Happy Father's Day

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
~ Mark Twain, "Old Times on the Mississippi" Atlantic Monthly, 1874

This quote is my favorite among the slim pickins' of Father's Day material I can find. In comparison, poetry books and internet quote sites alike abound with Mother's Day material. I'm not sure why, but it seems in our society the role of father has always been secondary to that of mothers. And it seems to be getting worse.
When I was growing up fathers played a less active role in the home. They went to work early in the morning and came home late at night and the work they did at home usually consisted of yard work. Maybe then, it was that they were seen less often.
Now days we have lots of stay-at-home dads, and I for one like the trend.
Even the dads that work outside the home seem to take a more active role in taking care of the children. I hope this will result in more nice poems and quotes. Fathers need to be celebrated as much as mothers, but instead they've become the butt of jokes. Just turn on the t.v. and you see them depicted as bumbling household idiots in most of today's sitcoms. Hopefully the result won't be that less children grow up to appreciate, as Mark Twain did, the wisdom of their old man.
Some would say that both Mother's Day and Father's day are just Hallmark Holidays, but I did some research and it just isn't true (see the excerpt from wikipedia that follows). Fathers as well as mothers need to be celebrated, so if your Dad's still around make sure he has a special day this Sunday. If he's not, find someone who is a Dad, and help him celebrate fatherhood.


It took many years to make the holiday official. In spite of support from the YWCA, the YMCA, and churches, Father's Day ran the risk of disappearing from the calendar. Where Mother's Day was met with enthusiasm, Father's Day was often met with laughter. The holiday was gathering attention slowly, but for the wrong reasons. It was the target of much satire, parody and derision, including jokes from the local newspaper Spokesman-Review. Many people saw it as the first step in filling the calendar with mindless promotions.

Looking for Inspiration

“I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning.”- Peter De Vries

It’s tempting to blame the lack of inspiration on mere procrastination, but Peter De Vries understood that inspiration dwelled within. He didn’t go looking for it, nor did he sit around and wait for it to show up; he just got up every morning and turned it on like punching a time clock.

I admire his discipline, but for him writing was evidently a nine to five job, which is exactly the lifestyle I’ve chosen to eschew, or more accurately, the one I escaped from in the nick of time, dragging to safety by a loose thread my authentic self, while trying to kick off the greed monster who had sunk its sharp teeth into my right ankle; all this while searching desperately for the key that would unlock the golden handcuffs that bound me to that damned clock!

Now that I’m free, and living a totally new lifestyle (is this what being in the witness protection program feels like) I’m just not willing to punch that clock.

Even so, I refuse to succumb to procrastination. I keep my commitments without having to look for inspiration. After all they’re the commitments I freely chose for myself. Okay, with the exception of, scrubbing the floor; that one’s a trade-off, and the inspiration comes from knowing someone else will mow the lawn.

So while I know inspiration can be called upon when needed, I prefer sometimes to let it come to me rather than to try to turn it on based on a set schedule. It seems to know when the time is right. If I need to prepare for a class, there’s no use looking for inspiration to work on memoir, its just not going to come without a struggle. If a scene from my past is stuck in my head, I may as well not even think about trying to prepare a presentation. I get the scene on paper, and lo and behold, I’m inspired to get ready for that class.

And now if you’ll excuse me, my muse is calling; not to write or teach, but to scrub the floor. Oh wait a minute, that’s not my muse, it’s just a lawn mower outside my window.

Rules

I’ve committed the cardinal sin of blogging! I didn’t post anything last week. Awful isn’t it? I knew when I started blogging, rule number one was, post weekly- it’s the thing that kept me from starting for so long, in the first place. Now, I’m afraid I’ve posted weakly.
Do I feel guilty? You, who know me, know better. Instead, I ask myself, “Who made up these rules, anyway?” Then I move on to concocting an excuse as to why I broke them. And so, Blog Police, here it is: Being a devotee of Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I was engaged in the practice of habit number three; Putting first things first. My “first things” being family, friends, fun and food, okay I’m kidding about the last two, but I’m telling the truth when I say, family.
The week started with Mother’s Day and, what other holiday celebrates family more than Mother’s Day? Without mothers, there wouldn’t be any families. Being a mother myself, I chose to go enjoy the day rather than post on my blog.
Sure, I could’ve posted on Monday, but instead…oh what’s the use, I don’t even remember what I was doing on Monday!
I do recall that sometime this week, I went to the bookstore. And by the way, I did add another book to my list of good reads and another label to my wine list. Do those count?
While at the bookstore, I noticed that Stephen’s son Sean has written his own seven habits book, geared to teens and Stacy Curtis a children’s book illustrator has written a seven habits for kid’s book. My fear is that someone is going to come along and write, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers, I can only hope, if it happens, habit number three will remained unchanged. Either that- or a new habit will emerge. It will have to be number nine, since Stephen already capitalized on the Eighth Habit. I propose that number nine be, “Before following a rule, ask yourself, “Who made this rule, anyway?”

Do you have a comment or suggestion? If so, feel free to click on comment and post it. It won’t show up immediately. All posts come to me first, for clearance. It’s how I keep the stone throwers at bay. If you think someone else might enjoy my blog, please feel free to pass it on.

