In Fat Times and in Lean

“Adult Attention Deficit Disorder!” Thus my husband announced his arrival home from work last Wednesday. I poked my head out of the kitchen and said, “Say what??” Adult ADD, he responded, with a little too much enthusiasm for my taste. You, he informed me, have Adult ADD.

Kaiser’s weekly continuing education for internists had, I learned, focused on this disorder that afternoon, and Scott was a little too gleeful about how accurately they described me:

• Constantly misplaces objects that are needed on a daily basis, eg, car keys
• Fidgets during long performances
• Was a space cadet in school
• Loses focus during a conversation that is not all that interesting to the person

OK, OK, so I’m guilty of all of these things.  And more.  Long email?  Chances are I’ll read the first two sentences, skim the rest and likely forget everything that was in it.  Long vmail?  Even worse.  I’ll delete after 20 seconds. Yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah… Don’t want to listen to it.  And as anyone who had the misfortune of working with me will tell you, my eyes tend to glaze when the discussion is getting into far more details than I care about knowing.

So, I asked my genius husband.  We have an affirmative diagnosis, darlin’.  What’s the cure?

Scott carried on for awhile about Ritalin and other types of speed that for some reason, help us ADD-types to focus.  My eyes lit up.  Speed?!  Like speed that will help me lose weight and be my old pre-menopausal slender, cute self?? Sign me up!

Like it would be that easy.  There are a few side effects – high blood pressure, being one of them.  Like a smoker weighing pleasure versus health, I teetered for a moment.  I’ll take high blood pressure medication, I decided, in exchange for being thin.

As I reached for the phone to make an appointment with my internist, Scott mentioned that one side effect of Ritalin that some patients don’t like at all is that you may no longer be the life of the party.

Oh.

I put the phone back.  Not that I’m the life of the party, but I like my exuberant, irreverent, high energy bordering on manic personality.  It’s what makes me – well, me.  And frankly?  I’d rather be fat than boring.  Alas.

So my skinny sisterhood, I’ll continue to envy how fabulous you look in clothes.  And I’ll continue to wince when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.  So be it.  I don’t want to swap my true self for a better-looking package.  Nor am I interested in giving up cheese, martinis and good wine. But that does remind me that I need to ask Scott,

Now what are the side effects of lap band surgery??

And Now For Something Really Amazing!

I woke up early yesterday morning, full of misdirected energy.  Which is really my only explanation as to why it seemed like such a good idea to clean up the kitchen.  In our unspoken marital contract of many years, I do the shopping and cooking.  Scott does the kitchen cleaning and repair work.

Well, the kitchen was a disaster.  Although Scott had warned me we had a concert Saturday night, I managed to block that unwelcome news from my brain, and way overbooked the day.  I didn’t get around to putting the turkey on the barbecue until 4.  No biggie. We then hopped into the hot tub to relax while the bird cooked.  At 5:30, Scott casually asked me how much longer until dinner was ready.  I shrugged – really, with a martini in my hand and hot water massaging my shoulders, who cared?

That would be Scott, as he reminded me we had to leave for the symphony by 7. (The rest of this conversation is now blocked by privacy concerns – just let it be said that I wasn’t very mature.)

After a quick shower, I stood by the grill, cursing the bird and begging it to cook faster.  Scott was pacing.  Somehow in the process I managed to overcook the turkey (Note to self:  Time to buy a meat thermometer as 190 degrees is apparently the right internal temperature for turkey jerky, but not for a juicy bird.)

We choked down dinner (literally, unfortunately) and rushed off to the worst concert of the season.  By the time we got home, I had a headache and Scott was aggravated with me for not being a better sport about being subjected to loud, screechy bad music for three hours.  Cleaning the kitchen, with access to all those knives, didn’t seem like a good idea, so we trundled off to bed grouchily.

