How Not to Decorate a Cake

We have a philosophy in our family: Celebrate Everything. From the truly special to the truly mundane. When the kids were little we had birthday parties for stuffed animals, made May baskets for neighbor friends, and to this day everyone in the family gets a gift on the first day of snow. It might be a little overly precious, but we like to celebrate. And we like cake. So, it only made sense we would celebrate, with cake, after Anna's International Baccalaureate Recognition ceremony this week.

The ceremony was nice. Sort of like a mini-graduation. It reminded me a lot of the Hooding Ceremony I participated in as a doctoral graduate. Students were given their IB sashes to wear at graduation and there was an air of pride and jubilation. The students conducted themselves politely although as one young man crossed the stage wearing a fedora and carrying a cane I wondered why he was dressed as a young Mahatma Gandhi, the way I remembered him portrayed in the 1982 film. I found out later he was impersonating Snoop Dog. I was clueless, which made me feel a little old and uncool but hey, I guess I am old and uncool. So be it.

We left the ceremony and decided to have a little impromptu celebration at home, which is sort of how a lot of these things go. We make a spontaneous decision to create a celebration and then quickly pull it together. Steve, Parker, and I stopped at the grocery store to find a little pre-made cake. We intended to have "Congratulations, Nerd!" written on it.

We are immensely proud of Anna's accomplishments and we lovingly refer to her as our little nerd. She has managed to go through the rigorous IB program almost like it was nothing. I've noticed that the program evokes a good bit of whining and complaining from a lot of IB students but Anna hardly ever mentioned how challenging it was. We are all a little in awe of her. Not only did she breeze through IB, she also took a job and worked at least 20-hours per week through her junior and senior years. Now granted, Steve, Charles, Parker, and I all held jobs in high school, but none of us came anywhere near the academic achievements Anna has.  Although she didn't have to, she paid for all of her own IB exam fees and maintained a GPA that far surpassed anything the rest of us earned. While we have a pretty smart family, none of us got our act together as early as Anna did. I think my goals in high school were just passing my classes and flirting with boys. I probably didn't get a cake for that.

Anyway, she's pretty much our hero. So she deserved a cake and a celebration.

We found our little cake covered in chocolate frosting with white edging and sugar daisies and took it to the decorating station with its array of partially squeezed, colorful frosting bags. I asked the cake decorator if she would please write on it for me. She took the cake from my hands without a word, as if I was inconveniencing her terribly. I cheerfully asked if she would write, "Congratulations, Nerd!" on it.  At this point she seemed a little angry at me as she glared and said, "Congrats." Meanly. "Um...sure...congrats!"  She grabbed a tube of blue frosting and I started to say, "Oh, how about you use a different color," since blue didn't really coordinate with any of the colors on the cake. I wanted to request yellow but her hostility was palpable so I let it go. I mean, it was cake, not a cure for cancer. I couldn't see provoking her any further. Clearly, asking her to perform her job had created enough conflict. She hastily wrote, 'Congrats, Nerd' and wordlessly, but angrily, handed the cake back to me.

Alrightythen.

We walked away from the bakery department and once we were out of her earshot Steve said quietly, "Well, she was a happy cake lady," which made Parker and me laugh but it did make me wonder why she is working as a cake decorator if she is that miserable. Cake is often involved in happy celebrations. Not always, but most of the time. Her attitude, it seemed, was almost as incongruent as the blue frosting she used to write our sentiment.

I can't begin to know the circumstances of the Grumpy Cake Lady's life. I can't know what made her so angry. If decorating cakes makes her that mad, she might want to find another line of work but I suspect it goes deeper than that. We all have issues and troubles. Some more difficult than others. Some of our own making. Some out of our control. But, I wonder how treating a stranger with disdain could possibly help.

Maybe if Grumpy Cake Lady, you, and I all started treating people even nicer on the days when we feel like being mean, it might make everybody involved just a little happier. I know everyone isn't outgoing and vivacious. I'm not asking for perky. Just polite. Please don't impose your bad day on me and I won't impose my bad day on you. That's all.