Back Up Recommended

A scary thing happened to me on vacation. My three-year old laptop was sending me error messages that it couldn’t save my files. It was a wake-up call. My anti-virus software has been telling me for months to back up my files, but it wasn’t telling me how. I’m not a computer geek and I have a habit of throwing caution to the wind, so I ignored the recommendation until now.
I mentioned the issue to my son who I was visiting with. He assured me it was an easy process, I just had to go out and buy an external hard drive. Mission accomplished. He was right- it was a snap. I can rest easy now knowing that when my laptop dies and I replace it, which I won’t, until it does, I can just upload my old files to the new machine.
What a glorious invention the external hard drive is! Now I just can’t help but wonder what a great thing it would be to hook one up to my brain. After all, it also sends me error messages. The difference is I don’t get the message until I try to retrieve the file.
How wonderful would it be, if my brain would warn me ahead of time of insufficient memory? Time to pull out the note pad and pen, brain- you’re not gonna remember this.
Let’s take it a step further. Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could add memory space? I’d gladly pay for a couple of gigabytes.
I for one would love to delete some files from my brain, too. The human brain never seems to have trouble remembering the things we wish to forget. All the times we stuck our foot in our mouth or made fools of ourselves. They seem to come back to us with ease. I know there are plenty that I would delete if I could.
Jokes abound on gradual memory loss in seniors and the medical profession assures us that some forgetfulness is normal, like forgetting a name, not being able to remember the right word, or why we went into a particular room. For some of us, I don’t think memory loss is as much the problem, as memory overload. I mean, there’s only so much space in there, right?
If our brains are really like computers, why can’t we add memory, back up our files and run a virus scan to eliminate the “bugs”?

What Stays What Goes

As I pack for my vacation the question of what to take and what to leave behind has been on mind throughout the day. One minute I want to take everything and the next, I want to take practically nothing. Obviously I can't take everything. It won't all fit in my suitcase. Besides, if I were to take everything, it wouldn't feel much like a vacation. I'd be spending my time trying to take care of too much stuff. On the other hand, I have to take enough, or I'll end up having to spend time and money acquiring things at my destination point that I won't need when I get back home. By the time we load our bags in the car I know I will have found a happy medium.

In the journey of life some people like to travel light while others tend to carry excess baggage. If each phase of our life is to be better than the one before, we need to make a conscious decision as to what we'll take from our past experiences and what we'll leave behind.

If we bring along the excess baggage of hurts and disappointments we'll be too weighted down to move forward. On the other hand, if we don't bring along the lessons embedded in those hurts and disappointments our destination won't be any different from our place of departure.

On this vacation I plan to take along healthy habits, rather than excuses to over indulge. I'm also taking along my walking shoes, a good book, a writing notebook and most important, I'm taking open arms to hug my granddaughters. What I'm not taking is stress- it doesn't fit in my suitcase.

Spring Cleaning

Ahhh Spring! Our Wisconsin April snow has melted uncovering the green grass and daffodils. Now comes the mud! Alfred Lord Tennyson said, "In Spring a young man's fancy turns lightly to thoughts of love." It sounds so alluring, but for women, at least those of my generation, in Spring our thoughts turn heavily to Spring Cleaning.

I don't mean to whine. Now days, at least it's our choice. Kind of. And men do clean too, or at least help. But have you noticed as much as the times have supposedly changed, the T.V. commercials for household cleaning products all still depict the woman doing the cleaning? We have to assume the manufacturers of these products have done some market research, which would prove, it's the women who the housecleaning chores rest the heaviest on. So, it's no wonder Spring is not my favorite season.

Give me Summer! When the mud has dried up and the work is all done. Oh, I forgot, A woman's work is never done. BTW, that little saying has been quoted so many times over history, I can't find the original author.

I apologize, my blog is meant to be educational and inspirational and I'm afraid I'm sounding negative. My excuse is the Spring cold that has invaded my head - so I'll just leave you with a couple more cleaning quotes. They were both authored by men of course- it's easy to find time to write when you don't have to clean!

"You sometimes see a woman who would have made a Joan of Arc in another century and climate, threshing herself to pieces over all the mean worry of housekeeping." ~Rudyard Kipling

"The obvious and fair solution to the housework problem is to let men do the housework for, say, the next six thousand years, to even things up. The trouble is that men, over the years, have developed an inflated notion of the importance of everything they do, so that before long they would turn housework into just as much of a charade as business is now. They would hire secretaries and buy computers and fly off to housework conferences in Bermuda, but they'd never clean anything." ~Dave Barry

Letting Go of Time Management

I used to try to manage time. In fact I've been both a teacher and a student of time management. Now days I wish I had back all the time I spent trying to manage it- not to mention the money I spent on it. You see, when you're trying to manage time it requires a lot of tools designed to help you get organized. Now I realize that all these organizational tools are just more stuff that I have to organize.
Now I spend the time I used to spend on time management, doing the things I couldn't get to, because I thought I had to manage my time first. Like spending time with my family and friends, walking & cycling, reading and writing.
Oh, I was reading before too- but I was reading about things like time management. Now that I've let go of trying to manage my time, I read things I enjoy.
I've tossed out a lot of planners and organizers and it's freed up a lot of the time I used to spend trying to organize. It saves me money too, which means I don't have to work so much and so I have more time.
Its taken my a long time - which is okay now that I know there's plenty more of it to come-but I realize the way to finding enough time, is to stop looking for it and let it go. After all, don't you have better things to do with your time?