my guardian angel

i've heard people say that if you put out there what you need, it comes to you. generally i'm not very good about asking for what i want or what i need - believing i can do it all myself. i know i'm pretty capable of many things, but it gets tiring do it alone. and i'm finally learning that sometimes you need a little help, a little inspiration....a little guardian angel. 

last week i wrote a blog about not being kirstie alley, about wanting to get back in shape and get healthy again. i received some funny responses and sincere emails, but the one that touched me the most was from someone i've spent some time with over the last 4 years. more time in the last year. we started as co-volunteers sharing secret opinions of what we worked on together. and shared many laughs along the way too. in the last year, it's begun to feel more like a supportive friendship. 

we all have our ups and downs and life has thrown us both some major curve balls, but deep down we're both positive people, believing in and wanting to see the good in all. so the email i received from her outlined how she wanted to help and inspire me. i would be a total fool to say no. we got together today and before we met i was tired from a long week and not enough sleep. but after a 3 mile walk in the park where we covered every topic in the book, i felt awake.

wwcd: working on what else i need and figuring out how to ask

waiting

i've never been a very patient person. when i know i have to wait, i acquiesce. like i did when i was pregnant. i knew i didn't have a choice, so i waited....patiently. and as many pregnant women will agree, the last few weeks are just plain torture. i've heard it said that the reason you feel so uncomfortable the last month of pregnancy is to motivate you through labor.  patience is a virtue.

so that kind of waiting is ok. waiting to hear if you're accepted to a school is along those same lines. there is a schedule that is followed and you just try to ignore time creeping by. it's the waiting where there isn't a schedule, where you're dependent on another person, that i have the hardest time managing. it could be about a job, a new person in your life, a special opportunity. the early bird catches the worm.

i come from a place where if you want something, and even if the timing isn't optimum, you act. you seize the moment because that moment may not come again. i'm afraid of missing opportunities, chances, people. i try not to second guess my decisions - usually.  i have to learn to be a little more patient in these situations, but who's going to want something for you more than you?

wwcd: carpe diem

conan's tonight show end

"but if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen." i've been a letterman fan since i was 20, but i was taken aback last night when i heard conan speak those words on his last tonight show. his good bye to his audience and fans was incredibly heart felt, sincere.....and kind. for someone to have been so gracious after being screwed so royal is a testament to his seeing the bigger picture and knowing himself.

if we look at an experience, conversation or transgression and think that it defines us or another, we are not seeing the bigger picture - the more important picture. we've all been rejected by someone - either a boy or girlfriend, a boss, but once out of the moment of pain or shock, we usually come to see that there is a better job, opportunity or mate for us. you just need to look for the bigger picture.

it was conan saying being kind that resonated. i've always tried to be kind and thoughtful and have felt alone many times in the last few years. feeling that why was i the one always holding the door or saying thank you or doing the work. i do believe you get what you give and what you put out there comes back, but it's more about being true to yourself and living up to your own personal expectations.

wwcd: i may even give conan a try when he ends up on fox in september

i'm no kirstie alley

or valerie bertinelli for that matter, but i've been thinking about the same 25 pounds for the last 10 years and still can't motivate to lose them. in the old days you could just drink a lot of coffee, smoke a lot of cigarettes, go to a couple of aerobics classes and lose 10 pounds in a week. well, those days have been long gone for a while. i know if i can psych myself into it i would succeed. i just can't seem to get my brain on board and my butt off the couch!

my step brother was just made vp marketing of jenny craig north america and i wonder if i could be a jenny craig success story. a little family motivation? i tried weight watchers and vividly remember the woman who ran the meeting plopping down on the table 10 pounds of fat from the butcher. ok, it was a very powerful visual, but so disgusting. what if i just continued eating the way i am and went to the gym a lot? but what kind of gym? spin? i'm totally intimidated. core fusion? done it, liked it, but it's so hard. stairs? so many parts of my body are already a little achy. kvetching doesn't burn calories, does it?

if i can quit smoking, which i did almost 7 years ago, i should be able to conquer anything. i keep saying that to myself and it's not making me feel invincible or motivating me either. maybe if i just pick a date in the near future as my start date, this would begin the process of psyching myself. that's what i did with cigarettes and it worked. i had to get to the point of hating cigarettes and having the stop date helped.

wwcd:  so now it's just which one - january 25, february 5 or president's weekend? 

snl on sunday morning

i love watching snl with zach on sunday mornings. i'm happy to watch it in the morning because i'm seldom up until 1am these days. i was up late last night engrossed in a movie, but it wouldn't dawn on me to watch snl without him. i know that by the time he's old enough to stay up until 1am, he'll be out with friends having fun. so i'm guessing (or hoping) that we'll still watch snl on sunday morning - at least until he leaves for college.