It isn't that hard to be nice. Nice people make the world a better place.

And a better world is definitely worth celebrating.

With cake.

Confessions of a Mini-Hoarder

I'm afraid I owe my children an apology.

I never thought I'd be in this situation. But I am. Maybe it is because my youngest child is graduating from high school in a few days. Maybe it is my increasing awareness of my own mortality. I'm not sure. Nevertheless, I'm sorry.

A few years ago when my siblings and I moved our mother out of her home of 30 years we spent days sorting through all manner of things she had kept. Many hours during many days going through stuff I doubt she even remembered she had. It was arduous.

(Photo Source: Google Images)

Shortly after that event I vowed that I would never do that to my own children. I came home determined to free myself of the burden of holding on to too much stuff. I even wrote a blog about it.  You can read it here.

I thought I was doing a pretty good job.  I am not, by nature, a keeper. I don't like clutter and I don't find a lot of sentimental attachment to things. I have sentimental memories, but stuff doesn't mean much to me. My husband, on the other hand, might be a teeny bit more of a pack-rat. Let me just say that if I die first, somebody is going to need to keep an eye on him. Seriously. He isn't too bad right now but that is probably because we live in a small house and I gently and oh-so-kindly recommend he get rid of things. Often. But if I'm gone, please, somebody check in on him. If you don't he'll get lost in the house. Not because of piles of old newspapers and dried cat feces but because of floor-to-ceiling towers of art books that will obscure passageways. He'll die one day and they'll remove his partially decayed body from the house and the neighbors will stand around outside and someone will say, "How did he die?" and somebody else will say, "I heard they found him trapped under a pile of nearly empty paint tubes with just one drop left in them."  The coroner will declare cadmium red killed him.

Well, that might be a little dramatic. But still. Check on him.

Anyway, my point here is that I thought I was doing a pretty good job of keeping my home free of extraneous stuff that my children would have to dispose of when I no longer can. But I had failed to give adequate attention to a little beige metal file cabinet that sat in a corner of what has become Steve's art gallery. It was unobtrusive, if out of place, and recently I decided to clean it out so the cabinet could find a new home. I assumed I'd take the things out of the cabinet, put them in the garbage or recycle bin and move on.

I assumed incorrectly.

It had been a long time since I looked in that file cabinet. I didn't even remember what was in it. But as I started to sort through things, I simply couldn't throw them away. Notes from each of my children, scrawled in the hand of those lacking fine motor skills that say, "i LOvE You mOMMy!" Drawings of our family that depict me much thinner than I really was. All manner of things, just too precious to throw away.

At age six, Charles had become obsessed with the Titanic. Obsessed. He was unable to hold a conversation without working in how many rivets had been used on the boat. He wrote poems and drew pictures and even at one point, wrote a letter to Dr. Robert Ballard, the oceanographer who had discovered the sunken ship at the bottom of the sea, inviting him to dinner. I found a copy of the letter. And the one Ballard had graciously written back saying his schedule wouldn't allow him to accept the invitation but thanking Charles anyway.

I found the business plan, letter asking family members to be investors, checkbook, and business cards from Griggs Brothers Ice Cream, the small entrepreneurial start up the boys began to provide a less expensive alternative to the ice cream truck that travelled through our neighborhood selling overpriced confections. For a couple of years Griggs Brothers did quite a good business. How could I toss that stuff?

I found myself unable to discard the bill from the body shop that repaired one of the only new vehicles we ever purchased. It was a blue 1993 Chrysler Plymouth stick shift mini-van. We'd only had it a couple of months when, due to a series of bad decisions on our part, the boys and some neighborhood friends got in it to play and caused it to roll into a bank of community mailboxes taking out the entire back end of the van. At the time it was terrifying. But nobody got hurt and today it makes a funny story. I couldn't throw that bill away.

I found warranties from infant car seats, swing sets, and bike helmets. The items are long gone, but I couldn't part with their manuals. They represent pieces of our younger family.

