Mother's Day

Mother's Days have come and gone and I expressed my love for Mom in one way or another with flowers, visits, sometimes just a card and a phone call. Mom never demanded anything and she was always grateful for whatever effort I made. I never thought about her not being here. Of course, once in a while there would be a fleeting moment of angst when the unthinkable would skitter across my mind. But to think of my loving, thoughtful, generous Mom being gone... well, it was just unthinkable--you think your Mom will always be there.

But this Mother's Day she is gone. On February 17th, 2009 at 75 years old, my dear, sweet Mother lost her life to lung cancer. She'd fought her way back from the brink of death more than a decade ago when 40 years of smoking landed her repeatedly in the emergency room unable to breathe. She quite smoking over 13 years ago and it bought her more than a decade of life. It was a tough decade.

Mom's every thought for almost as long as I can remember was about how she would get enough breath to do the next thing. Not a move was made without first assessing how much of her precious, limited air it would consume. Still, it didn't stop her from doing much of anything that she wanted to do. Well, other than rearrange the living room furniture, oh how she missed doing that. Even after Dad died in 2002, she continued to shuttle herself around in her beloved little black Rav4, its dashboard blanketed with stuffed animals and bobble-head figures she'd gotten from her kids, and her grand and great grand children. I think part of why she loved the car so much was because it had been mine first. Long trips to Elko became less frequent, but trips to Wal-Mart and WinCo were never far apart. She'd take her time, sit and watch people when she needed to catch her breath, and right up until her last outing to Wal-Mart she refused to even think about wearing oxygen out in public. Mom was always worried about what others would think. It runs in the family.

She was diagnosed in December and gone by the middle of February. From the moment she found out, she was steadfast in her refusal to even consider treatment. After suffering along with Dad and what he went through with chemotherapy and radiation she was positive that she wanted no part of it. Her diagnosis was late stage 4 -- so treatment wasn't an option anyway. In some ways I think she was relieved to get the diagnosis. She kept telling me that she was ready. She was tired. She didn't have the energy to keep fighting for every breath.

Thankfully, she was able to maintain a high quality of life right to the very end. With hospice care she was able to stay in the home she loved and she was surrounded by the family and friends who so thoroughly loved her. Her family of neighbors stepped in for her sons who lived miles away. Who can really ask for more than that as we let go of this life?

I have the lovely memory of several trips Mom made to visit me in Seattle. The picture here is one taken at the very top row of Safeco Field baseball stadium. The first ever major league baseball game she had ever attended. What a wonderful day we had. The picture taken from the top row had special meaning. You can only take an elevator so far up in the stadium. The rest of the way you're hoofing it up some of the steepest stairs you'll ever see. I'll never forget as we stood at the bottom of what appeared to be an endless staircase to the clouds, not realizing at the time that our seats were in the very top row. Stairs are the biggest fear for someone with breathing problems, but she trooped up the stairs barely even slowing down for a rest -- truly amazing us both! Seattle was magical that way for her. Being at sea level, she had new found energy and vigor here that she couldn't even imagine having at home where the elevation was high and the air was thin.

Some of the best times I had with Mom and Dad were spent scouting around Seattle, combing Pike Place Market, exploring Whidbey Island, drinking in the visual beauty of the Skagit County tulip festival. It was a whole new world for the Nevada rancher and his wife of nearly 50 years.

This Mother's Day I am both thankful and sad. Thankful for having such luck to get an endlessly loving mother. Also thankful that her long, exhausting struggle is over. She was tired and she was ready, even though I wasn't. And then there is the sadness. I really have no words. When I try to examine the feelings inside they threaten to consume me. So, for now, all I can say is I've lost my best friend, the most important person in my life, and although everyone says it will get easier, right now I can't possibly believe that it will.

I love you Mom.

__

Oh! The Places You'll Go!

Oh! The Places You’ll Go!
The last book published by the incomparable Dr. Seuss

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

You’ll look up and down streets. Look’em over with care. About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.” With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you’re too smart to go down a not-so-good street.

And you may not find any you’ll want to go down. In that case, of course, you’ll head straight out of town. It’s opener there in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen and frequently do to people as brainy and footsy as you.

And when things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening too.

Oh! The Places You’ll Go!

You’ll be on your way up!
You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers who soar to high heights.

You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed. You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead. Wherever you fly, you’ll be best of the best. Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don’t.
Because, sometimes, you won’t.

I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you.

