Wireless = Chicken Foot

Wireless networking is enough to drive a person to superstition. It never fails that I have a board room full of people and the computer screen projected on a wall when someone decides at the last minute that they need a document off the network. Should be no problem, especially for someone who has as much experience and knowledge as I have with networking. I mean I truly, fully, graphically understand how wireless is supposed to work.
But for some reason, only in board meetings, I cannot connect. And with the whole world watching, I cannot run to the my office to troubleshoot. So I am powerless.

And that is where the superstition comes in. What did I do wrong? Was I wearing these shoes the last time this happened? Is it because I don’t have on my lucky bracelet? OOOOH That is blasphemy. That is why I’m being punished. Or, did my mind wander during invocation? Am I even being punished? Am I supposed to learn something from this humiliation? Why did I choose this field? Why was I ever born? What is the meaning of life?

Honestly, at times like this, if you told me that waving a chicken foot over that laptop would fix it, I would be terribly tempted to try it.

You see?

Wireless = Chicken Foot

Good, Bad and OMG!

Who am I? Okay, I know the answer to that. I spend a lot of time thinking about who I want to be, and a lot of time taking actions that move me in that direction. So why the question: Who am I? A phone call from an old friend reminded me of the decisions I made back when we were close. It reminded me of the way I thought at that time and what I thought was important.

When I look at my life in its entirety, it’s dizzying. I’m sure this can’t be healthy, because when I think back to the person I was, I cannot reconcile that person with the person I am now. And how I came to be here, at this age, in this life, with these people is bizarre to me. I imagine an amnesiac coming home from the hospital after a head injury trying to remember the threads and stories tied to the people and places and things in her life.

In this present tense, I am a relatively content, self-sufficient human being. Hopefully I give more to society than I take. I am a reluctant leader. I don’t trust myself, but a lot of people depend on me for a lot of things and I do everything I can to keep from letting them down. I believe in doing what’s right, even when it’s inconvenient, even if it’s difficult, even if it costs you personally. That is the easy part. Figuring out what is right is the most difficult. Finding it buried under all of the “I wants” and “I don’t wants” is a chore.

I know that sometimes you have to speak up and lead. And sometimes you have to shut up and follow. And usually, when you most need to do one of these, it’s when you really don’t want to.

I don’t believe in zero-sum solutions. I don’t believe that if I’m smart, you must be stupid. I don’t believe that if you’re successful, I’m a failure. And I don’t think that there is a prize for identifying the shortcomings of others. I have learned that there is no us vs. them. I like people. I like win-win solutions and the creative process that finds them.

I like quiet enjoyment. I’m not a thrill seeker. And if you saw me screaming on those roller-coasters last Sunday, well, inside, I was quietly enjoying the view. Raising my hands and marveling at the sensation. Melding myself into the turns and rolls, smoothing them out. And if you were there and you thought my screams had a note of falsehood, they did. When I yelled out, it was calculated. I decided to do it to see how it would feel.

I have a collection of amazing people in my life. They make me better at being a human.

I believe that human touch has healing powers.

I am a hard person. I speak harshly. I am intolerant of many things, like mediocrity. But I saw a WWJD bracelet about five years ago, and it changed the way I look at the world. There is beauty in grace. And we all need grace. Especially me.

Because I started living too soon. Or maybe it was too late. I was taking action before I was fully awake. I made horrible childish mistakes at adult games. And my self-recrimination stops as I remember that I was too young to be playing those games in the first place. The person I was would sacrifice my entire future for a moment. Not for the thrill of the moment, but for a moment of approval or acceptance. The person I was made herself invisible and worked off the radar to get her emotional needs met. No values of my own. Nothing so sacred or personal that I wouldn’t give it up for someone else. I adapted myself to whatever the situation or person in front of me called for. Weak. Desperate. Small.

So how did I get to be the obnoxious independent thinking person that I am today? I’m not sure it’s something that can be fully understood. Somebody gave me the tools, many somebodies gave me many tools along the way. But I really decided, fully committed to using these tools when I became a mother. I was sick of heartache by then. Sick of the heartache that comes with bad decisions. And then I had someone in my life that I valued. I didn’t think enough of myself to set boundaries, but I thought enough of her to go to bloody battle with anyone who would tread on her.

And I thank God every day for giving me the will to live. Not just exist, but to live. She is sixteen now, and she is everything that goes with that. Good, bad and OMG! I’m not the best parent. All parents lack objectivity, but sometimes I examine her with glittering fascination. She reads. She drives. She rolls her eyes. I am amazed that we made it this far. She’s almost a fully formed human being.

Her name is the same as the river of Jesus' baptism. The popular definition of her name is “downflowing” as it relates to water, and maybe that is also fitting. But her name truly means “descendent of the tribe of Dan,” and Dan’s name means “God is my judge.”

