Magic 8-Ball helps with adult decision making

It’s fall and I’m ready for it. I speak for homeowners everywhere when I say it’s a relief to get past the final lawn mowing and the leaf blowing to the few weeks before it starts snowing. But in the weeks leading up to November/December relief, there are multiple decisions to be made.

 

Should I trim the hedges now or wait until spring? Should I swap out the leaf rakes for shovels? Should I box all the kids’ short-sleeved shirts and haul out their sweaters? Should I start stop shaving my legs and start filling the basement with wood? I laundered bedding one recent Indian summer day and wondered if it was time to replace the sheets with their flannel counterparts.

 

Decisions, decisions. I thought about it the whole washer cycle and halfway through the drying process when I finally decided I should consult my most trusted oracle: the Magic 8-Ball. Actually, God is my most trusted oracle, but I try save him for the really big, burning bush type of questions and not bother him with the more mundane, “should I buy Bush’s or Campbell’s pork and beans this week?” inquiries.

 

Do you remember Magic 8-Balls? Well, you should. They’ve been around since 1946 and our Magic 8-Ball is one of our few toys I remember from childhood. Okay, it was really my older sister’s Magic 8-Ball, but somehow my taking it and hiding it from her conferred joint ownership in my mind, hence it became “our” Magic 8-Ball.

 

For those who don’t know, a Magic 8-Ball is a four-inch diameter hollow plastic sphere resembling an oversized black and white pool ball that contains a 20-sided die (singular of “dice”) floating in violet fluid. The die is covered with statements that can be read through a special viewing window.

 

Those statements include: As I see it, yes; It is certain; It is decidedly so; Most likely; Outlook good; Signs point to yes; Without a doubt; Yes; Yes, definitely; You may rely on it; Reply hazy, try again; Ask again later; Better not tell you now; Cannot predict now; Concentrate and ask again; Don’t count on it; My reply is no; My sources say no; Outlook not so good; and Very doubtful.

 

Compared to cell phones, which most people seem to religiously consult for advice, my Magic 8-Ball (okay, my kids’ Magic 8-Ball) is a lot lower-tech. But the absence of bells and whistles makes it a lot less intrusive. It also doesn’t require regular recharging or monthly fees. It just sits there waiting to be shaken into giving sage advice that it’s too bad we can’t shake people into taking.

 

As Magic 8-Ball is more portable than an ouija board and more durable than a fortune cookie, I’ve begun carrying mine everywhere. It’s been a big help both socially and while driving in unknown parts. “Should I congratulate that woman on her pregnancy or is she just fat” I asked, to which it replied, “My sources say no.” Whew. Dodged that bullet.

 

On a recent road trip, I asked it, “Did I miss my exit?” to learn, “Signs point to yes,” which meant I’d ignored the sign to Cincinnati. I feel comforted knowing that even though my head doesn’t house all the answers I need, they are at least as close as my purse.

 

I saw a cute pair of shoes at Kohl’s the other day and before trying them on, I consulted the 8-Ball on the wisdom of buying them. “Better not tell you now,” it replied. So I came back the next day and sure enough, they were on sale. If I hadn’t been a believer before, I became one at that instant. Instant believer, just add water.

 

When I go to the polls next week, I plan to smuggle in my trusty Magic 8-Ball. Sure, it will take a little longer to vote, but it’s worth it. As I shake my way through the ballot, I can feel confident for once I am choosing the right candidates. After all, my choice process requires at least as much thought as the politicians will give to the issues once elected. Maybe more.

It’s never too late to sprout a set of wings

To much shock and surprise (my own included), I ended my stint as director of the Jackson County Department on Aging on October 8, 2010, a date naysayers prophesize will become a huge source of regret for me.

Maybe I should say “stent” vs. “stint,” as my original intent in accepting the position was to re-open possibilities when, like a damaged blood vessel, family finances threatened to close off my future, resulting in unbearable pressure. Directorship was neither a dream nor a long-term venture for me. My motive was two-fold: To work with seniors and to hold down one job versus many to feed my family. Not exactly a Donald Trump move.

Why quit a secure job at the age of 46? Well, the decade of my 40s has been all about mammoth changes. From divorce at 40, to remarriage at 44, to hysterectomy at 45, I had already done a major life decision hat trick. Note: I use “mammoth” to describe my changes because parallel to the Wooly Mammoth, sometimes a person’s options come down to change versus extinction. In this case, it was evolve or lose myself.

While I was not lost in administration, I was bored by it. For a creative person like me, my job description began to feel like more of a Job (pronounced “Jobe”) description, pretty unbearable. I lacked the patience for that. Leadership requires mapping out an overall strategy, then deploying others to achieve it.

