I left work early today to pick up a job and a few things for an upcoming event. As I was coming out of the first stop with purchase in hand, a guy pulled in and said, “Hey, you passed me on the highway.”
Despite having a 225 hp turbo under the hood, I drive like a much older person driving a much lesser car. Really. So, I knew I wasn’t a jerk to him.
He continued, “What year is that car?” When I told him, he just stared at it. “I was going to buy one of those, but I got into an argument with the dealer over cruise control. I bought a Civic instead.” He was driving a Honda but not a Civic.
“It’s my favorite car I’ve ever owned,” I noted.
“Yeah, I bet if I bought that, I would still own it too. Have a good day.”
Sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants. Don’t let a petty argument get in the way of a great ride.
I’ve been blessed with amazing health in my life, and until I was about 25, I didn’t even work out. When I met my husband, who is 10 years older, he worked out every night after work. I had few hobbies at 25, so I started working out too. I started by running and moved to tennis a few years later when friends of ours wanted to play.
I started tennis with a trampoline racquet that was a hand me down from my husband. I didn’t have the right shoes. A lifetime of avoiding athletics made me a poor athlete with an angry mindset. I didn’t know how to relax. I threw racquets. I had no money for lessons, but I kept playing. I supplemented my tennis with yoga and weights using DVDs I picked up online.
Fast forward a few years, and I’m a regular in a social match at our favorite club. I play USTA matches and advanced to a national championship with my husband a few years ago. I now take lessons. I no longer throw racquets. I smile on court. I’ve turned myself into a competent tennis player.
However, all last spring, I was coming off court with tight achilles tendons. I knew I needed to add yoga back into my regular workout, and I started working out with Rodney Yee DVDs that I stored on my hard drive. I do one particular practice religiously. Nearly every night and some mornings.
What is great about yoga is the gentle progress you make. Do the same workout every day like I do, and you’ll notice changes quickly.
My one downside is that my favorite dog can’t join me. While she follows me like a shadow, she chews the mat, bites my ears, and pulls my hair anytime my head nears the floor during a practice. I started distracting her with toys and only locking her out of the room as a last resort. Gradually, she played along until just this week I could complete a practice until she collapsed near my head to chew my ear during final relaxation.
Rather than get annoyed, I pulled her onto my chest and just listened to her breathing as I enjoyed corpse pose. It was a modification but a welcome one. It reminded me of my early playing days and the unrealistic expectations I set for myself after picking up a racquet for the first time. I expected her to relax as I set about contorting my body for 30 minutes. It was a high bar.
All good things come with effort and patience. She’ll join me more often and for longer periods until my machinations no longer trouble her. Patience. Kindness. They’re the keys to everything.
“I developed a self esteem out of a couple of hard things. I knew I was a good father. I knew I was a good partner. I was good to those two people in my life. When we think about lying to people or not being good to people, we think about the harm we do to them. But we don’t think of the harm we do to ourselves. With telling ourselves who we are. If you lie to people repeatedly, you can find it hard to trust yourself. That’s who I am. I’m a liar. That’s what I do. This becomes crucial when it becomes time to make promises to yourself.” – Ta-Nahisi Coates on WTF Pod
2017 has felt like a year of loss, and some of it has been literal. My grandmother, Doloras Shay, left this world yesterday after 92 years. My brother and I passed her hometown of Hays, Kansas on a cross country trip in the ’90s. It was just west of Russell, Kansas, which sported an enormous billboard announcing it as the home of Bob Dole. Hays had no such distinction.
She had a subtle midwestern cadence when I met her, but by then, she was living in Boise, Idaho. She met my newly divorced grandfather Eric Rostock at The Ranch House in Garden City in the 1970s. He pointed it out every time we went by. It had few windows and an enormous white, stallion sculpture rearing up on the roof. Doloras had red hair when they met, and he would call her “Red” for the rest of their life together.
