Don’t Rock the Boat (or Car or Truck)

Posted in Business, Humor, Relationships, Virginia, Wisconsin by Shelley Sackier

When asked to make a list of my least favorite things to do, I’d likely answer in this order:

— Walk barefoot across burning coals to prove my physical courage as a warrior and gain the approval of any ancient Native American spirits that still linger on my land, as they occasionally show their displeasure with how I’m running my summer vegetable patch by simply shutting down the water well I depend upon.

— Go through the ritual of my yearly facial tattoo—again, to please these demanding land spirits, but also because this has proven a very effective way of remembering my New Year’s Eve resolutions and ensuring my efforts toward completion.

— Keep up with the scarification task I’ve placed upon myself, as long ago, I realized this was the most effective way to keep an accurate score for how many crocs I have wrestled into submission while trekking through the tropics of Africa and Asia. People ask for my tally all the time. I don’t know. It’s a Virginian thing I guess.

I would not admit this list out loud to anyone, simply because their jaws would slacken in disbelief that I did not answer as they surely would have.

Their least favorite thing to do?

GO TO THE DMV.

That’s right. The Department of Motor Vehicles – or Transit Authority – or Licensing Agency. We all have our country’s version of it.

It doesn’t matter what time of day you come in, there is always a line. A line that rivals a Disney queue back in the pre-measles break out days. Yep. You can now ride the thrills of Space Mountain twice before you can make it to the head of the line that brings you to the information desk clerk—whose job is simply to hand you all your forms and a ticket that now states, “You’re in line.”

But I don’t fear the DMV—I welcome any notice in the mail that states I have to pop back in to title, register, test or renew. But it’s not because I’m a glutton for punishment—as I believe I’ve made abundantly clear with my “least favorite things to do” list—it’s simply because I have an advantage:

My dad used to work there.

Back in Wisconsin growing up, I could cross the threshold of many a DMV location and simply state who I was, and then get stellar service. They recognized the last name.

Now in Virginia, I have to surreptitiously slip it into conversation. It’s challenging, because you can’t just blurt something like that out—the state employees will see you as an entitled gasbag and ignore you. One must use stealth and cunning conversation to bring it around to the big reveal.

I start off with all forms filled in correctly, and clearly—because I think we’ve all had an experience or two where we’ve gone to some government staffed window only to be handed a fresh stack of forms to redo because we did not write in BLOCK CAPITALS, or because we used blue ink instead of black. Or we discovered we had spinach in our teeth from lunch and were deemed unfit for service by whatever Ministry of Mightiness we happened to have offended.

If the individual sitting behind the window I am assigned does not immediately shower me with a, “Good afternoon! And how may I help you on this fine day we’ve been blessed with in the great universe we happily share? And here … have a cookie I baked last night,” I jump in with something to soften their day.

Ooh, gorgeous earrings.

Or, My goodness, your perfume is heavenly. Or, That is a truly striking tie.

Something, anything to get some eye contact. If I can manage eye contact, then I can unleash the smile I had melded into my person from years of media training. The kind of training that made you impervious to pinches, the ‘wayward hand,’ snarky put downs, and the surprise ice bucket challenge.

Thereafter, I am usually able to find some object placed around the staffer with which to bring on my shock of delight:

Well! Will you look at that? You folks are still using pens for writing—just like my dad did when he worked at the DMV for thirty years.

Again, subtlety and canniness is crucial for success.

After I gracefully lob a comment like this across the counter that reveals I am not one of the countless, faceless masses they must service today, and it expertly lands in the lap of our staffer, he or she brightens with a smile worthy of a successful laxative commercial. I am golden. I am in.

You say your dad worked at the DMV? For thirty years? Lord Almighty! Hey, Shirley! This here young woman’s dad managed to make it through thirty years at the department. I bet you’ve got the scars to show for it, doncha, honey?

This is where I cleverly turn to speak to the audience behind the camera that follows me everywhere, and that is imperceptible to all living, breathing beings around me, and reveal that I have no idea how many years my dad worked with the department, but with each visit, the number goes up substantially.

Yes, I do, ma’am. Then we laugh and I continue. He certainly saw his fair share of folks who drove him right up the wall. Some of them so demanding, so ungrateful, and certainly the majority ill-prepared. But it was his greatest pleasure to help and serve. I think the DMV must attract that kind of staff.