I much prefer to be the deployee, instructed to “get ‘er done” however you choose. I granted that creative freedom to my employees. I will miss them deeply, along with the many seniors we served. I will also miss the paycheck, for deployers get paid more than deployees. That’s probably why I stayed in administration as long as I did: Financial fear (we ARE in a recession) that doing what I love would not be commercially viable.

I never learned to take positive risks, only negative ones to avoid harsh consequences. And any idiot can make do-or-die changes. Life-saving decisions are reflexive. Knowing to jump out of a burning building doesn’t require much thought. Self-preservation instinct takes over. Making voluntary major decisions to increase life satisfaction is a different matter.

“There are two lasting bequests we can give our children: One is roots, the other is wings,” said Pulitzer Prize winning southern editorialist Hodding Carter II. My farming and small business family heritage may have blessed me with deep roots and solid values, but a set of wings was not included.

Leaving the Department on Aging felt like popular author Danielle Steel has observed, “Sometimes, if you aren’t sure about something, you just have to jump off the bridge and grow your wings on the way down.” My resignation was downright risky during the current economy, but hopefully not financially suicidal.

At my exit interview, human resources informed it’s highly unusual for a director to voluntarily resign. Leaving through retiring or firing is the typical exit. This put my resignation on par with England’s Edward VIII abdicating the throne to marry Mrs. Wallis Simpson. Except slightly less dramatic.

I don’t expect anyone to cry big crocodile tears for me. I was born capable, with a curiosity about life that propels me forward. As a result, I’ve had the chance to learn many skills. Over time, I’ve turned into one of those maddening people who are good at just about anything they do. That’s just the problem: What I’m good at isn’t necessarily what I like to do or what I’m supposed to be doing per God’s calling for me. Ignoring my calling for something more lucrative is my problem.

What is my calling? Writing, teaching (NOT English, like my mom), coaching and performing. I’m now working part-time at KCC, teaching employability skills through the Workforce Solutions department. It’s meant for the first time ever being home when my kids get off the school bus, plus a host of other home front benefits.

My newfound wings have served me well. All that’s left to bring me full circle is a short sale of my husband’s former nest in Mattawan. Selling myself short is no longer an option.

Lunch packing a lesson in people pleasing

One of the most dreaded aspects of my children’s fall return to school was the lunch packing. While I don’t consider them particularly picky eaters, perhaps I just don’t notice it when we are all eating together at home for breakfast, dinner or weekend lunches. An abundant refrigerator and pantry allow for substitutions. But packing a school lunch is playing for keeps.

I tend to pack lunches the way I like them: Ever-changing and fully of variety. My husband says he appreciates opening his lunch and finding something different each day of the week. His only request is yogurt not be more than a few days past its expiration date (forcing me to take the extra step of scratching the damning inked evidence off the containers’ lids) and vegetables not be thrown in loose with his sandwiches due to time and space constraints. It’s different with my kids.

Connor is compliant by nature, so during his first year of carrying a lunchbox, he ate whatever I put in it. By second grade, some savvy kids in the lunchroom turned him on to the fact that needn’t be the case. He had many choices of which his mother had not informed. Anything he didn’t like could be either traded or tossed. So I continued packing the same items as always, blissfully ignorant they were falling into unknown hands and garbage cans.

I helped accelerate the sandwich sleight of hand when he one day didn’t like the bologna and American cheese on whole wheat with mayo creation I packed, so he simply didn’t eat it. I may have carried on a bit too much about food waste and starving people in other countries when I found it stinking up his sandwich keeper the following morn. Finding himself sandwiched between the unpalatable lunch baloney and Mom’s baloney, Connor simply went underground with his actions. We’ve all been there (and still go there). Don’t ask, don’t tell.

I admired his ethics when he took me aside at the start of third grade and stated he wouldn’t eat anything other than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and could I please put them on white bread? While I was at it, I should stop sending juice boxes because they are way too sweet for his liking, plus he’d heard they weren’t too healthy, either. How about he just buy milk at school? He’s basically a meat and potatoes kind of guy, like his dad.

The new system seemed to work for Connor. Not that I would ever spy on my children, but reliable sources at the school indicated he was eating his sandwiches and his school lunch account balance continued to lower in 35-cent increments. He’s expanded this year to salami and Swiss on rye.

Kate couldn’t be more different. She regards lunch as a form of self-expression and is willing to eat just about anything I dream up. Not content with mere sandwiches, she’s become a powerful foe in the fight for last night’s dinner leftovers.

