Category: Everyday Musings

Posted in Everyday Musings

Why I Call Myself a Grinch – but I’m Not Really a Grinch

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

It’s like a switch that automatically turns me off as soon as the Advent 1 church service starts. All of the joy and excitement and celebration that suddenly becomes the center of everyone else’s life for four weeks to Christmas just falls right out of me. Dries up. Heck, runs away screaming.

Because of this, I’ve always called myself a Grinch, sometimes a Scrooge or a Humbug.

But dammit, I’m not. I’m none of those characters. I’m not mean or nasty or heartless. I don’t steal anyone else’s fun and cheer.

I don’t hate the holidays – the secular ones or the holy ones. I don’t hate the traditions, the gatherings, the food, the songs, the colors, the festivities.

But I’m an introvert. The holidays, and my reaction to them, is one of the few ways I know, truly know that my Myers-Briggs 1-point preference for introvertism is really true; seven other behavioral analysis, several repeated, confirm this. I know, it’s hard to believe of me, right?

“The holidays” are inherently a social phenomenon; they can’t happen without the tacit cooperation of groups – mostly large groups – of people, whether parade marchers or watchers, naughty and nice list comparisons, and the most basic present giving and receiving. Even more so, the religious foundation of holi-days is social, beginning with and culminating in a collection of the largest worship services of the year for most churches.

Think about it. There is not one single holiday tradition that carries a positive connotation and is experienced without engagement with others.

And for me – an introvert with a 6-person max – this is excruciating. Even if I’m mostly left to “wall-flower” (which is what I always secretly hope will happen), I watch the clock so that I can cut and run as soon as I’ve attended for a respectable amount of time.

And I do want to be respectful when I choose to attend; I never want to make a host/ess feel like s/he has done something to make me uncomfortable or unhappy. It’s why I choose quite carefully and deliberately when and how and with whom to engage during the holidays.

If I cow to expectations and attend, I’m often noticeably reserved, even if I have a drink. In fact, I willingly – actually cheerfully – volunteer to cook, serve, and especially clean up just so I have an easy excuse to just be rather than interact.

If I do what I want and RSVP regrets in favor of Die Hard and Home Alone marathons, I’m labeled a Grinch, a Scrooge, a Humbug by others.

It’s a Catch-22 of the purest variety.

Because I’m not a Grinch with a heart too small to love others. I’m not a Scrooge who’s been hurt by others and just wants to hurt people back. I’m not a Humbug out to squash others’ celebration. (While I do detest yard decorations with a passion, I’ve never once suggested that others stop decorating or take theirs down.)

But I don’t have any other cultural references to use when trying to simplify my discomfort with the norms of the holidays than to call myself a Grinch, a Scrooge, or a Humbug. They serve to convey that I don’t want to participate, certainly. But the edge of negativity they come with is something I’d like to figure out how to divest.

Posted in Everyday Musings, Published Writing

My Love Letter to Mt. Pleasant, SC – featured on LowcountryLoveLetters.com

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

Check out my guest post at LowcountryLoveLetters.com where I write about how the changes in, the growth of my small-town Mt. Pleasant, SC, is an opportunity for long-time natives to activate our history, not simply hold it sacred and separate from collaboration with our newer neighbors to shape our town’s future.

Thank you to Angela Wicke and Emily Gildea for inviting me to carefully consider what loving my small town really means in a tangible and shareable way.

Posted in Everyday Musings

Judging a Book by Its Cover: When a Woman Desires to Be “Just” a Wife and Mother

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

This is short, perhaps just the beginning of an idea, a discussion.

It’s partly about the word “just,” especially when it means “only” and carries the implication of a self- or externally-imposed limitation.

It’s about choice, even when others think your choice is beneath your potential.

It’s about judgment, and others’ failure to recognize that most of us have more or different dreams waiting behind the scenes to become the focus of our lives and choices.

A friend of many years recently revealed two things publicly that have been received with strong responses:

  1. her dream was/is to be a “classic American” wife and mother a la June Cleaver, and that this is her American dream
  2. she recently filed for divorce from her husband

Responses to the second all follow in the same vein: sympathy, compassion, prayers, offers of support.

But responses to the first revelation have raised eyebrows and generated various levels of judgment that her dream is wrong, undesirable, bad, as well as condemnation of examples of newer variations on the American dream as entitled, lazy, absurd, and more.