It’s at this point where she is supposed to turn to me and reach over the counter to motheringly caress my cheek.

But she doesn’t. Instead she peers at me through squinted eyes. I must have taken it a hair too far today.

She smiles tightly, bends over to open a seventy-five pound drawer, and scoops up eight pounds of it. She hands me a stack of forms.

Fill these out CORRECTLY.

I head back to my chair, but then make a quick detour to the lady’s room. I’m going to be here a while. I gaze at my reflection in the mirror. What went wrong? I ask myself. It’s then that I notice two things:

I’ve got spinach in my teeth.

And I forgot to put my latest facial tattoo of “I love the DMV” all in block capitals.

~Shelley

*BONUS CARTOON FOR THIS WEEK’S POST!* (click)

Don’t forget to check out what we’re cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all talked about down in the pub. Plus, you can see more of Robin Gott‘s humor–all from the only pen carved from a human funny bone.

21Feb2015

I Have A Lot To Answer For

Posted in authors, Books, Humor, Publishing, Storytelling, writing by Shelley Sackier

If I were to take a whack at describing myself in one sentence, it might sound something like: I have a zest for drama, a hunger for adventure, and a thirst for knowledge.

Perhaps it’s a bit pretentious sounding, but not so much once you discover my zest for drama may be nothing more dramatic than putting four drops of sriracha sauce into my mayonnaise.

And that my hunger for adventure may equate to simply switching to a tooth whitening paste instead of just cavity fighting, and then holding up a series of paint swatches next to my teeth each night to document the exciting voyage from drab to dynamite.

But my thirst for knowledge is an unquenchable longing. The more I feed that fire, the more outrageous and irrepressible it grows. It’s like my curiosity is a tape worm that feeds on facts and data. And I’ve always been very maternal about that critter, so I nourish its gluttonous appetite to extremes.

I have a lot of questions. And I’m determined to have them answered.

Using my own inquiring mind as a measuring stick, I’d have to say I’m hugely impressed with the depth and breadth of curiosity my publisher has regarding me and this zesty, hungry, thirsty life of mine. They casually handed me a smattering of queries to answer, and ended the request with the cordial advice not to stress over the questionnaire.

And I wouldn’t as long as I was the type who didn’t equate the measurement of the word smattering to mean BUCKETFULL, and who did not define the term stress to translate into FREAK OUT.

But I do.

And I have.

So every day I am chipping away like a Lilliputian lumberjack at the plethora of probing pleas for info.

There are the easy-peasy questions whose answers roll right off my tongue, like What are you reading right now? And What are your favorite books? Or even What did you have for breakfast?

Okay, that last one was not a bonafide question, but I did let them know the answer regardless, as surely everyone knows that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, next to lunch and dinner, and that if you’re going to invest massive amounts of capital into the mind-blowingly expensive campaign launch of that fairly unknown person’s book, you’re going to want to know that they’re eating enough fiber and not just surviving on the remnants of whatever is still in the half drunk tumblers scattered about the house from last night’s regular drunken spree and a pack of Marlboros.

See? I care about this job.

Some of the more challenging questions are:

What is your education? Your professional training? Have you earned a degree?

Again, I don’t blame the company for wanting to know these tidbits of historical interest, as they have agreed to publish a book I’ve written for children that has buried subliminal messages within the text. And parents are much less apt to purchase a book for their children if they discover the author took sewing lessons from Cruela de Vil and now sports a coat made from puppies, and who for a short, but unfortunate period of time in her life, shared a cell wall with Hannibal Lecter and is still Facebook friends.

Umm … yeah. It’s best to ask about your employee’s formative past.

They ask a million little detail questions that have me unpacking my brain of the detritus clogging the path to the tiny nooks and crannies that hold the answers. Out go the bits I just learned about new tax laws and regulations. Who needs to hang on to the abominable vaccination statistics I allowed to seep in whilst listening to the news this morning? And let’s shove aside that web site address that announced a sale on rare malt whisky—wait, hold on … yeah, I’m gonna need that one front and center.

I work around it.

Tell us all the places you have lived and when. List every club and organization you’ve ever had membership with. And explain to us why you did so poorly on that book report about Native American hunting traditions and trading practices in the fifth grade?

I thought I had that last one all trussed up and buried, but these guys are good. They are thorough. It’s possible I’m being vetted for a political appointment. I’ve watched House of Cards. I understand ‘talking points.’