i like having these little rituals with him. silly times make for some of the best memories. it's also great when your child starts becoming an adult and you can share movies, theater, books and music that you really enjoy. i've sat through my share of kid movies, enjoyed some more than others. but this age has a little more taste and i have more in common with it than previous stages. i'm not saying that we agree or like all the same types of entertainment, but i can sit through the hangover and laugh and zach can truly enjoy frost/nixon or hamlet.

i've enjoyed zach at all ages...really. i wasn't wishing for the next stage and am really not now. as much as i look forward to seeing him as an adult and know that he'll still be the sweet and thoughtful person he is now, it means more about him having his own life. don't get me wrong, i've got my own life and a lot going on, but for 14 years he's been the first priority when thinking about or planning anything. it'll be odd when it's not that way. i didn't say bad, i said odd. i'm just trying to wrap myself around that concept.

wwcd: still looking forward to making more silly memories

mr. volel

it's always so interesting to me how connected we all are. 6 degrees of separation. it never seems to take long to make some connection when meeting a new person or traveling to a new place. jewish geography. new york city is filled with so many people, in such a small amount of space, it's no surprise we run into people we know all the time on the street. when you think about all the kids you went to school with, teachers who taught you, people you worked with...you could potentially run into many memories.

attending dalton casts a wide net. it's inevitable that at some point you read about someone you went to school with...whether the person is an artist, musician, author, politician, doctor, and even your teacher. 10 years after i graduated from high school, my favorite teacher was shot and killed in haiti. mr. volel taught me math and life.  he was dramatic and smart and kind, with a smile that lit up the room and a booming voice.

mr. volel left haiti in 1965 to escape discrimination by the duvalier regime. he was a lawyer with a passionate sense of right and wrong. while teaching, he wove in stories of haiti and his desire to give back and go back to run for president. i remember hearing mr. volel had a daughter who graduated from dalton in the 90s a few years after he died. i've been thinking about her a lot this week and hope she's not living in haiti now.

wwcd: it's hard not to feel connected to haiti after hearing so many stories, so many years ago

kind of more of the same

i'm having a hard time not being sad or finding the positive. the images from haiti are gut wrenching and remind me of the world trade center, katrina, and the tsunami in banda aceh. all different tragedies, with similar results. it's hard feeling helpless. it's uncomfortable just writing a check - even though it helps. it's hard thinking about day-to-day silliness and i'm definitely more impatient with myself and others.

we had a fun dinner tonight with mom and we laughed a lot. it was mindless fun and it wasn't until the routines of the evening started up again that i slipped back into the quiet of my thoughts. we're all so fucking lucky and so many of us can't appreciate it. at times we do, but why can't we love the people in our lives and enjoy our lives more? i sometimes get the feeling that people bond over complaining.

i love reading people's status updates on facebook. i've gotten to the point that if you read me the updates without telling me the person, i'm pretty sure i could match the statement to the person. we've all gotten a bit repetitive. there's farmville-ers (which we all learned to block pretty quickly), the eco-friendly poster, the inside jokester, the proud parent picture person, the you tuber and the complainer. i like acknowledging positive statements with the i like that click and am glad that at times there isn't the i don't like that click option.

wwcd: maybe facebook would introduce the really? click

don't think, just help

i cannot think of a better time to step outside your day-to-day and think about someone in addition to yourself and your family and possibly work. if a natural disaster is the motivator, haiti is in need. i woke up this morning, began watching the today show and became increasingly uncomfortable for being able to sleep in my bed last night when so many, oh so many, are homeless or dead in this country.

haiti has brought me back to the way i felt during the tsunami in 2004. the news reports began their reporting with a few casualties and in a fairly short period of time the number of people who died was in the hundreds of thousands. the reporting on haiti seems to be following suit. to give this some perspective: haiti's population is 9 million, manhattan's is 1.5 million. hundreds of thousands of people dead is many moms, dads, sons, daughters, granparents, aunts and uncles....

wwcd: if you would like to help, cnn lists many of the organizations giving aid: www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/impact/

challenges

i finally figured out what turning 50 means. well, at least what it means to me. and only what it means career wise. i'm starting to think that if i decide to stay put in my job, i will never work at another company. that realization freaked me out a bit. i don't really consider 50 old, but i also know the likelihood of being hired after 55 gets pretty slim. so unbeknownst to me, i thought turning 50 would be about looking old, it's not. it's about being old.

it seems like a time when you either move to a new job with all new challenges, continue to challenge yourself at your current job, or stay where you are and start winding down. the first 2 are the only options i can see as viable. slowing down? really? and then, somewhere in the back of my mind i think how nice it might be to stop working. i've worked since i'm 20 years old and i've loved it. some years more than others, but all in all, i've always considered myself a working kind of person.

