My New Career!

I’m good at what I do for a living and I consider myself successful at what I do. But like many people, there comes a time when your career isn’t as exciting as it used to be. You don’t get up every morning with that same fiery excitement that you used to and you find yourself daydreaming about the second half of your life and what different things you could do to fill your time and still earn a paycheck doing it.

My daydreams of change have always centered around creativity. Maybe I would become a photographer or writer or painter or even a professional clown. Whenever I do something creative I lose all sense of time. I get so lost in an idea that when I finally check the clock, I gasp at the amount of time that has passed. How wonderful to be so engrossed in what you’re doing that time magically slips away. It’s my perfect example of being completely present in the moment.

Since I usually lean toward the creative world, I was surprised to find my true calling in a different arena this weekend and I owe it all to my brother and sister-in-law. They were the master minds behind the Road Rally my family participated in this weekend. It was just like Amazing Race, except we never left the country, never jumped out of an airplane, and no camera crews were following us around. It was awesome! I was definitely born to compete in Road Rallys.

Speeding down the road looking for clues, decoding secret messages, spotting hidden treasures, and taking silly photographs is what I was born to do. How do I make money at this, you ask? Well that’s definitely the tricky part. Actually, every great idea I’ve had in the past ten years has been marred by that particular glitch.

Did I mention that my team won the Road Rally? Another reason to make it my job – I already know that I excel at it. Of course, I did not win this race all by myself. My brother-in-law, Eric and my nephews Andrew, Austin, and Johnny were all valuable members of my team. Even though, my inner “Nancy Drew” did shine through as the leader of these “Hardy Boys”, I appreciate the large role they played in our victory. I’m certainly willing to take them along for the ride if they want. Heck, Andrew’s eighteen so we could work together and I could give him 30% of our winnings. I don’t know who’s gonna pay us to run around and play Indiana Jones all day, but if that fool is alive and well, Please God, send him my way!

I just want to thank Scott and Renee’ for taking the time and putting in the effort to make this Road Rally a success! We all had an awesome time and thanks to the two of you, I’m gonna quit my day job!

Um........... Can I come live with you?

A Day With Izzie

My sister’s up from Louisville for the weekend because the whole family is gathering Sunday for a Road Rally, which is like a scaled down Amazing Race. I can hardly wait to Rally because I my intention is to win! But today, Amy and her husband took the four oldest kids to Eric’s brother’s for the day, and they left sweet baby Izzie with me – Yeh! (She’s 18 months old )

We went to the Pet Store to pick up food for George and then visited with all the animals. She didn’t make a single peep as she took it all in. After oo-ahhing over the puppies and laughing at the parrots, we left to do some grocery shopping. Once again, she remained silent as I loaded the vegetables all around her in the cart. When she got her hands on the red leaf lettuce, she worked it over as if she was trying to pulverize a bag of potato chips. I guess that’s what you call a tossed salad!

As I type this, she sleeps peacefully just three feet away as she most likely dreams of the puppies and talking parrots she met this morning. It’s been three hours now, so I’m thinking it’ll be any moment that she opens her big brown eyes and giggles at me.

Whoa! Talk about timing! “Hello, sweet girl”.

I’ve gotta go! There’s a beautiful park down the road that’s calling our name!

Whoooooa! That Was Close!

To prepare for the carpet installers to come and coat my floors with “Champagne” I had to move a lot of stuff from the third floor to the second floor. That meant countless trips up and down the stairs with my arms full. On one of my trips, I got careless with my footing and did one of those, “Whoooooa!”, where your foot misses the step, your body lurches forward and you fight to pull yourself back before you somersault your way down the stairs. As I took a moment to center myself, I thought of all the missed falls I’ve had on this staircase. My chunky Steve Madden shoes from years ago, were by far the greatest cause of near mishaps. I don’t know how many times I saved myself from disaster in those shoes and then reprimanded myself with, “SHERI!!!! BEEEEE CAREFUL!”

I’ve often thought about what would happen if I fell down the stairs and knocked myself unconscious – what would I do? Seriously! If it was a Friday or Saturday when I had no plans, it could be days before someone found me. Of course, if I had a man picking me up for a date, then he could swoop in and save the day. WOW! Dating could save my life!

When I shared this long-time concern with one of my best friends, she just laughed at me. This friend lives in Canada, which means she’s gonna be the last person to find me – what’s so funny about that? I’m dead at the bottom of the stairs while she’s hoopin’ and hollerin’ it up at a hockey game, completely unaware of my demise. The game of hockey would never be the same for her after that!

My other best friend laughed at my concern too. She lives much closer and she would be the first one knocking down my door if I failed to show up for an ice cream social. In fact, she would call in the helicopter police to meet her at my house to help her knock it down!