Thus, Sunday morning I awoke feeling guilty about the previous night – both for destroying dinner and pouting about the concert – and decided to make amends by cleaning up.  As Scott slept, I powered though pots, pans, dishes.  I cleaned counters, tossed garbage.  When I opened the cupboard to put away the kosher salt, I found a half-empty box of instant baby oatmeal.  I plucked that off the shelf, dumped the remaining oatmeal in the sink and tossed the box in the recycle container.

That’s when things got ugly – really ugly.  As I started coffee with one hand, I turned on the water with the other to wash the oatmeal down the sink.  Which didn’t seem to be going down the drain too well.  So I turned on the disposal, and watched wet baby oatmeal spew out of both sides of the sink.  But not for long, because this stuff was turning to cement faster than I could believe.

But Scott could.  He had larger-than-life memories of the time I put brown rice down the sink, an hour before the housing inspector was coming so we could close the deal on the sale of our house some 25 years ago.  Man, some people just don’t forget!  Maybe because he then got to spend the next frantic hour under the sink, cleaning out gluey rice, stripping the threads on the trap and generally cursing married life.

And now he got to do a repeat performance, right down to the stripped threads. Which ended the way all such stories do – with a call to the plumber.

Two hundred dollars later, the sink is all better.  And for my next needlepoint project, I plan to stitch a sign and post it over the sink:

Sisters and Brothers

Sisters, sisters
There were never such devoted sisters,
Never had to have a chaperone, no sir,
I’m there to keep my eye on her
Caring, sharing
Every little thing that we are wearing
When a certain gentleman arrived from Rome
She wore the dress, and I stayed home
All kinds of weather, we stick together
The same in the rain and sun
Two different faces, but in tight places
We think and we act as one
Those who’ve seen us
Know that not a thing could come between us
Many men have tried to split us up, but no one can
Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister
And Lord help the sister, who comes between me and my man!

This little Irving Berlin ditty from White Christmas is a long-time favorite of my sister and me. To our husbands’ (and let’s face it, our children’s) horror, we’ve been known to spontaneously burst into this song, given little provocation (and maybe a wee dram or two).

With the emotional and physical turmoil of the past few weeks, I found myself humming this song a lot.

My sister, Joan, is two years older than I am.  She was always the smart one, the logical one, the analytic.  She became a successful attorney but an even more successful mom, raising her kids with warmth, total attention and a sense of humor.  I was the artistic one, the flibberty-gibbit, the disorganized let-it-be kid, who figured that everything would always work out in the end.  I became a successful executive, but until the last few years, never thought of myself as a successful mom, when I saw how wonderfully our children have turned out (could be dumb luck, of course).  But Joan was always my idol.

Joan and Terry, Fort Buchanon, Puerto Rico, 1954

This time of stress has drawn us closer together while our senses of humor have kept us sane.  My sister is one of the few people who has made me laugh so hard that I’ve snorted scotch out of my nose.  I like to think I do the same for her (except in her case, white wine as she doesn’t drink scotch – besides, snorting white wine out of your nose is much more ladylike).

Because our relationship means so much to me, I’ve always wanted my son and daughter to share the same closeness.  While Carolyn and Andrew were very close as young children, adolescence pulled them apart.  Then Carolyn moved far away to South America, and then to the UK, and I wondered if they would ever find comfort in each other again.

This was a very good weekend for them, despite my mom’s illness, I think.  Andrew finally got to meet his nephew, Lucas.  Carolyn got to see her brother as a very loving uncle.  When we had to run off to the emergency room on Thanksgiving Day with my mom, I tossed the recipes at the two of them and said, as I was dashing to the car, “You guys are in charge of dinner!!”  Together they pulled off a magnificent feast.

I don’t know that the two of them could make each other laugh to the point of snorting various liquids out of their noses, but there is still hope.  I was rocked to sleep their last night in town to the sound of my grandson’s hilarious shrieks of glee, as his Uncle Andrew played peek-a-boo with him.  Yep, could definitely happen.