but what if i had the opportunity not to work? what would i do? the thought stops me dead in my tracks. i took off 5 years when zach was born, but was still doing things. things like teaching myself new computer programs and working on freelance graphics projects. so, would i really ever not work? i think i'd always continue to challenge myself with something. i don't think that something has to be a work-related task.

wwcd:  it's more about keeping my brain active

unyielding hope

when i heard then president-elect barack obama utter the words unyielding hope during his acceptance speech, it solidified what i believe in. i believe in unyielding hope and the power of being positive. i am relentless about being positive even in the midst of situations that might seem quite dark. i know my being positive has annoyed more than a few people at times, i'm not a good pity party participant. but it's easy to get sucked into a vortex of negativity and it's hard to climb out of it. so, i try to avoid it.

i've always smiled at the statement that it takes more muscles to frown than smile. or the question do you see the glass as half full or empty? but honestly, it all comes down to a choice - the efforts themselves seem quite similar. do you see the positive, hope for the best, or anticipate negative and expect the worst? it's just as easy and even more relaxing to see the best and expect whatever the "it" is to work out.

to live in a heightened state of negativity is very draining. to make yourself see the positive during hard times can be draining too. of course there are dark times in life...hopefully not too many to handle. what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. it doesn't get more positive than that. even in the darkest times to know there's at least something...someone to live for, brings hope. and as long as we can hope for something - peace, health, love, safety, prosperity - we live in a happier state.

wwcd: i'm hoping (and expecting) the best for us in 2010 

kindergarten

i'm not sure what has me more concerned: the insanity of the admissions process for kindergarten or the lack of great public schools in nyc. it was competitive 9 years ago when i was applying zach for kindergarten and it's even more now. i remember friends so freaked out with the process that they needed tranquilizers to sleep. i also remember wondering if i was making the right decision about which school was perfect for zach. i wish someone had said to me: you're not signing a 9 or 13 year contract, only think about where you see your child k-3.

i don't believe in this-is-the-perfect-school-for-my-child. there are many great schools and my guess is your child will succeed at any of them. since there are a lot of families staying in nyc, it would be great if they knew there was an exceptional public school option. in some neighborhoods there is, but not all. it's incomprehensible to me that we live in one of the most cultured and wealthy cities in the world and our public schools are not nearly as good as some of the schools in nearby suburbs.

so maybe one idea is community service for families applying children to kindergarten. some sort of commitment to your neighborhood public school. whether it's volunteering time, helping in the classroom, collecting supplies, or donating money - maybe we can stimulate interest in helping to make public schools better. i already hear my friends who are applying their kids now saying: are you crazy, who has the time? well, something has to give. there aren't enough spots at private schools for all of the kids applying and $35k is a lot of tuition money. but....it's almost february and acceptance letters will go out soon.  i wish for you patience and perspective and know that it will all work out.

wwcd: and remember, it's only kindergarten, and school will not determine life-long happiness

my time out

too many meetings and too much coffee (iced of course) is what this week has been. i know it's the first week back and everyone is a bit anxious to get their projects underway, but my head is spinning. i had a very short half hour in my office this morning before the first of 4 meetings began with the last ending just before noon. i couldn't get out of the office for lunch fast enough.

my brain works fast and luckily i inherited the organized gene, but i like quiet time to think and reflect and osmose conversations and ideas. unfortunately, it's really too cold in ny right now for a walk in the park. so where do you find the quiet time? i used to have a 20-30 minute commute and now it's maybe 5 minutes, which is not enough time to decompress or think. and once home, well, the second shift begins.

it's thursday night and i'm promising myself to spend some very quiet time on both saturday and sunday. i need to spend this time re-evaluating how i'm spending my time. and why i feel i need to meet everyone else's needs - at work and personally - before i meet mine. and why i can't or don't say no.

wwcd: time to make time to re-prioritize my time 

the smell of it

i keep writing about being positive and putting only the good out there and yet i haven't been very nice to my mother lately. i'm can be helpful and am usually thoughtful, but i've been short tempered and i just realized why. i truly thought i was reacting to having to repeat myself because she asks the same question and doesn't listen to the answer. and i thought it might be our differing need of understanding why things happen or don't when it comes to the computer. but it's not either of those reasons.

it's my frustration with her smoking. how crazy is it that i smoked for many years and probably wasn't the most thoughtful smoker, and now 6 years after quitting i'm disgusted with the habit? i only know 2 people who smoke. i walk around people who smoke on the street. i also want to approach teens i see smoking and explain how hard it will be to quit - but stop myself cause i know what i would have thought if an adult had said anything to me when i was that age.

i'm upset and even angry that i don't feel comfortable spending time at my mom's home, which happens to be in the same building where i live. she's very helpful and takes my dog, lucy, in the afternoon to have a play date with her dog. but lucy comes back smelling of smoke which gets me crazy....as does knowing that lucy is getting sick from the smoke. and so is my mom.

