Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Decluttering and the Easter Robot

Recently my wise and wonderful friend Nancy, a professional organizer, helped me declutter my basement. Things had been piling up down there for years, and looking at the mess was overwhelming. I needed some support and a little kick-start.

Right away Nancy made me feel better by telling me that I didn’t have a major problem with clutter. She said getting it under control was just a matter of moving things around so they were up off the floor and visible, and then it would be easier to let go of a few items. (A few? Nancy is oh, so kind.)

We started with things that were no-brainers to get rid of. It gives you momentum and a sense of satisfaction. In this category were VHS tapes on which I’d recorded episodes of Thirtysomething (I now own the DVDs), card games with missing cards and puzzles with missing pieces, and a box of old sweaters that a mouse had nested in (nothing like decomposing mouse to make your priorities clear). Incomplete craft projects that dated from when Maggie was a Brownie (Maggie is twenty-one), the inside of an ice-cream maker, and three old phones we replaced because they weren’t working right—out they went.

Next we tackled things that might be useful to someone else, but no longer had a place in my life. The extra-large Rubbermaid bin of holiday ornaments that was labeled “Did not use in ‘05” had additions in different colored marker that read, “ ’06, ‘07, ‘08 and ‘09.” Clearly these gems were not necessary to our festive celebration.

Then things got a little more complicated. We opened a box of cassette mix tapes, probably 75 of them, that my darling Pop (who passed away nine years ago) had made for me. As far back as junior high school, I have memories of us sitting on the floor in front of the stereo working on them together. When I went away to college, spent a year in Italy, got married, had children, my father kept the tapes coming. They’re a record of my life on fragile plastic strips.

“What do they represent to you?” Nancy asked, and after thinking for a minute I realized that when I looked at the tapes, I saw the time and the love that Pop put into them. But I also realized that these cassettes were not my father, and maybe I could preserve that feeling with fewer of them. I chose a half-dozen favorites and kept the boombox with the cassette player, just in case.

Nancy was kind as we unearthed faded old baskets. “But I got an arrangement of cookies in that when Rorie was born!” (Rorie is twenty-two.) She was tolerant of the stuffed pink snake, Sam, I used to sleep with as a toddler.

Overall the process was easier than I had imagined. Seeing my stuff through the eyes of a considerate helper made it much easier to make decisions about it. Out, out, out.

We were almost ready to call it a day when we came to Bunnush. Bunnush, a wind-up little floss rabbit with soft ears and a round fluffy tail, was in my very first Easter basket. Now he looks like this:

When I held him up, Nancy gave a stifled yelp.

“What is that?” she gasped.

“It’s a rabbit,” I answered.

“It looks like something out of the Terminator movies.”

I guess that’s true, but I still picture Bunnush with his smooth brown flocking and his fluffy fluffy tail.

In the end I had two vanloads of stuff to donate, much less dust, and determination to never again accumulate such a mountain of stuff. Nancy seemed to think I had done well.

But I noticed that before she left, she placed Bunnush on a bookshelf in my office, where I pass him a few times a day. I think she expects me to get tired of looking at him, but I won’t. I’m happy about everything I was able to let go of, but Bunnush? He stays.


After all, if you wind him up just right, he can still hop a few steps.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Signs of Spring


First we see St. Francis, shivering in my backyard a little over a month ago. Next we see St. Francis today.

He's hoping for some chocolate.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

TwitWit

There’s a scene in the Disney movie “Bambi” when the adolescent buck is strolling through the Technicolor springtime forest with his buddies Thumper (a rabbit) and Flower (a skunk). The three observe two lovestruck birds circling around each other and ask, “What’s the matter with them?” Wise old owl in the nearby tree says, “Why, don’t you know? They’re twitterpated.” Bambi looks disgusted and says, “Well, that’s not gonna happen to me.” Of course, before long the three friends meet ladyloves, and the twitterpation begins.

Which pretty much parallels my experience with Twitter, the social networking service that allows you to post scenes from your life in 140-character bites. First I didn’t get it, then I was enticed in, and now I am becoming infatuated by the possibilities.

I signed up a few months ago, after my friend Vicki, a fellow writer, said that I should reserve my name because social networking was important in marketing communications. Registering took approximately one minute, and immediately after Twitter obligingly gave me a list of people from my email address book who also have accounts. I signed on to “follow” all of them, mostly women friends and a few business associates. Then I waited to see what fascinating things were happening in their lives. And I waited, and am waiting still. Because none of us tweet anything. Ever.