My first response was personal:

I congratulate your choice to want and to strive to be a Proverbs 31 woman, wife, and mother, though I am baffled at the idea that there is only one American dream, the one anyone refers to as “the” American dream. I would prefer that no one impose any dream on my life and choices, much less a uniform “American” one. I would also prefer that no one judge me for my choice of dream, but as God didn’t grant me control over others’ minds, alas, judgment happens. I love you, sister, and pray for you support, comfort, and peace as you make your best choices moving forward into a new life situation.

But my continuing ruminations led me to wonder what kind of man does God direct as a match for a Proverbs 31 woman. A simple Google search for led to mostly articles and commentary on a Proverbs 31 husband, but my favorite presentation referenced Ephesians 5 and really focuses on the man’s role in lifting up his wife the same way Proverbs 31 focuses on the woman’s actions and choices. Be sure to click on the “Ephesians 5 husbands” in the Searches related to “husband for proverbs 31 wife” at the bottom of the results.

25 gHusbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and hgave himself up for her,

26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by ithe washing of water jwith theword,

27 so kthat he might present the church to himself in splendor, lwithout spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.1

28 In the same way mhusbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church,

30 because nwe are members of his body.

31 o“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and p the two shall become one flesh.”

32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

33 However, q let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she r respects her husband.

I’m truly privileged to say that I can easily name 20 men in my regular circle of friends whom I believe and have witnessed who are Ephesians 5 husbands and women who are Proverbs 31 wives. I try hard to be a Proverbs 31 friend. And I dearly pray to God to send my friend her Ephesians 5 husband.

This is by no means the end of this discussion – whether in my own meditations with God or out loud with friends in person or online.  I welcome your thoughts and especially your prayers for my friend and for all people to find the passion and acceptance to pursue the dreams they choose.

Posted in Everyday Musings

LinkedIn’s Programmers are Missing the Mark

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

LinkedIn tells me I’ve been a member (aka, had a free profile) since January 25, 2010. Twice I’ve subscribed to the job seeker upgrade ($19.99/mo) when exploring career change opportunities. Once, for an extended period of time, I joined groups and mined connections in an effort to populate a list of prospective clients for an employer.

Two of the features that made the connection mining successful were Notes and Tags.

  • With Notes, I could identify how I found or knew the connection and what communication exchanges we’d had.
  • With Tags, I could create a collection of features by which to define each connection that would make it easy for me to search for smaller subsets of clients based on what my employer-at-the-time was focusing in sales and products.

linkedin-notes-and-tagsAnd today, January 11, 2017, LinkedIn sent me an email to tell me, since they know I use Notes and Tags, that they are discontinuing the two features but that, if I subscribe to their new service Sales Navigator, I’ll still be able to capture similar information.

I’ve watched LinkedIn struggle to find/create an identity for itself as part of the rise of social media. But its continued attempt to be both a sales CRM, competing with giants like Salesforce and Zoho, and an ATS, competing with giants like Indeed and iCIMS, while providing no content filters to minimize political, entertainment, and personal ad posts is crippling this platform.

Yep, I said it. LinkedIn’s programming and development priority towards revenue-generating strategic repositioning should be to create and implement an automated and a manual system for filtering content.

Posted in Everyday Musings

Observations about Age and MLMs

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

I’m approaching 40. And most of my friends are +/- 5 years from that age. And I’m noticing something I’ve never seen anyone write about: it seems that you might be able to track a woman’s age and/or stage in life by the type of MLM for which they become a consultant.

My Assumptions

  • Most women who subscribe to MLMs are married, especially the ones attractive to the younger age groups.
  • These generalizations may not apply to those who subscribe to an MLM to manage a specific health condition; that is, the age may not match up with the standard adoption age range.
  • Most MLM consultants join to gain the discounts for themselves and do very little to sell the product or to develop a sales team under their management.

21-30

For the young adult ladies, generally 30 and under, the top MLM/consultant choices appear to revolve around millennial ideals focused on sustainability and reduction/rejection of traditional medicine and household chemicals (some might call these moms “granola”), those generally suspicious of anything overly processed.

  • Jamberry Nails – rejecting the inhaled and absorbed chemicals of the nail salon
  • Young Living or doTerra (Essential Oils) – rejecting prescription management
  • 31 Bags – for carting kid stuff and being cute
  • WildTree – spices and freezer meals and likely responsible for the rise of grapeseed oil

31-40

Moms whose kids have reached an age where basically they can make their own cereal on Saturday mornings and beyond.  These women have finished having kids and pushed through the toughest, most high-maintenance formative years, and are finally getting to think about themselves again – their appearance, their health, the way they used to be able to take care of their appearance. The MLMs for this age bracket can generally be perceived as enabling an attempt to reclaim some of the ease, glamour, of those pre-kid years and maybe even a bit of the pre-married years.