The difficulty with Kate lies in packaging. How do you ensure black bean soup survives excessive jostling and subsequent sliming the rest of her lunch? Or keep a pear Waldorf salad from decomposing? And who knows if lemon-peppered Tilapia can withstand room temperatures and still be relatively bacteria-free by lunch? Just to be safe, I try not to send expired yogurt the same day. The only lunch commonality my kids share is a failure to bring home the spoons I send. Ticks me off!

My mom went through a phase of trying to save time by making our sandwiches ahead and freezing them. Unfortunately, it aligned with her gourmet cooking phase, when she experimented with new concoctions, including a tuna, Swiss, sour cream and garlic sandwich and an apricot with cream cheese variation on normal. The thawing ingredients turned the bread into a soggy mess, rendering lunchroom trading out of the question, even with foreign exchange students.

It’s taken extensive therapy to eradicate that episode from my mind. Hopefully, I’m providing my kids with sound nutrition sandwiched on rye between their future memories of palate abuse. If not, they’ll just have to trade.

“Singin’ in the Rain” a hit with the kids

When my friend, Sandra, and I recently met for lunch, she gave me a flier detailing a fall line-up of classic movie hosted by Celebration Cinema in Portage. The September through October series consists of Rebel Without a Cause, Sunest Boulevard, Singin’ in the Rain, Giant, Casablanca, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dracula and Wizard of Oz, with shows on Tuesdays, Thursdays and (September only) Sundays.

Back when I lived in Kalamazoo pre-motherhood, Sandra and I had together taken in several high brow Kalamazoo Film Society films at WMU’s east campus theater. I truly enjoy off the wall Indie flicks involving off the beaten path themes and characters. Classic films are my next favorite, followed by British comedies. With an occasional exception, mainstream films don’t often hold my attention.

I especially enjoyed films shown at the east campus theater because the audience consisted of fellow serious filmgoers and was minus the typical passel of brats and their shushing parents (of which I’ve since become one) who park directly behind me and makes noise throughout the movie.  

Conversely, I imagined the film society folks as people who took Sunday afternoon off from watching PBS, playing chess and/or wine tasting to go see a quality production. They didn’t shout obscenities at the screen, make out, smuggle in alcoholic beverages, throw popcorn or announce in loud voices they had to go pee.

On the other hand, for all I know, they may have arrived already stoned, wearing monogrammed Depends made especially for artsy fartsy patrons. Still, it was with great trepidation I took my kids with me to see an early Sunday showing of the 1952 musical, “Singin’ in the Rain.” 

“There won’t be any car chases,” I warned during our drive to the theater. “And I don’t think anyone gets killed or anything blown up.” I caught Connor and Kate exchanging glances in the rearview mirror, but couldn’t refrain from adding there were no computer-enhanced graphics or other special effects. Just good old singing and dancing.  

“Great!” said Connor, who was still recovering from being subjected to my most recent Friday home movie night pick, Lilies of the Field. He was pleased to learn this movie would at least be in color and at a real theater.

 If you haven’t been to Celebration Cinema, it’s an enormous multi-plex boasting leather furniture in the lobby and video screens playing coming attractions. To expedite concessions, patrons butter their own popcorn and fill their own soda cups. Zowie!  

The only problem with the popcorn system is all the butter and salt remain on top. As usual, I caught myself over-salting our bucket with the scientifically impossible expectation that, if I only shook it enough, some of the salt and butter would travel toward the bottom. It never does. It never will. But we salinized several perfectly good tastebuds trying. At least that prevented us from noticing there was no butter or salt on the rest of the popcorn. Then Kate had to miss part of the movie fetching a soda refill in a feeble attempt to cleanse our palates. 

My fears surrounding my children’s movie theater behavior proved unfounded. They watched, entranced, the exceptional singing and dancing from the edge of their seats, cheering for the hero and heroine, hissing at the villainess, and laughing at the clever lines and antics of the characters.  

“She’s the mother of Princess Leia from Star Wars,” I elbowed them when Debbie Reynolds first appeared on the screen. Judging by the way Gene Kelly’s character was admiring Debbie Reynolds’ character, Connor thought Gene Kelly had to be Carrie Fisher’s father. “No, Eddie Fisher was BEFORE  Elizabeth Taylor stole him away,” I informed, adding, “Never mind” to his blank stare.  

I was the only noisily disruptive member of our group, at one point whispering too loudly to Connor (for emphasis), “Don’t you dare try that at home” when Donald O’Connor ran up a wall, did a backflip, and landed on his feet, still singing and dancing.

“That was really good,” Kate said on our way home. It had better be. We’re going back to see Wizard of Oz on the big screen. Sure as monkeys fly.