It appears there may be a few things I’ll want to steer clear of when doing interviews.

What I have noticed mostly while going through this laborious process, is that putting together a successful marketing campaign for a book launch is a lot more involved than simply hanging a sign out the window that is the equivalent of “Lemonade for sale. 5¢ a glass.” Some of it is far beyond my realm of understanding and I’m relieved someone else is sitting in the captain’s chair for that part.

But still, it all comes down to the hankering for learning. Learning about building this campaign. Learning about breaking down monumental tasks into small bite-sized chunks.

And learning that apparently sending a monthly supply of brownies to my high school’s secretary in exchange for “losing” my academic record might be a plan I’ll need to beef up.

Regardless of how I phrase it—the zest, the hunger, the thirst—it all boils down to nourishing one’s spirit and satisfying one’s soul. When I get the munchies, I shall slake my appetite by feasting on the buffet of life. But apparently I will have to slide over and make room on the bench for my publisher.

Please pass the salt.

~Shelley

*BONUS CARTOON FOR THIS WEEK’S POST!* (click)

14Feb2015

Don’t Be Alarmed …

Posted in Health, Humor, Nocturnal hours, Technology by Shelley Sackier

I am a time freak.

Obsessed by the hours, minutes and seconds of my day, I am surrounded by the ever present notion that time is slipping away. And I am desperately grasping at those units of time with the same success as a giant Maine lobster trying to thread a needle.

Not terribly successful.

But I’m not a total bust either, just realistic when looking at my chart of accomplishments and noting the upward trajectory is minute at best—no pun intended.

When I take a 360 glance about myself, I note the myriad gadgets that help me track my day and the plan I have for it.

Clocks are everywhere.

Tiny ones live on my desk, on my computer, on my shelves. Scheduled pop ups announce themselves on my smart phone and my tablet. My wrist ‘wearable’ vibrates every forty-five minutes with a tiny trumpeting announcement that the only things moving during the last three quarters of an hour have been my fingers and my eyes. Get up. Get going. Get active.

Too often, I feel my life is accompanied by a giant, ticking clock—a timekeeper so inescapable it is like trying to run from the wind, the unseen currents ubiquitous, uncontrollable and disorderly.

My car has a clock that is always in a hurry. It runs several minutes fast, which consequently makes me feel late—and that of course adds to the general mental mindset malaise of never being able to keep up. Somehow the message surreptitiously sneaks into my brain that even if I am on time, I am late according to the beast of a manufacturing company I purchased this product from. Perhaps they have passed on their own unhealthy psychology to me, their consumer? The attitude that sounds—if you press your ear to the dashboard—like the desperate, drumming tattoo of, Churn them out. Churn them out. Churn them out.

I have a grandfather clock in the hallway which I long ago stopped setting. In the past, when waking to its hourly bong, I thought it absurd to be reminded that another sixty minutes had gone by since I last fell asleep—a good chunk of them spent attempting to fall back into slumber.

I have three alarm clocks that are bedside companions. One is on an insta-glow setting, so that I’m never farther than one elevated eyelid away from knowing how many more precious moments of pretending to sleep I have before the other two audibly announce, “TIME’S UP!”

On the zootechnical front, I have two domesticated animals whose internal rhythms are so precisely tuned to their biological needs, there is no reason to own anything battery operated or electrically charged.

And lastly, I find myself wholly annoyed with our planet’s main source of life—a star that, when visible, speedily tracks across my window pane and taunts me with the incessant reminder that the hours are slithering away, vanishing without a hint of anything to suggest they once existed apart from what lies behind and above the cursor on my screen. I long for cloudy days.

Of course, I am tied to the most vital of metronomes, the one which most of us ignore unless we are in an urgent state of health—either mental or physical.

The heart.

I know it is there. Yet I’ve never seen proof. I feel its presence if I place my hand upon my chest, if I sprint after my hound, or if I come upon the faces of my children.

It stretches and nearly bursts with the swelling that takes place when discovering that my work mattered to someone, and it aches when it splinters after grasping the unrelenting unkindness in our world.

In my quiet moments of yoga practice, I am asked to find a stillness so deep and connected with the internal workings of my physical-ness that I can locate, feel, and hear my own heartbeat. That is a thin thread of ‘knowing’ available to all of us, but seldom sought and rarely found.