wwcd:  find a way of accepting, not judging mom - otherwise i'll miss out on mom

that time in my life

i just finished reading a book written by an old friend. it was a biography, but a biography about his famous friend's career that covered a stretch beginning in the late 70s. coincidentally, this is when i knew the author, so the beginning of the book is laced with a few familiar references. as i read each small mention, they triggered vivid memories of that time in my life. a red pick-up truck, a small town, the do-drop-in.

i was 19 in the late 70s and busy experiencing all new york had to offer and making connections with so many different types of people. what's incredible to me is how many of these people are still in my life. certainly not all on a day-to-day basis, but definitely in a way that i would not hesitate to pick up the phone. i'm sure there are a few who fell to the side, but not too many of them are coming to mind.

the people who remain in my life are pretty special. seeing the adults they've grown into - whether year-by-year or fast forwarded 30 years - has been a comforting feeling. some have been faced with a lot of adversity, career changes, divorces, many are parents, some have children with learning disabilities, several have buried their parents or faced health issues themselves. the common thread i find is they all still have a positive outlook. just feeling very fortunate to have these people in my life.

wwcd: is it as simple as attracting what you put out there?

keeping up

because of my job and the fact that i have a 14 year old son, i need to keep up with technology. specifically, new applications, social networking sites and how to monitor information coming into our home computers. the truth is, i enjoy this. i think i enjoy it because i'm not afraid of new technology and trust it. growing up, i vividly remember my mother not trusting the calculator. she had the ability to solve problems quickly in her head, and needless to say, the calculator always made a mistake. it was technology's fault.

but i digress...the point is, accepting or welcoming change seems to get more difficult as we get older. i'm not a tech whiz by any means - but i'm thoroughly excited by all the new technological possibilities available. i love facebook and linkedin...the jury is still out on twitter. i've come to love blogs and follow several. when francis bacon said, knowledge is power i would have liked the next thought to be: and then fear disappears.

we are living in a world with information available 24/7. with the technology to speak with people face-to-face online at no cost. with the ability to write something in an email or post on facebook that will hurt another person or your future, or just make you look foolish. we are dealing with very powerful tools and as adults we make mistakes. we need to learn as much as we can to try to avoid these mistakes. more importantly, we need to learn about it so we can teach children or at least be able to answer their questions. not allowing children to take advantage of the positives, with the hope that they will then avoid the negatives, is not keeping up.

some helpful tips that you can discuss with your kids:

- when posting a status update on facebook, think: would i say this out loud to the principal at my school?

- when choosing a picture of yourself to put online, think: would my grandparents be proud to show it to their friends?

- when writing an email that is slightly controversial, pick up the phone or speak in person.

wwcd: as a parent it's a choice not to like new music, but it's a waste to withhold the future

sundays

sundays are tough for some. sundays after two weeks off for winter break are tough for many. as much as i enjoy my time off and a break from life's routines, i love routines and schedules and my to-do lists. i also prefer when zach has a schedule and things to do. don't misunderstand, i don't think he or we need to be over-scheduled, but i prefer structure.

i'm now feeling kind of bad. so many of my friends and their kids prefer the lack of schedule. maybe it's that they don't completely enjoy their typical routines or school and this makes sundays particularly difficult. i do get it, but i also think that not every single part of life is supposed to bring complete and utter joy. if it did, could we really live in a constant state of total happiness, always? i prefer the balance of both - it's my perspective keeper.

i wonder if as adults we're just remembering that feeling we had as kids of the impending doom of school on monday. maybe we can change this pattern for ourselves and even our kids and look at sundays as the reality check. if sunday is as bad or as sad as we feel during the week, that's pretty amazing.

wwcd: i'm going to start posting the blog to fb on sundays and start the week off on a positive note

controlling the uncontrollable

i love numbers and am fascinated with their coincidences. i was born on 7-7-59, turned 18 on 7-7-77 and then turned 48 on 7-7-07. i chose to have zach's bar mitzvah on 10-18-08 because it was a double chai and thought that would bring him double luck. and today is 01-01-10 - all those zeros and ones makes it feel like a new beginning.

i'm also a sucker for astrology. i love being a cancer, with all the traits of a cancerian, and many of my friends are cancers too. when i was in my teens and 20s, i poured over horoscopes, went to astrologers and would find significance in these messages. it would be easy to believe that something or someone planned my life and that should allow me to sit back and wait for life to come to me.

as an adult i don't relinquish control in my life, but somewhere in my brain i do feel as though some things in our life are already planned. the part we do control is how we decide to live our life. do we live with goodness in our heart? do we appreciate what we have? do we try to set a good example for our children and others? i completely believe that what you put out there comes back to you. the good and the bad. it may not be immediate, but eventually it does come around.

wwcd: on this first day of a new year and decade, i plan to put only the good out