When we moved to Boise as kids, we lived in their spotless split level for a few months. She was a magnificent cook and fastidious housekeeper all while working full time in the administration offices of a local Sears department store and walking both ways to and from work. She never learned to drive.
She was the compass for my grandfather keeping all in order from some bookkeeping for his business to her many home improvement projects to the giant below ground pool in the back yard. As children, we’d help her open the pool by diligently hand scrubbing the winter’s dirt from the plastered sides, but in truth, she did the lion’s share of the work in the entire yard. The landscaping was immaculate, and when you commented on it, her only complaint was that she kept getting ringworm from the cats who pooped in her luscious flower beds.
Doloras had four children of her own from her first marriage. Her son Mike and his wife Diane would become especially great friends to my parents. She never married my grandfather, which was curious to me as a child but less so now. She was a great companion to him, and I fear he’ll be lost without her guidance. Rest in peace.
Me with Doloras in 1982. I’m wearing a dress she made.
In November 2017, my husband and I went to New York City for a Jets Thursday Night game. We spent three days total and filled the first one with, among other things, a trip to the Society of Illustrators (128 E 63rd St, New York, NY 10065) for their fall show. The show, which featured children’s book illustrations, was due to officially open that night, so the two floors of framed illustrations didn’t all contain information about the author or the book involved. The majority of the placards were in a tiny pile on the lower level waiting to be installed. This actually added to the show because you really viewed the work disconnected from the book.
I asked a curator how book authors and illustrators are connected. She said that the illustrator was the author’s choice and that authors frequently had long standing relationships with artists. This made sense when you looked at the variety of styles evident in the illustrations. Some were hand drawn and others were digital. There was even some photography combined with illustration and some mixed media.
How amazing is this? The placard wasn’t installed yet, so I have no idea who did it or why. It’s just fantastic by itself.
The second floor was a George Booth show. Booth was an illustrator best known for New Yorker cartoons and covers, and this show was small but lovely. The hand drawn comps were on display with no explanation. Again, art to be enjoyed for it’s own sake.
Waiting, a lovely New Yorker Cover by George Booth.This one made me laugh out loud.Wait for it…
The third floor was a restaurant and bar, the 128 Bar and Bistro, decorated with the society’s annual member show. The theme this year was “Food Fight”, and each artist interpreted it very differently. This was art created just for consideration for the show, not necessarily a commission.
This gallery was a reminder that there are places for talented artists that you might not expect. It also probably pays to network and build relationships with unlikely allies, like children’s book authors. Always keep your eyes open for potential projects.
The 128 Bar and Bistro would be a lovely place to visit regardless of the shows available at the Society of Illustrators.
Back in July, I wrote a post about learning Spanish. You may be wondering, is that still a thing? Sure is. Since that time, I’m nearly through Duolingo and half way through the beginning course on Babbel.
What did I learn? I learned that I have to be patient with myself. Very patient. 95% of my life is in English. Writing in English is a large part of my income. Given my beginner level, I have yet to secure a teacher to practice production, listening, and speaking. I’ll do so when I have finished with the Babbel course. I fit my lessons in throughout the week, but they still make up a small portion of what I’m reading and learning. Therefore, I forget. Frequently. All the time. I still may not know the word for rain, and I learned it weeks ago.
As the lessons build, I find myself doing each one twice. Some concepts still evade me like numbers and any words involving snow or cold weather. Indirect objects may require me to do a lesson three times to get my head around it.
Am I discouraged? No. I know I’m making progress because everything I learn was literally something I did not know the day before. Language learning is a heavy lift. I knew that before I started. Finally, it’s not a competition. There is no prize for finishing first or being perfect. The prize is in taking my time seriously and making progress, albeit slow, on a long term goal.
Project Runway is one of the few shows I wait to watch. I know when the next season is being released, and I’ve seen all 16. It inspired me to take a sewing and pattern making class and buy a sewing machine. However, more than fashion, I think it is a show about leadership and conduct. It’s about doing the right thing and acting with courage and sometimes, minding your own store.