Park Road 4

No one can drive down Park Road 4 without counting their blessings. I defy them. I know it looks like an anonymous turn off of Highway 281. And the first stretch might mislead you into thinking it’s just a paved path to take you wherever you’re going. Even as you pass Longhorn Cavern, you might still be preoccupied enough to take this place for granted.

And maybe it’s best if you are lulled and unsuspecting when you come to that first hill. Then it really gets you in pit of your belly. Your car tilts down and you have to lift your head to see forward. But you can’t really see forward, you can only see the almost vertical up-stretch of blacktop that is the other side of the hill. The trees block the rest of the road from view. And while you crane your neck, watching for oncoming cars, your stomach floats up into your chest. And before you know it you are tilting your head down, trying to see over the hood of your car, and you stomach is being pulled down toward your seat. Then whoosh, it’s over.

And what makes this road better than any other tickle-belly hill from my childhood is that, on Park Road 4, there’s another hill coming, just as steep as the first. And then there’s a third that’s almost as exciting that follows right after that. And if you’re really blessed, you’ll have two ten-year-old boys in the back seat yelling “Faster! Faster!” But you don’t really have to go faster. The hills will still give their thrill at a safe speed.

And once you’re past those hills and smiling in that homemade ice-cream and lemonade frame of mind, there’s a majestic castle that comes into view just long enough to amaze you all over again. No matter how many times you’ve seen it, you still come to that one point in the road where it’s rising out of the greenery and looming against the blue sky. Then it disappears again, and you can only catch glimpses of it through the trees.

But the little guys in the back won’t let you work very hard to get another look at the castle. “Wow! Mom, look at that.” You turn and sloping down to the left are soft rolling hills framed by the bristly cedar and oak that line the roads. And you feel like you’re landing an airplane when you slide down and around the hill and the view collapses slowly and drags out behind you.

So if you just happen to be taking Park Road 4 to meet the very best friends you have for a birthday party to celebrate one of the most amazing kids you know, well, just be sure you can handle that kind of bliss. It is exquisite.

School Supplies and Introspection

I watched yet another movie today with that same musical scene where one of the main characters walks down a busy street in soul searching reflection. The scene always starts with unfamiliar faces walking toward the camera as a sad song plays. Then in the crowd, the main character’s face distinguishes itself from the rest, as he or she looks introspective.

And after I left the theater, my husband and I went to the store to buy school supplies. Of course I waited until the last minute to buy them. And I won’t use the excuse that I was too busy to do it sooner. Of course I’m busy. Everyone is busy. But yesterday, when I should have gone to the store to get the deed done, I just couldn’t do it. I got tired just thinking about it. So I drove home in soul searching reflection, telling myself that this must be how lazy people feel. They know what they should do, and they don’t. And I told myself that the only difference between me and lazy people are our actions. Then I laid down on the couch with my laptop and wrote.

Being that I’m in a writing class, you might think of writing as a productive thing to do. But the truth is, I don’t earn a living at it and no one is depending on me to get it done. I do it because it is as relaxing an escape for me as a bubble-bath and a romance novel is to some of my friends. So I’m not delusional. I know that being at that store on the Sunday night before school starts was a bad situation created by none other than my own lazy, selfish choices.

So there I was. I had just gotten out of the movie with the reflective-music-busy-street-walking scene, and I found myself in the dismal discount store with the rest of the procrastinating parents. And we all looked haggard and stressed. And we would have been pushy and rude, but we didn’t have any fight in us. And I know why. Because the supply list requires brads in the folders. Pockets and brads. And teachers have asked for pockets and brads for as long as my kids have been in school. And every year, there is box after box full of folders with no brads. Those folders are colorful and have sports team logos on them. They come with a wide variety of colors and designs on the front. They are a great way for your student to express their individuality. But they don’t have brads.

And you get pushed along the school-supply aisle faster than you can search for the items on your list, because other parents need what is just beyond you. So you move a little to let them get what they need, and then someone is behind them, and you move a little more, still trying to look back at the pencils to see how many packs of 8 or 3 that you will need to get the 43 called for on the list. But before you can decide what combination of regular and mechanical pencils your child will want, you have been pushed past the grading pencils, the dividers, the binders and the clipboards. (I want to know what supply list calls for clipboards? I have a junior in high school and have yet to need one of those.) And before you know it, you are pushed out the other end, your basket is empty and you have to circle around to start over.

But, things are looking up in the old Stewart household. The store still had most of what was on the school-supply list. And it was on the school-supply aisle that I had that moment. That moment when your blog topic occurs to you. Even if you don’t blog you know what I mean. Everyone has a funny rant every now and then.

I had been pushed out of the aisle for about the fourth time, and I found myself looking back down at the faces of the parents. At that moment, they looked like the faces on a busy street. And then, the face I was searching for came into focus. My husband, red-eyed and irritated, reflecting on the shortage of folders with brads, I’m sure. If a sad song had been playing, it would have been a scene right out of a movie. Someone should put a school-supply shopping scene into a movie. But movie makers, please don’t let the scene go on too long. I get tired just thinking about it.