I’m thinking the best case scenario would be if I tumbled on a work day. The girls from the office would be knocking down my door at ten minutes past the hour, because I’m nothing if not reliable. Reason number 22 for being a dependable employee - if you fall down the stairs and knock yourself unconscious, your co-workers will come looking for you.

Actually, best case scenario would be to simply walk down the stairs one at a time like I learned to do when I was three years old. After thirty-some years of practicing this basic skill, you'ld think I would have mastered it by now!

Men Just Want A Little Respect

Spending all day with a diverse group of patients can lead to many captivating conversations. I see all walks of life in my office, which makes every day interesting. I have this one patient, who I’ll call Stuart, that I just adore. Stuart and I got along swimmingly right from the start. Our conversations were always highly spirited as we jumped from one subject to another, each of us waiting for our turn to speak. He’s a pastor at a local church, who’s married with three teenage boys. He is what I call a “high quality individual“. On his last appointment, while discussing fabulous books we had read, he gushed over the book, “Love and Respect” by Emerson Eggerich. Apparently, he gives it out to all the married couples he counsels and it always gets rave reviews.

Since my future husband is lost in space somewhere, it seemed the perfect time to read a book about getting along with your spouse. I figured it couldn’t be too hard to respect a man who wasn’t there. After all, the imaginary men are the most fantastic to date, because they’re perfect in every way! What’s not to respect, right?

According to Mr. Eggie, men need respect like women need love. In a study of 400 men around the nation, when forced to choose one of the following scenarios, they were asked which they would prefer to endure?

A) to be left alone and unloved in the world
B) to feel inadequate and disrespected by everyone

Seventy-four percent chose to be alone and unloved rather than feel inadequate or disrespected. Gee! How many times do women make their men feel inadequate? Yeah.

Every page I turn I see the truth in what he speaks. All that women want is to feel genuinely loved. We want to be the center of one man’s universe. As much as that is true, the men we love ( even the ones lost in space that we patiently wait for) desperately want to feel respected. According to Eggie, if a women shows disrespect to her man – and we do it ALLL the time – then that man finds it difficult to show love to the women who does not respect him. When a man does not feel respected for who he is, he withdraws from his woman, and the woman takes that to mean he doesn’t love her enough. This begins the Crazy cycle, as he calls it. This cycle doesn’t have to start with the woman. In fact, it probably starts with the man doing or saying something seriously stupid. Whoa! Did I just say that? Wow! I need to practice my respect speak before my space boy finds me.

If you read this book, Mr. Eggie will convince you that these two elements of Love and Respect are indeed the core issues between a man and a woman. I think this man is a genius and I’m going to start practicing these techniques on my bunny George. There are days when I poke a little fun at him and I realize I may be emasculating him and that’s why he retreats when I try to love on him. Sometimes, he looks at me like I’m about to take his life, as he runs to his little den. I don’t ever want to see that look of fear in the eyes of the man I love. So for practice, George is gonna get nothing but respect from me for awhile and we’ll see if his aloof attitude changes into Looooooooove.

Preparing For A Funeral

As it is so many times in life, death comes sooner than expected. We think if we plan well and take good care, everything will be alright. But sometimes, if we’re not paying close enough attention, sickness slowly settles in. So slowly, that by the time we notice that death is near, it’s too late to breathe new life into it.

Sadly, I am prepared to officially bury my garden tomorrow. It will be tilled under, way before it’s time. Tonight, as I took one last look at my wilting and shriveling plants, I thought of all the gardens around the world that are still alive, vibrant and producing award winning produce. Why couldn’t my vegetables thrive this year? Was it the year of the strawberry?

June-bearing strawberries made their yummy debut in my garden this spring and I took that as a sign that it was going to be a fruitful summer. It wasn’t. It seems that when fruit entered my garden, the vegetables staged a boycott. I had no idea there would be a conflict. I always thought fruits and vegetable got along. I know they play well together in salads.

Anyway, I’m gonna make the trip to Lowe’s tomorrow to pick up the refuse bags that will serve as the carrying coffin for the deceased vegetables. I’ll walk them to the curb and wait for the big red truck to come and take them away. They’ll enter the recycling world, where they can be reincarnated into something different for next season. Maybe as vegetables, they missed their calling and next year they’ll thrive better as mulch.

Wouldn’t it be wild if they came back to my garden next year as mulch? Unless they plan to come back to suffocate the strawberries – that would be bad! Maybe they should just move on and I’ll do the same.

I tried to post a final picture of the garden, but Blogger apparently thought it was too bleak to post, because it refused to upload it. Maybe it's for the best. A person could wilt just looking at it.

Instead of dwelling on what wasn't this year, I choose to remember all the years before, when it wore big green leaves and produced juicy red tomatoes. I'm looking ahead to next year and dreaming of all the possibilities!