On the October 5, 2017 show, a talented contestant named Margarita becomes fixated with the thought that another contestant, Claire, is cheating by copying designs and measuring her own clothes in order to make patterns. Consulting a pattern book is verboten, but copying is in the eye of the beholder. Regardless, the situation so unnerves Margarita that she ruins some fabric and ends up making a sub-par design. She also shares her suspicions with another contestant, Michael, who is also furious.
In this particular show, Margarita has immunity, so she is not eliminated. However, the object of her fixation wins the prize. In this case, the win comes with $25k. Whether the money prize created an additional level of tension for the cash-starved design crew is probably unknowable, but at one point another contestant reveals that 25k would be almost more than his annual salary.
The entire show was filled with the tension of envy and anger. Of someone building expectations for Claire that she is unaware of and can’t meet.
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of seeing entrepreneur Jen Groover speak. One of the take-home messages was the importance of letting go of expectations for others. Most often, you can’t or don’t communicate those expectations and other people can’t meet them regardless. They’re your expectations, not someone else’s. Expectations are what you’ve built up for others that become a source of frustration for you. Let go of them and focus on yourself and what is within your control.
That lesson was evident on this episode. Those who copy and cheat are most likely living on borrowed time. (In this case, when the cheating is revealed, Claire is eliminated and the prize is revoked.) Margarita would be better served to focus on her own work and what she can control than worry about another person.
Since I previously posted about food, let me spend a few minutes talking about a food I really like, evol.
I work 30 minutes from my home, and the distance makes it impossible to go home for lunch. I don’t want to spend too much on food, and the options near my workplace are limited. I also am sometimes limited on time for lunch, and I rarely cook dinner so have few leftovers. What to do? Frozen dinners.
evol has a lot of vegetarian options include two versions of ravioli.Save the points on the box for cool tshirts and goodies. What a great branding idea.
Hey, I know it sounds awful, but they’ve come a long way. When I first started eating frozen food, the pre-made dinner options were pretty awful – high in calories and fat. Since that time, they’ve come a long way. The brand I especially like is evol. They have a variety of vegetarian options that I dress up with low calorie goodies like hot sauce, fresh tomatoes, and green peppers. They are relatively low in calories with each dinner clocking in under 400 calories. The lasagna and mac and cheese are higher, so consult the box.
Finally, they have an evol community option. Each box contains points printed on the box. Collect the points, and you can send your points in for cool t-shirts and other neat stuff. It’s great branding, and the community gear options are very nice.
#recommended
I traded in 200 box points for this awesome hoodie. Even more great branding. Now I’m wearing their brand.
I have two dogs, Pom and Baby Cow. Pom’s entire life is moved by food. He’ll do anything for it. It makes him exceedingly easy to train. Baby Cow likes attention. She likes food alright, but it doesn’t move her world. I am much more Baby Cow than Pom.
However, one curious thing about my relationship with food that is probably not unique: for every decade I’m on this earth, I can eat less food. If I ate the same way I did when I was 20, then I’d be overweight now. My metabolism seems to change every few years now, and I’ve used the Lose It App to banish stray pounds over the years. Try it. It’s easy.
Lose It has a vast encyclopedia of foods. Punch in your current height, age, and weight and what you would like to weigh. Finally, give it a goal. I want to weigh X in 3 months. It gives you a calorie budget, and you punch in everything you eat every day. It gives you encouragement along the way. It’s discrete, positive, and super easy to use. Plus, it’s free. If you need more details, access to data, and meal plans, you can buy a premium plan.
Eat frozen dinners for a work-day lunch like I do? Scan the barcode. Lose it has you covered. You need to do a bit of calculating with fresh foods, but it is very easy to do. Build in a little margin every day, and you’ll reach your goals in no time.