I stand at a nexus. Excited to see my children launch into their own adult futures but tugged backward to those childhood days. They are moving on. It is what they are supposed to do. Some days I'm ready. Some days I'm not. Sometimes I am eager to see what they do with their lives. Sometimes I just want to hold on a little longer.

But I can't. Life doesn't work that way. I have to let go.

There is a price to pay, though. I'm sorry, some day they will have to sort through the box. They will have to figure out what to do with the only tangible things left from their childhood. Maybe I have to let go of them. But I just can't let go of a note that says:

"i LOvE You mOMMy!"

Office Party of One

I'm glad I don't work for Yahoo. 

Not that I've noticed them calling me on a regular basis offering me a job or anything. But still, I think it would be hard to have an office all set up at home and, after getting used to shuffling around in pj's with a favorite mug of coffee in hand, being told those days are over.

(Source: Google Images)

 

Before I go any further, I want to be clear in saying this isn't a diss on Marissa Mayer. I'm sure she made the 'no more telecommuting at Yahoo' decision soundly. Like all business people, she has and will continue to make some good decisions and some not so great ones. I guess we'll find out which category this one falls into eventually but, as someone who advocates strongly for more female representation in the world of high level leadership, I want to go on record that I support Marissa. She's pretty dang powerful. And influential. And the woman makes more money in a year than I'll ever make. I suggest she keep doing whatever it is she has been doing. Although, she probably doesn't need my advice or approval.

Nevertheless, I suspect some Yahooers are not yahooing over having to go to an office. I say this because, in my opinion, working from home has some nice perks. 

I have a lovely little office in my house, painted a delightfully cheerful Granny Smith apple green. It is home to my desk and my much needed white board where ideas leave my head and get recorded in somewhat random but nevertheless comprehensible (to me) fashion. On the wall hangs my Wild, Wacky, Wonderful Woman calendar that reminds me which day it is in case I forget. And I do. Often. Next to my computer, a lamp delivers a cozy heated spot for a cat to sleep while I work. And on warm, sunny days I open the large window and let in fresh air.

I pretty much love it.

Except on days when my extrovert self grows weary of my extrovert self's company. I can only laugh at my own jokes so many times. On those days I long for an office with other people. I miss the conversation, the laughter, the creative energy. Still, it is nice not to have to deal with any workplace drama other than an occasional feline tiff. Those are easily remedied with a spray bottle. Human coworkers tend not to like solving conflict with that much water.

For the most part, I'm an extrovert, living an introvert's life. And for today it works. The right job in an external office environment may come along, and if it does, I won't hesitate to take it but for right now, I'm functioning just fine.

Nevertheless, I've been hearing a lot about the differences in introverts and extroverts in the workplace. Introverts seem to think extroverts are annoying. It appears the latest theory is that extroverts are poor leaders because they are loud, scatterbrained, impulsive, messy and unwashed. Well, okay, I made up the unwashed part. But, extroverts seem to be getting a bad rap.

I guess the introverts got tired of being perceived as uptight, compulsive, and moody.

All of this has me wondering why we feel the need to put people into such extreme categories in the first place. I mean, yes, I am an extrovert. But that doesn't mean I'm incapable of being quiet, or thoughtful, or reflective. I can sit in my office and work productively without adult supervision. And I'm reasonably certain introverts are capable of social interaction without breaking out in hives.

Why the need to categorize one as better than the other? Being an introvert isn't better than being an extrovert. Nor is being male better than being female, or white better than black, or Christian better than Muslim, or straight better than gay.

For whatever reason, we seem to feel that people have to be placed in specified categories and those categories have to be arranged in hierarchical order of better or worse. Whoever falls into the category of 'better' wields the most power. None of it is real, of course. It is just what we allow ourselves to believe. Nevertheless, it is disappointing to hear that personality characteristics are now being added to the better/worse classifications. It isn't going to serve anyone. The world isn't made better when we sort people into groups of better and worse.

The world is made better when all people are regarded equally. When groups don't matter and characteristics are just simply characteristics without value classifications. We don't live in that world, of course. But if we all did our part to stop categorizing we'd come a little bit closer.

Imagine it. All people having equal value.

Yahoo.