This was the toughest but perhaps the best Thanksgiving ever.  We are blessed.

For My Fellow Midwesterners

Forty years ago, my parents bought a beautiful piece of land in Strongsville, a little farm town southwest of Cleveland.  Their lot abuts the park system, known as the Emerald Necklace, that laces its way through Cleveland along the Rocky River.  All the bedrooms and the living room have a glorious view of the park, with deer, wild turkeys, and foxes as frequent visitors.

Their house is a contemporary home, with sculptures and artwork in every room. It’s a truly lovely place.

It was their good fortune to buy the lot at the end of the longest cul-de-sac in the development. Because the Strongsville that exists today is a far cry from the one we moved into in 1969.  I spent only one year in this house, as I was a high school senior, but I still remember the big horse ranch that graced the land across the street from my folk’s development.  Today that ranch is a huge shopping mall.  I remember getting off I-71 at my parents’ exit, and admiring the big forests of deciduous trees to the north of the exit.  Today?  Gone.  Costco, Best Buy and other big box stores are plopped down in that space.  And along Pearl Road, the main drag in town, you can find every single big box retailer you can imagine.  The traffic, frankly, is far worse than anything we encounter in Los Angeles.

This is what happens when you have poor zoning laws.  I’m sure that lots of people in town have made lots of money from the rape of this pretty city, but what a sad state of affairs for those of us who remember it when…

It Was the Best of Times; It Was the Worst of Times

About a million years ago, when I was in high school, we were assigned to read The Plague, by Albert Camus.  For the final exam, we had to answer just one question:  Do you think the plague was a good thing or a bad thing, and why?

That’s sort of how I’m feeling today, sitting in my mom’s house, taking a short break from endless phone calls, paperwork – oh, and an irritable mother – in order to make sure my mom will be okay once I return to Los Angeles. My mom alternates between being very grateful to my sister, Joan, and me for this, to being very resentful that she is “imprisoned” in her own house and being forced to pay for all this help that she doesn’t want.  And yes, on occasion she does take that out on us.

Knowing that her time is short, knowing that life will get harder for her, not easier, lends a certain urgency to everything we’re doing.  It’s so frustrating to try and do the right thing when it’s the exact opposite of what my mom wants.  And trust me, I’m no saint.  My temper and patience tend to be short, so this has been a personal battle for me to be kind and good – one that I’m embarrassed to admit I don’t always win.

But with all this, there are some moments that I’ll keep with me for life.  Let’s look at yesterday…

I started the day off at 6 am by calling 911 and getting my mom to the emergency room after she became short of breath and anxious.  Joan quickly joined us at the hospital.  As we waited for the tests to be run and results to be received, Joan and I sat with Mom and amused her – and ourselves – with funny stories and snide comments (yes, snideness does run in families).  A nurse finally peaked in and exclaimed that our room was the liveliest on the floor.

While what was causing the shortness of breath was not good news, the emergency room physician didn’t believe that a hospital stay would be helpful, so we happily got out of there and returned home.  Joan and I went back to creating huge lists of tasks that needed to be done and people who needed to be contacted, all the time reminding our mom to “USE THE WALKER!”, which you know she did not appreciate. Once done documenting everything, we moved to through all our mom’s belongings so we could get valuables out of the house (We’ve heard too many nightmare stories about items stolen by so-called kind caregivers.).

The three of us went through boxes of costume and good jewelry, with each piece having a story. Some moments were poignant – like finding our great-grandmother’s engagement ring, and our grandmother’s wedding band.  Some moments were sweet – like our mother gently holding special pieces of jewelry our dad gave her.  And some moments were hilarious – like laughing at allegedly valuable heirlooms that turned out to be paste and tin.