I am reminded to live in the present, to acknowledge each moment as prized, whether I am glowing with joy, or wrestling with pain. I am told to sit within time—not in the past, nor in the future.

I am a devotee of days, a maniac for minutes, and crazy with chronography.

I am a time freak.

~Shelley

7Feb2015

Who Do You Think YOU Are?

Posted in Education, Humor, Medicine, promises, Reflections by Shelley Sackier

Now that we’ve all gotten through that first (and some might say unbearable) month of the year, it’s a grand (and some might say painful) time to take a quick looksee backward to collect a few points of data.

I call this month the time of RECALIBRATION because with all the frenzied excitement of December’s last week, which is stuffed full of well-meaning (some might say drunken) promises we nearly tattooed to our skin with the bulldozer determination of rebranding ourselves into the new shinier 2015 version, it can get overwhelming.

Some might say paralyzing.

I see no need for any of us to shrink away from our former selves, or the vows we made to our former selves. Like campaign promises, circumstances change: real life slaps us upside the head, supporters who swore they’d have our back are getting crabby because the timeline is too slow, we’ve finally had a moment to sit down and read the fine print, and in some cases, we discover that Lincoln’s historic and exclusive bedroom smells like Lincoln’s socks are still stuffed beneath the bed. All the hype ain’t quite what it was cracked up to be.

So now is a good time to take a deep breath and practice this phrase:

I used to be …

NO GUILT!

‘I used to be’ can be just as cleansing as it is clarifying. For example, I used to be determined to rid myself of the seasonal Jack Frost Flab until Polly Polar Vortex burst through the door and hollered hello.

I have changed my mind. I am now simply always on the ball with early winter prep.

Another illustration might be, I used to be resolute in my goal to sing a duet with Frank Sinatra, but then he died.

I never gave up on this goal, I just came to realize it is doubly difficult to sing two part harmony with a corpse.

There are myriad examples that may be just as revealing, but a little less disheartening like: I used to be young, but now I am … not as young.

But each day that has passed has brought something my younger self did not have:

EXPERIENCE.

Hard won, effortful, exhausting, mind-numbing, hair-curling, wouldn’t-trade-most-of-it-for-the-world experience. (Some of it I would trade. Some of it I would pay people to erase from my memory and the memory of all the others involved, and then I would be at the mercy of those folks for as long as they would allow me to serve them.)

Or how about: I used to be a student—and go figure—I still am.

I used to be a student in a small classroom, then a large classroom, then on a massive campus. Now I am a student, but one without walls. My math assignments are the bills, the budgets and the taxes. English reports are my books and my blog. History is learned from the library. Science is a rich alchemy occurring all around me—from the stove top to the utility room, from the distilleries I study to the labels in my medicine cabinet. School is ever present, and I will always be a student.

At this point in my life, it’s almost as if behind every door I open, someone is flipping on a light bulb, and a small, but vocal collection of brain cells all join together and belt out a beautiful chorus of an aha moment.

I pray their efforts don’t diminish. I hope that one day there will be an ongoing work of symphonic status performing up there.

And I implore science to hurry up and double their labors at successfully creating that special pill/implant/gene therapy that will ultimately improve my concentration, increase my memory, and boost my intelligence. I promise to do great things with it. I promise not to hack the financial industry, or mess about in the tech corridors, or commandeer the world’s defense divisions.

I promise. I can assuredly say that I used to be honest is not a phrase I will ever utter.

I really just want the extra brain juice for a few household experiments like figuring out a cost analysis for the most efficacious and least expensive wrinkle creams, or for what speed my make and model of car would consume gas most efficiently, or whether cryonics will be a sound decision for my hound at some point because I cannot imagine finding another animal as perfect for me as he is. And I will wait for whatever cure veterinary medicine doesn’t have available just yet for some ailment he may nearly succumb to in the future.

That’s what I’d use it for.

I promise.

And how ‘bout this one to leave you with? I used to be afraid to try new things.

I still am. But I never let it stop me. Except when fear equals wisdom. Best not to ignore that little pearl.

Now you look at your life. How many ‘used to bes’ is it filled with?

It takes a significant element of courage and energy to commit to become something. That something that was important to us for a minute, a month, or a lifetime. Identifying your used to be is not a list of your failures.

It is a record of your efforts and accomplishments. It is a sign of movement and momentum. It is a mark of evolution.

