be like to study, work or play fully all the time instead of waiting for the proverbial "break"?

So I have been playing full out, studying, working and what has been missing is play. Funny, my play has become my work, and so it does not feel like play any more. As my interests become a part of my routine they no longer have what I consider the essentials of play. So I guess I stopped playing.

What would life be like of you could bring play into ever aspect? Would this bring harmony into focus for you? I'm not speaking about stirring things up or creating a "fun" disturbance; I'm talking about bringing joy, spontaneity and a sense of adventure to the details, the minutiae of life. So I'm going to take a bubble bath, find something fun to put into it, and enjoy myself. How are you going to bring fun back to your life?

Trapped and freed through inquiry

I was trapped by a question I did not know I had. Has this ever happened to you? Imagine a conversation with someone at work or in your personal life. You say something, they say something and something that they say or perhaps do, sticks with you or even on you. This happened to me. The way it happened was through an action, not words, but words did follow it. Then there was a cover up, and it left me puzzled for a long time.

What I wondered was who am I that someone would do this to and take this action? And then, who am I that someone would then lie about it? These were the questions that I did not know I had until recently. Discovering that these questions were imbedded in my mind gave me freedom to let them go. It is kind of like finding words or events stuck in amber, fossilized, never to be released except through great heat.

So how did I release the questions? Where did the heat come from? The inquiry provided the heat and I have a drive to understand which makes me a great researcher, communicator and consultant, but those skills and that drive trapped me in having to know/understand. Ultimately I did get to the bottom of this issue and am on the lookout for what else I am trapped by. What are you trapped by? What gets under your skin?