We continued on our quest, going through drawers that haven’t seen the light of day in years.  My sister found an old wallet of our dad’s, with his student identification card from The American University in Lebanon, along with a crisp Palestinian bill from 1945 or thereabouts.  That one will end up framed on my sister’s wall.  We found notes my dad carefully wrote, and I admit that just seeing his handwriting sent a jolt through my chest, reminding me how much I missed him.

Small moments, all of them.  But precious because there will come a day when we won’t have them.  When we are going through those drawers with a very different purpose in mind – wrapping up memories of our parents; saying goodbye to our childhood.

The plague?  It was a terrible, terrible thing.  But the human heart beats on, sometimes a little stronger when we’re reminded of both our mortality, and the mortality of our loved ones.

Words I Don’t Want to Write

Thirty-some years ago, I wrote my grandfather’s eulogy.  Five years ago I wrote my father’s eulogy.  And yesterday I realized that, despite my state of denial, the time is coming when I’ll need to write my mother’s eulogy.

My mom’s been on a roller-coaster of bad health and recovery for the past two years.   We learned too late that four years ago, she had an abnormal mammogram and decided to ignore it.  Bad idea.  Eighteen months later, the cancer had exploded throughout her body. The loss of function in her right arm and severe back pain, plus the threat of being in a wheelchair, helped her accept radiation treatment, albeit reluctantly.

The radiation worked like a charm.  Once she recovered from the treatment-induced fatigue, she was back to her old self.  Hanging out with her girlfriends, attending book clubs, volunteering and driving (oy!).  We had a pretty good year.

But then the cancer returned. Aggressively. We persuaded her to do another round of radiation.  She reluctantly agreed.  Same story as before – two months of extreme fatigue followed by a pretty good bounce back.  Which didn’t last as long.

When I would come to visit, it would break my heart to see her – so frail, so unsteady, so fiercely determined to protect her independence, and so resentful of having her dignity chipped away.

I got the call last week that she was back in the hospital.  Double pneumonia took her down, and she very reluctantly agreed to be admitted.  Today, while her pneumonia is under control, her situation is not good.  She has become demented – not unusual, the hospitalist tells us, as the combination of fragility, major physical problems and being in a strange place can bring on severe confusion in the elderly. Her mental symptoms are paranoia, antagonism and utter irrationality.

This is my mom?

I spent much of yesterday fighting panic attacks and tears.  To calm myself down, I took the Boo out for a long walk, which is when I realized that (1) I need to get my butt to Cleveland and (2) I better start thinking about how I want my lovely mother to be remembered.

We all go through this, I know.  But that doesn’t make it easier or kinder.

So I leave you with this last thought – please, if you have an abnormal mammogram, don’t go into denial and think the problem will go away.  Because it most assuredly will not.  And the results can be devastating.

Farmer Terry, Retired

For the past three months, I’ve been hooked on Farmville, and it’s an addiction shared by over 63 million people around the world.  Yes, that’s right.  There are 63 million people just like me, wasting hours and hours of time planting virtual crops and tending virtual sheep.

Like other addictions, I was introduced to Farmville by a friend, who told me how much fun it was.  Like other addictions, it drew me back on a daily – uhm, sometimes hourly – basis.  After all, I had chores I had to do!  My “cows” need milking!  My “crops” needed tending!  And like other addictions, it kept tantalizing me with something a little better, a rush that my current fix couldn’t get me.  I had to climb the ranks so I could plant sunflowers!  I had to climb the ranks because I had a jones for that pink cabin!

And then yesterday, it happened.  I stopped caring.  By then, I had grown my farm to the maximum size, traded in my pink cabin for a big farmhouse, weeded out all the tropical trees that looked odd next to my red maples, settled my cows into dairy barns, secured my chickens into a chicken coop.  I was about to start planting my vast “acreage” when I saw I was short on fuel, and would have to pay REAL MONEY to get more, as I didn’t have enough Farmville dollars for a scant tank of, uh, gas.  I also saw that if I wanted another chicken coop, I’d have to pay REAL MONEY for it.  I saw that I would have to play – oh, I don’t know – like a zillion more rounds to progress to the next level.  And just like that, I was done.  The silliness had overcome the fun, and my cheapness had won out over virtual rewards.