  • Mary Kay / Arbonne / Forever Living / Younique / Lipsense / Melaleuca – easy, streamlined, time-efficient application
  • Young Living / doTerra – essential oils as alternatives to traditional, synthetic oral medications and treatments
  • Premier / Cookie Lee / Lia Sophia Jewlery – inexpensive but rich-looking pieces, multiple pairings for variety
  • Pampered Chef – cooking stones and single-purpose meal prep tools

41+

The closer a woman gets to 40, the more likely she is to turn her focus to slowing the progress of time with products designed to keep her looking as young as she is and to manage some of the physical changes that menopause brings on. I find it interesting that, in large part, women in their 40s finally become focused on their skin – the foundation of the makeup that used to be so prominent in their “appearance” arsenal. In addition, food-based MLMs fall out almost completely.

  • Rodan and Fields / Arbonne / BeautyCounter

NOTE: as a purchaser, Thirty-One handbags and organizers have been part of a few recent purchases, but I have not been tempted to buy out of any of the ingested or topical application products, mainly because so few disclose their ingredients. You can claim all you want that it’s natural, not tested on animals, gluten free, vegan, but none of that means that it’s actually safe and appropriate or that it’s ingredients can be verified to be beneficial.

50+

What comes next? What do imagine attempting to sell your friends on when you’re all 50? Because, let’s face it, that’s as far as 90% of MLM adopters get – selling to their close friends who’ll buy a little bit to be nice but not much more after that.

Posted in Everyday Musings

Redneck Lessons (or Observations of a City Girl)

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

So a few months ago, some friends of mine in Kershaw began my official “redneckification,” an official course of study with courses and everything (I usually don’t know I’m in class until I do something unexpected that they think is cool). My curriculum currently consists of 4wheeler riding (mostly), dirt track, gun shows, shooting, and hanging out. To date, my study notes go something like this:

  • Don’t call a shotgun a rifle; you will definitely fail the course…and get to…I mean “have to” repeat the course.
  • A full night of riding requires at minimum two sets of clothes: the ones you’re wearing and ones to change into when you get wet, muddy, or both. Change of shoes optional depending on your personal preference.
  • Drivers (as opposed to passengers like me) will be honest with you and tell you when you need to get off the 4wheeler for safety…or so they can do some really crazy trick.
  • Don’t tease your driver about how muddy he is…or he’ll sit on you and squish the mud all over you too.
  • Cell phones are an essential tool on a ride; not only can you follow the weather and get away from the creek in lighting, you can also upload instant hilarious photos!
  • Girls will take a shower, do their hair and makeup, and want to look cute for the meet-up and photos. By the time the ride is over, no one cares what you look like.
  • Kids have some insane ability to stay awake and keep on riding…into the wee hours of the morning.
  • There are three ways for a passenger to sit: on the back rack (easy while riding, hurts like hell parked), on the back rack with a pillow (little more comfy, but slidey), and in a seat (a little raised up and a little more secure for bumps). In order of preference, I’ll take the pillow, the bare rack, and maybe the seat.
  • Find a way to wear your hair up, not down. When dry, it’s painful to brush out at the end of the night. When wet, you might as well not even try.
  • Goggles may look funny, but trust me when I tell you crying from dust and debris flying in your eyes looks even funnier.
  • Rain just might be the most painful natural event while riding…must be what being stoned (in the biblical sense) feels like. Is there such a thing as rainburn?
  • Take a snack pack…somehow. It’s no fun to be on an 8-hour ride with a hunger headache.
  • Trust your driver…and make sure he knows you do. He’ll tell you when you screw up his driving, and you’ll be thankful even if he’s snarky about it.
  • Ask questions if you don’t know something and want to. And be truly interested in the answer.
  • Your bra can keep your phone safe from getting rain soaked (at least mine can).
  • Mud is good…and best found and played in right after a storm!
  • Don’t play or ride near the creek when there’s lightning.
  • When your driver has to pee, hold on tight cuz he’s gonna stop fast.
  • Learn the basic operations of the 4wheeler; you never know when you’re gonna want/need to stop or move it…even if you’re just the passenger.
  • Ride with a man with a gun; he can shoot the snakes and bad people!
  • Don’t get your fur up when you’re called out. It’s either in jest so you laugh with it, or it’ll save your life so you’re thankful!
  • Snakes are bad. Run ’em over now so they don’t bite you later.
  • Guns fired at night make little fireworks. Get excited and keep shooting for extra credit!
  • The Monday after a great weekend will hurt, especially for a city girl who never gets a chance to get used to riding all the time. Smile through the pain and think of the fabulous time you had earning every bump, bruise, and scrape!
  • Be fearless for yourself and careful of others. You know what you’re willing to risk but you can never know how far the other person will go.
  • I LIKE shooting guns, and I’m not a half bad shot either.
  • Sooner than you think, you’ll see someone flip their 4wheeler; stay calm and let them freak out if they need to.
  • Everyone expects Sunday dinner at Mawmaw and Pawpaw’s house, even if they’re not home. Plan accordingly.
  • Do not expect real mud to come out in the first washing, so don’t dry it ’til you check it.
  • Sometimes you just don’t feel like riding, so you go to dirt track instead.
  • The country is the perfect place to just be quiet…no tv, no talking…just sitting together thinking your own thoughts or better yet, none at all.
  • Food tastes better in the country, even if you cooked it yourself.
  • It’s easiest to pay someone back in shrimp.
  • The ride schedule is always Friday and Saturday night at 7; meet at Joey Tolbert’s unless otherwise posted. Sunday and weekday rides are a bit more casually organized.
  • Sometimes it’s a good thing I ride without my glasses; I can pretend the snakes aren’t there.
  • Definitely…call the 4wheeler a “chariot” and ask your driver to bring it around; guaranteed to get a call and a laugh 🙂
  • The best time to go riding is right after the ladies have a sex toy party…yeehaw!
  • If you improvise a classic redneck solution–such as a trash bag and tape cover when your cooler hinges break–you only get half points for using packing tape instead of duct tape. “My office didn’t have any duct tape” isn’t a valid excuse because you should have had some of your own in the car.
  • The best archery teacher is a 6 year old 🙂
  • A pig takes a long time to cook, so be sure to bring roast oysters, bring your bows and guns, sing songs by the fire to keep from being bored.