Why, I wonder? Twitter bills itself as “without a doubt the best way to share and discover what is happening right now.” What's important "right now" may mean links to intellectual and informative articles, if you’re Anderson Cooper; or “Up early today! At the Gym!” if you’re reality starlet Kim Kardashian; or “Rehearsal and Oscar parties tonight. Hope everybody is having a great weekend!” if you’re TV personality Cheryl Burke, who is obviously having a much more exciting weekend than I am. (If Schroeder or Jasper, my dogs, could tweet, the message would always be the same: “Right now! My favorite thing!”)

Even non-celebrity tweeting is a blast when it’s used to capture the small quirky moments of our days, as my college-age children and their friends use it. My daughter recently tweeted the heart-warming “DC + 70 degrees + sunshine + driving with the windows down = one very happy Maggie.” Her friend Laura posted, “Text from my mother: ‘Getting Hair Done. Going red.’ MAKE THE MIDLIFE CRISES STOP.”

There are eeks! moments too, such as when my son Tom commented on our companionably watching the scene in the hilarious movie “Election,” in which a high school student and her teacher share a Diet Dr. Pepper while Lionel Ritchie’s “Three Times A Lady” plays in the background. His tweet, which I will not repeat verbatim, was something about him and his parents finding the humor in a potential underage relationship—eeeeks eeeeks! I would not have represented it exactly that way.

But back to my own personal and valued contacts, and our reluctance to Tweet. My theory is that we feel cautious about saying something that could be misinterpreted or make us seem unprofessional. We’ve heard too many stories about ill-judged emails that go to the wrong person and never go away. And even if we’re just sharing some incident that made us smile, we wonder, does the newsletter editor I work for really want to know about the conversation I just had with the guy who sells me salmon?

Or maybe she really isn’t too concerned how I spend my days (as long as I meet her deadlines) and maybe I’m overthinking Twitter. To me, it’s more about finding the fun than anything else, a small record of quirky events (Tom’s friend Veronica calls it “a baby diary”) that cause us to pause and appreciate and maybe LOL.

So, in the spirit of twitterpation (and because I want to read good stuff from everybody else) you’re invited to follow me on Twitter. My next post might reveal that my other idea for this entry’s title was, “What the Tweet Do We Know?” Or maybe I’ll just post the story from my salmon guy. I think you would enjoy it.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Feeding the Boys

My husband Rob and I are Georgetown grads, and we have season tickets to GU basketball. This season I watched a few games from my comfy sofa, when I didn’t feel like driving into the city on a dark and freezing Tuesday evening. Rob skipped one game, the weekend we had over 30 inches of snow, and he was desperately trying to borrow a sleigh right up until game time.

We sit next to each other at the games, but we have different experiences. Rob, a lifelong player, referee and coach, analyzes the plays, discusses strategy and protests all calls against our team. I know what’s happening on the court, but I also check out all the cute babies, watch mascot Jack the Bulldog pant, and look forward to slapping the players’ hands as they run in and out of the arena. Occasionally I can make eye contact, and they will smile back at me—especially lanky freshman Hollis Thompson, who is consistently charming to the middle-aged lady fan in the purple scarf in section 103, row G, seat 7.

I also overhear great stuff. Last year a group of young men, fans of the opposing team, were discussing guard Austin Freeman who was having a stellar game. “He’s so slow!” they exclaimed. Freeman, who looks like he could bench-press 6’10’’ center Greg Monroe, is a legitimate NBA pick and gets up and down the court just fine. When he does something particularly brilliant, my son Tom and I remark, “Slowpoke makes good.”

But my very favorite pastime at the games is to plan a dinner for the team. Some of my fondest memories of my kids’ high school basketball careers were the team dinners—serving pulled pork, cornbread, mac and cheese, vats of salad and brownie sundaes to thirty-plus athletes. I always made way more food than I thought we needed, and no matter how much there was, someone could usually manage to down a fourth sandwich or scrape the chicken caesar bowl clean.

Feeding those Georgetown players, though, that would be a challenge. I think of them eating mediocre cafeteria food and my maternal instinct goes into overtime. What would they like? I wonder. Pot roast and garlic mashed potatoes? Chicken parmesan? Homemade deep dish pizza? All of the above, with chasers of ribs and potato salad?

I picture the boys coming in to the room, smiling shyly, sniffing the air. After they have piled their oversized plates high and begun to feast, I cruise the room with platters of veggies and massive tubs of fruit salad, urging seconds and thirds. Because they are Coach Thompson’s crew, I know they are polite young men, but I don’t expect them to make conversation. I just want them to have a good home-cooked meal and enjoy it. When they have eaten more than their fill, I press packets of chocolate chip cookies, blondies, and trail mix into their hands for midnight snacks.