Perhaps I’m not the best customer for companies like Zynga… only playing for free, not willing to put my money where my nearly carpal-tunneled wrists are.

I did find the experience fascinating, though.  I actually got know some of my Facebook friends a little better, and there were those I was always willing to do favors for, and those who just never seemed to return my good will.  Which made me less inclined to give them fabulous gifts, like a “topiary” or a “sheep.” I’m not the recruiting type, so I didn’t invite others to play, but once I saw a friend on the Farmville roster, I would ask them to become my neighbor, so I could grow my farm.

What can I say?  I was an addict.  But no longer.  Yesterday, I retired.  I posted the notice on Facebook and washed my virtually-soiled hands of the whole messy business.  I thought my sister summed up my situation best, when I was caught up in the cycle of planting and harvesting:  “Terry has waaaaay too much time on her hands.”  But then the always perceptive Kathy Knopoff chimed in with her analysis, commenting on my retirement announcement: “Well, with Mafia Wars, who has time?”

So true.  So tragically true, Donna Knopoff… Meet me in Cuba and we’ll talk over stolen cigars and bootleg whiskey…

About That Book I Was Writing…

True confessions: I finally figured it out – I lack the discipline and passion to write a book.  Which is really sad because when I made the decision to go part-time, writing that book was certainly high on my list of priorities.  Please, no pity parties.  Although the literary world should, perhaps, be in heavy mourning without my contributions.

It’s a shame, though.  I had such grandiose plans.  And I kind of fell in love with the idea of me on a book tour, chatting with Oprah, being interviewed on NPR, sharing my wild ideas and deep insights with a grateful public.  But now that I’m into month 10 of procrastination, I’ve had to face the fact that just the thought of doing the actual writing fills me with such exhaustion that I need 30 minutes of Judge Judy to snap me out of it.

I think part of the problem lies in the writing instrument itself – the computer.  In the (good) old days, we used typewriters.  There are clearly a number of differences between typewriters and computers, but the most significant one for me is that not one of my electric or manual typewriters had games on them.  Or instant message.  Or Skype.  And when one is cursed with a difficult task and the attention span of a flea, those distractions become an irresistible draw.

We watched Barton Fink over Halloween weekend (a treat if you haven’t seen it – so twisted and riveting), and it was all about writer’s block -  oh, and going to hell, too, but that’s a story for a different day.  Well, let me tell you something.  If Fink was blocked pounding away on his old typewriter, sitting in that third rate hotel with peeling wallpaper, John Goodman as his rather odd neighbor, and no television, well, let’s just see how he would have fared in today’s world.  Add 300 channels, Facebook, solitaire and Bejeweled Blitz to the picture, and Fink would have been even more screwed.

Compare my laziness to Al Riske, Greg Bardsley, Ruth Pavilonis and Mark Richardson – mostly, but not all, former Sun colleagues who hold down day jobs AND write AND get published.  I don’t recall hearing any of them talking about what happened on Judge Judy last week, which just might be a clue to my problem.  And, I should add,  I’ve been unsuccessful in engaging any of them in Mafia Wars and other total, utter wastes of time.

But you know?  I’m likely not going to change.  I love telling my stories on stage.  I love telling my stories here on my blogging site.  So I’m going to stop beating myself up and …. oh wait.  Gotta run.  Judge Judy is on!

Facing Up to the Ugly Truth on Facebook

“After 22 years with Sun…”

“You guys are the best – I’ll miss every one of you…”

“Waiting and waiting – will the axe fall today?”