I’m sure there are more lessons to be learned; I get a few every time I go up to the country for a weekend! I’ll add them as I learn them…and boy, will I have fun learning them!

Off for a Friday night ride in the creek!

It’s a dirt track night, and I’m melting in the stands. Another hour or so before the sun goes down behind the trees and we can cool off!

Posted in Everyday Musings

Rebounders (aka, can guys and girls be friends?)

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

Hmmm…sounds like it might be the title of a great sitcom, right?

So, how many times have you had or been the rebound relationship? I guess a better question is “what is a rebound relationship”? I mean, what function is it supposed to serve versus what actually happens?

Caveat: I am a classical economist, a political centrist, so in my mind there is only “what is” and almost never “what should be,” mainly because no one has let me be in charge of the universe yet. Then I’ll (or you’ll) get to decide “what should be” and then make it happen.

That said, what is the function of the rebound relationship? Technically, a rebound only follows a relationship that made it into the serious, big “L” love, on the way to marriage and kids and til death do us part level. Doesn’t have to have gotten than far for both parties, and generally that’s why the pre-rebound relationship ends. So you, assuming you are the one who believed in the happily ever after-ness and still in that mindset, find a lovely person to whom you can transfer those feelings. Rarely are they real, but they are so strong that you can’t just stop on a dime. It’s all bottled up inside you and you need somewhere to stow them. So you meet and date a fun, fantastic person; you might even meet his/her friends and family on some group dates.

Thing is, that love really belongs to someone else, not your rebound.

I mean, think of the word itself, re-bound. The primary definition of “to bound” is bounce. Add the prefix “re” and you’ve got a fancy way of saying “bounce back,” as if you’ve just fallen down and you are bouncing back up. Another way to use it is straight out of basketball…means exactly the same thing…ball is thrown for the basket and misses (relationship #1) and someone else catches it and tries to score. Yes, sometimes the person who threw it also catches the rebound; that’s the relationship we’ve all seen at least one of our friends in, where the pair break up and reunite over and over again, rebounding with each other.

Where am I going with all of this? Well, my rebound and I just “broke up.” But first, the man I love and I had to break up. Before that we had to be in a relationship that included the connections that lead up to love.

And that’s precisely what happened. The thing is, I knew I was in a position to be a great rebound girl for someone else, but I never considered how much having a rebound guy would benefit me.