The people to whom I’ve confided this fantasy have mostly laughed uproariously. Our friend Peter, a Villanova grad, told me the athletic department would probably think I was a stalker. My brother-in-law Michael, himself a GU alum, said he could think of better ways to spend over $500. I disagree; just the thought of watching the team put away Costco’s on-hand supply of organic beef gives me a thrill.

It is an odd dream, I guess. Why would I want to go through the work, schlep the supplies, and figure out how keep fifteen banquet trays of food warm for the vicarious thrill of watching very large young men eat? It’s a little hard to explain, but I think it’s because they work so hard. I know Rob looks at them and sees trained athletes. I see really big boys, just the ages of my own three kids.

It could happen. Earlier this season I broached the idea to the Hoya Hoops Club (the basketball boosters) president, Al, who listened to my proposition, drew in a long breath and said, thoughtfully, “Well, it’s not against NCAA rules.” Still, Coach would have to approve, and I realize that as March madness looms, the idea of scheduling the dinner hosted by the slightly crazy lady is low on his list.

But Coach, and Austin, Hollis, Greg and all you guys, know I am waiting in the stands, ready to take menu requests. Even Rob would be excited at the prospect of feeding the GU boys. He could discuss the season. Me? I’d be happy to serve thirds on dessert, and maybe score a few smiles.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Why Talking to Think?

A few years ago my husband Rob and I attended a workshop on the Myers-Briggs Indicator, a tool that helps people understand their personality type. After you answer a series of questions, the tool rates your personality tendencies along four scales with opposite inclinations, like Introvert-Extrovert. Most of us came out somewhere in the middle, with traits of both extremes. I remember that one of Rob’s coworkers, Devon, had the highest score possible as a Thinker, or a pure analytical type, versus a Feeler, or an empathizer. “Wow, I’ve never seen someone so far off the charts!” exclaimed the facilitator. All of the women, in one synchronized motion, turned and looked sympathetically at Devon’s wife, Andrea.

It was at this workshop that I first heard the distinction between those of us who think to talk, and those who talk to think. Here’s the basic difference: think to talkers wait to speak until they know what they’re going to say, figuring it out in their heads beforehand. But talk to thinkers, like me, figure out what we want to express as we’re verbalizing. To us, talking is a way to work through the haphazard collection of possibilities rolling around in our heads.

We talk to thinkers make connections between ideas as we go along. A discussion of how unfinished projects are driving you crazy eventually segues into the way your uncle would frequently begin a story with “Yep, that’s the way it was, all right,” and along the way thoughts on creativity, the raw food movement and some funny headline you saw on people.com may emerge. You’re never quite sure how you got from there to here, but you can always trace the path back, if you want to.

Most of my closest woman friends are talk to think, which makes things easy because we identify with each others’ methods and don’t mind being interrupted. We start out with “Now I’m not sure how I want to say this,” or “Help me figure this out,” and everyone knows what to expect.

My daughter is also talk to think, but Rob and both of our sons are think to talk, which is good for me to keep in mind so my style doesn’t overwhelm them. When the boys were younger, I would approach them about dinner this way: “What about barbequed chicken pizza, only you just had that pizza for lunch, or would the chicken be better, maybe with rice, but that’s kind of boring, or I could do that soup you liked, or do you want Caesar? What do you think?” “Yeah, that’s fine, whatever,” they would respond, obviously startled.

Once you know about talk to thinkers and think to talkers, it’s impossible not to want to place everyone you know in one camp or the other. (In a similar fashion, my sister-in-law Jennifer claims that everyone in the universe can be classified as either a pin head or a bowl head, but that’s another story.) But whether I can immediately identify someone’s style or not, I know that, with no conscious effort, I’m attracting others like me.

Yesterday I was standing at the gas pump, waiting for the tank to fill, when another car pulled up next to me. Out of it stepped a woman in gray sweatpants and a hip length striped top. She was tall, probably in her sixties. She had very white skin, very black hair and very red lips. We glanced at each other, made eye contact, and I smiled.

“Why, aren’t you pleasant,” she said, then informed me that she was feeling harried. “I just found out I’m having knee surgery,” she explained, gripping the offending knee. “I’ve already had hip surgery and I think I might have lost my credit card, but I may have left it home in my nurse’s uniform, but I went ahead and called the company and told them that if there are any charges before four o’clock they should deny them. They already cancelled the card and they’re sending me a new one, and I really think it’s at home but I didn’t have a chance to check, because I had this appointment. My hip’s been really hurting again, but it’s mostly because I need the surgery. And I only have ten dollars on me but that’s enough for gas.” She paused. “Thanks, it feels better to talk about all this.”

I knew just how she felt.