~Shelley

(This post was inspired by one of my favorite authors and thinkers: Seth Godin.)

31Jan2015

Baby, Is It Cold Outside?

Posted in Calendar, Festivals, Folklore, Humor, Weather, Winter by Shelley Sackier

Midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox up here in the Northern hemisphere, folks start to get squirrelly.

We’ve made it through the big eating festivals of Thanksgiving and Christmas, gushed forth an armload of inebriated promises to ourselves at New Year’s—swearing ‘change was on its way,’—and then we slogged through the gloomy gray of January, bedamning those drunken oaths.

When February hits, we are tired, we are bloated, and we are desperate.

So we flip the calendar to a new page and employ the soothsaying prowess of a rodent. We gather round the critter’s hovel and cast out our urgent pleas.

Make these dreary days brighter for us, oh woodchuck!

Release us from winter’s wretched hold, little land-beaver!

Heal our melancholy spirits from these lugubriously long days, tiny whistle pig!

And then we hold our pudgy warlocks high into the air and ask them to divine the future for us as all sane people of advanced cultures are doing.

I love Groundhog Day.

According to most of my reliable internet search engine sources and Frau Heidlehaufen on the north side of the large hill I live atop, both have stated that all groundhogs rise from their winter slumber on February 2^nd at daybreak. Frau Heidlehaufen might have actually said prune cake or headache, but as she is a 92 year-old woman with only three teeth, most of what she says is easily mistaken for a long buried form of Greenlandic Norse.

Still, the World Wide Web never lies.

What happens then is thus:

If our precious badger-like beast spots his shadow casting a long form from the front doorstep of his burrow, he yawns, waves drowsily at the gathered crowd and heads back below to hunker down for another six weeks of snoozing until spring will finally arrive.

But if our meteorological marmot does not see his shadow, he quickly checks his stocks on the NASDAQ, scampers into his bunker to put on a pot of coffee, and starts sifting through seed packets for the early arrival of spring—which should show up in about six weeks.

How did we wonky Americans come up with this little piece of mid-winter amusement? Clearly, it came about at a time when the Internet had yet to enter stage left, Instagram wasn’t even in the stages of Let me show you the pictures from my family’s trip to Disney World, and George R.R. Martin was likely giving himself permission to go to the bathroom in between writing his enthralling epic novels for a demanding and impatient readership.

We obviously needed SOMETHING to keep our spirits up.

And I think most of us have realized that if we can’t find a ferret to shove down our trousers in a round of raucous pub games, then any animal from the group of large ground squirrels will do.

Of course, there’s also the historical footnote stating that this custom was brought to our country via the Germanic tradition of Candlemas Day where folks would bring their year’s supply of candles into church to get blessed from whomever was behind the altar that day.

Yeah, I’m not really seeing the connection either, but this fact was brought to you via some old school traditionally published encyclopedia that I was thumbing through and not my more reliable source of some dude’s blog post advertising his small West Virginian farm and the heart healthy benefits of varmint meat. You decide.

There are plenty of American cities that have claimed their prickly pet as the real deal, but read any poll administered by the good people of a small town in Pennsylvania and you will soon see that Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators, and Weather Prophet Extraordinary is the groundhog upon which all other groundhogs measure their self worth.

If there is one thing we must collectively agree upon though, despite the protestations from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stating that the groundhog possesses “no predictive skills,” it is the fact that these guys are amorous little rascals.

According to modern ethologists, who believe the study of animal behavior is more reliable using the scientific method vs. folklore, these chubby chucks are not actually stirring from slumber to check on the weather, but whether Shirley, or Sheila, or even Shondelle—a few burrows over—is up for a quick cuddle.

That’s it.

Nothing more profound.

It turns out that our furry friends pretty much feel the same way we do come the beginning of February: they are tired, they are bloated, and they are desperate. So they gather round another critter’s hovel and cast out their urgent pleas.

“I’m cold. Can I come in?”

The answer is usually yes, as thawing somebody else’s icicle toes turns out to be a pretty heartwarming gesture. Apparently we’ve been wrong about these creatures from the beginning. They are not oracles with a forecast from a Doppler radar wormhole, they are simply starry-eyed romantics. They are motivated by nothing more than answering the quest for comfort. Just like you and me.

In the grand scheme of things, we’re pretty much all groundhogs at heart.

~Shelley