And boy, did I get lucky. My rebound guy had his messy, nasty, self-esteem shattering break-up about six months after I had mine. Okay, I admit, that’s not really how mine happened; we loved each other but had very different expectations about how things could or would happen to move us toward something more than just loving each other…that life together. I spent about four days crying and not eating over mine, but an amazing snuggle of friends supported me through that. My rebound guy wasn’t so lucky; that is, his ex spent about two months viciously shredding him to pieces, everything from how he looked to his career choices to his age, even hitting so low as to suggest he was a shame to his family. I know this because he and I were friends, just friends, through all of this. I even took care of him a couple of times when he was so busted up that he needed help.

But earlier this year, we were talking about our relationships with others and our relationship with each other. He and I share an intimacy that is uncommon among men and women, that rare “best friends” intimacy between a man and a woman. We wondered if there was something more, so we consciously decided to take some time to see if there might be something more there.

I still had my love for another man bottled up, nowhere to put it, but had been meeting up with this friend for “date-like” occasions.

He had several years worth of love for a women who now hated him, and nowhere to put it. I even met her a month or so before the 2-month-long break up began.

Might as well see if we fit. So we had dates. For events and especially family occasions, we attended as an unspoken couple. In fact, that was key for us; we never declared to anyone that we were a couple. But we are both guilty of not correcting what we knew was their assumption.

So for the past five months, we’ve spent about two weekends a month together, usually one with his family and one with mine (we live in different areas of the state). And it’s been rare that a day goes by that we don’t talk, even if just a little. We do little special things for each other.

But the fact is, we did all of this as friends, when we were each seeing other people, in love with them, in fact.

I’ll admit, I’m less guarded than he with my feelings and let myself enjoy and show my joy in spending time with him and loving him; I even told him that I love him a few weeks ago. That’s the tricky part. I do love him, and I know he loves me. But it’s easy to mistake our intimacy with the kind of love that makes people want to make a life together.

So last week, my rebound guy and I “broke up.” I have to put it in quotation marks because we were always just seeing where our special, rare intimacy boundaries were.

And the best part is, there is no one else for either of us right now. We “broke up” because we simply aren’t into each other that way. I love knowing that we simply aren’t “the one” for each other rather than came in second place to someone else.

And I have to admit, I was worried about the conflict that would flare up inside of me if I really loved two men with the same intensity. Because I do still love my ex, in a way that makes me want to make a life with him.

So what did I get out of this rebound relationship? That’s an interesting question, and I’m not sure I know all of the answers to it yet. But I learned to have fun with a man, just fun, no expectations. To open myself up to new experiences, not just the ones that we share but the ones that could become important parts of my life. To share myself openly with someone else, knowing that I could be hurt but trusting his care for me and that his honesty is something I can trust. Perhaps I learned that the kind of man that I’ve always dreamed of finding and loving really does exist, isn’t just a figment of my imagination.

It would have been so nice and easy if he and I could have fallen in love with each other…the marriage kind of love. It’s certainly what both of our families and friends were rooting for. But it’s not what happened.

The Moral of the Story: the rebound doesn’t have to be a bad or dangerous relationship to be in. I still think I make a great rebound girl, as long as I know I’m in that role. I’ve dated and stayed friends with many men who found me just as their marriage was busting up. Being honest with each other about having a good time and enjoying the companionship can make a rebound relationship fun!

Posted in Everyday Musings

High School Flashback…folding notes

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

Today, I enjoyed a day-long exchange with an old friend…actually my old high school boyfriend…mimicking the age-old tradition of passing notes…but Facebook style!

Yes, there are a few more exchanges, but only because he butt-dialed me and I heard the book he was listening to in the car.

But this all made me think about that classic way we used to fold our notes, thinking somehow that our “secret” folding technique made our notes impenetrable by teachers. I also remember writing backwards, again thinking that my teachers would be too stupid to figure it out and wouldn’t be able to read the note out loud and embarrass me.

So I grabbed a piece of paper from the copy machine and let my memory take over:


Fold diagonally from the top right corner to the left straight edge, matching up what was the top edge with the left edge and making a perfect point at the top left.

Fold the remaining bottom “tag” upwards.

Fold vertically from the bottom right to the bottom left, matching up the two bottom corners.

Fold horizontally and to the back so that the top point now points downward.

Fold that point back upwards over the front.

Fold the remaining little point tag down into the pocket made by the paper.

There were also variations on how to fold that final point into the pocket, sometimes making a pull tag, but that’s pretty much the gist.

Crazy sometimes the things you remember from high school. Crazier still that twenty years later a good-looking man can still make you blush by asking you to check yes or no to let him know if you like him. I mean like-him like-him 🙂