These are just a few of the layoff messages I’ve seen on Facebook today from my many friends and colleagues at Sun.  Heads are rolling, and with this, the 8th or so major Sun reduction in force in five years, there seems little rhyme or rhythm as to who has to go this round.  Eventually, I guess, we’ll all be gone. And what was once the best company on the planet will be just a memory.

I’ve been down all day about this, but do draw some comfort from the number of supportive messages being posted – some in response to a particular person’s layoff and some just expressing, as Dana Fugate said, small written hugs to our community.

I’ve also had several online Facebook chats with colleagues about how they’re doing.  It’s tough to be laid off, but it’s also heart-wrenching to have to give the news to one of your employees.   Miserable stuff, all around.

And meanwhile, we continue to wait for the European Union to approve our acquisition by Oracle.  And wait.  And wait.  And worry.  Then wait some more.  Ugh, ugh, ugh.

I extend my  warmest support and good wishes to all Sunnies – whether you lost your job, whether you had to tell someone the bad news, or whether you simply are watching good people go.  It’s a sad day for all of us.

Go Ahead – Be a Square

My friend and business partner, Greg Mann, posted a really interesting blog on Piet Mondrian last week.  The Dutch painter is best known for his Neoplastic work, such as Broadway Boogie Woogie:

Mondrian had a heavy influence on a generation – and not just painters, in fact.  A quick look at Wikipedia tells us this:

Mondrian… was one of the main inspirations to the early pointillist musical aesthetic of serialist composer Pierre Boulez.

The Mondrian OLAP Server processes information in OLAP cubes.

The Mondrian Hotel is located in West Hollywood, California, on Sunset Boulevard. It was built in 1959.

Piet is an esoteric programming language named after Piet Mondrian.

The La Vie Claire cycling team’s bicycles and clothing designs were inspired by Mondrian’s work throughout the 1980s. The French ski and bicycle equipment manufacturer LOOK, which also sponsored the team, used a Mondrian-inspired logo for a while. The style was revived in 2008 for a limited edition frame.

Fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent’s Fall 1965 Mondrian collection featured shift dresses in blocks of primary color with black bordering inspired by Mondrian. The collection proved so popular that it inspired a range of imitations that encompassed garments from coats to boots.

He inspired painters, composers, couture, architects – and at least one writer – me.

I led two webinars last week on presentation skills* last week) and I really pounded on the point that you need to know and be passionate about your topic if you want to rock the house.  But even more important, you need the discipline to focus on two or three messages if you want your talk to be memorable.  As it turns out, Mondrian gives a perfect structure to build that (pardon the pukey jargon) message architecture.

Consider the Yves Saint Laurent’s dress referenced above:

Where does your eye fall? The red square, I would wager… The black lines frame that square, re-emphasizing its importance,  The blue area draws you away briefly, while the yellow hem snaps the picture together.  Just like a tightly told story should work.

So let’s play with this for a minute, using Mondrian’s painting, Lozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Gray:

Let’s say that I want to tell the story of The Three Little Pigs, who had to defend themselves against the big, bad wolf, but I want to use it for a business metaphor:

The first thing I like about this particular painting is its diamond shape, which reminds me that good stories have a strong start-to-finish plot that is clear and easy to understand.  The next thing I like about this piece is that it gives me structure for the two main messages I want to make: a strong defense is the best offense for these three little underdog pigs (apologies for the cross-species contamination) and that spending money on good strong bricks can be a wise investment.  There’s a sub-theme I’d like to subtly introduce, which is that just because you’re bigger doesn’t mean you’re better.

Is this the tool for you?  Try it and see.  I do know that it works for me, not only helping me structure a communication but giving me a little creative boost along the way.  Thanks, Piet!  And thank you, Greg, for reminding me how much Mondrian has to teach us, over 60 years after his death. (By the way, there’s even a site where you can create your own online Mondrian designs! How cool is that?)

*Shameless plug: I will be giving a half-day workshop on the same topic at the Melcrum Annual Employee Engagement Conference in February.