You can get all hung up in a prickle-ly perch. And your gang will fly on. You’ll be left in a Lurch.

You’ll come down from the Lurch with an unpleasant bump. And the chances are, then, that you’ll be in a Slump.

And when you’re in a Slump, you’re not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked. A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin! Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in? How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And if you go in, should you turn left or right…or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite? Or go around back and sneak in from behind? Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place…for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil, or a Better Break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting.

No! That’s not for you!
Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying. You’ll find the bright places where Boom Bands are playing. With banner flip-flapping, once more you’ll ride high! Ready for anything under the sky. Ready because you’re that kind of a guy!

Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all. Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be, with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don’t. Because, sometimes, they won’t.

I’m afraid that some times you’ll play lonely games too. Games you can’t win ‘cause you’ll play against you.

All Alone!
Whether you like it or not, Alone will be something you’ll be quite a lot.

And when you’re alone, there’s a very good chance you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants. There are some, down the road between hither and yon, that can scare you so much you won’t want to go on.

But on you will go though the weather be foul. On you will go though your enemies prowl. On you will go though the Hakken-Kraks howl. Onward up many a frightening creek, though your arms may get sore and your sneakers may leak. On and on you will hike. And I know you’ll hike far and face up to your problems whatever they are.

You’ll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act. Just never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)

Kid, you’ll move mountains!
So…be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ale Van Allen O’Shea, you’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!

10 simple ways to save yourself from messing up your life

By Adrian Savage

1. Stop taking so much notice of how you feel. How you feel is how you feel. It’ll pass soon. What you’re thinking is what you’re thinking. It’ll go too. Tell yourself that whatever you feel, you feel; whatever you think, you think. Since you can’t stop yourself thinking, or prevent emotions from arising in your mind, it makes no sense to be proud or ashamed of either. You didn't cause them. Only your actions are directly under your control. They’re the only proper cause of pleasure or shame.
   
2. Let go of worrying. It often makes things worse. The more you think about something bad, the more likely it is to happen. When you’re hair-trigger primed to notice the first sign of trouble, you’ll surely find something close enough to convince yourself it’s come.
   
3. Ease up on the internal life commentary. If you want to be happy, stop telling yourself you’re miserable. People are always telling themselves how they feel, what they’re thinking, what others feel about them, what this or that event really means. Most of it’s imagination. The rest is equal parts lies and misunderstandings. You have only the most limited understanding of what others feel about you. Usually they’re no better informed on the subject; and they care about it far less than you do. You have no way of knowing what this or that event really means. Whatever you tell yourself will be make-believe.
   
4. Take no notice of your inner critic. Judging yourself is pointless. Judging others is half-witted. Whatever you achieve, someone else will always do better. However bad you are, others are worse. Since you can tell neither what’s best nor what’s worst, how can you place yourself correctly between them? Judging others is foolish since you cannot know all the facts, cannot create a reliable or objective scale, have no means of knowing whether your criteria match anyone else’s, and cannot have more than a limited and extremely partial view of the other person. Who cares about your opinion anyway?
   
5. Give up on feeling guilty. Guilt changes nothing. It may make you feel you’re accepting responsibility, but it can’t produce anything new in your life. If you feel guilty about something you've done, either do something to put it right or accept you screwed up and try not to do so again. Then let it go. If you’re feeling guilty about what someone else did, see a psychiatrist. That’s insane.
   
6. Stop being concerned with what the rest of the world says about you. Nasty people can’t make you mad. Nice people can’t make you happy. Events or people are simply events or people. They can’t make you anything. You have to do that for yourself. Whatever emotions arise in you as a result of external events, they’re powerless until you pick them up and decide to act on them. Besides, most people are far too busy thinking about themselves (and worry what you are are thinking and saying about them) to be concerned about you.
   
7. Stop keeping score. Numbers are just numbers. They don’t have mystical powers. Because something is expressed as a number, a ratio or any other numerical pattern doesn't mean it’s true. Plenty of lovingly calculated business indicators are irrelevant, gibberish, nonsensical, or just plain wrong. If you don’t understand it, or it’s telling you something bizarre, ignore it. There’s nothing scientific about relying on false data. Nor anything useful about charting your life by numbers that were silly in the first place.
   
8. Don’t be concerned that your life and career aren't working out the way you planned. The closer you stick to any plan, the quicker you’ll go wrong. The world changes constantly. However carefully you analyzed the situation when you made the plan, if it’s more than a few days old, things will already be different. After a month, they’ll be very different. After a year, virtually nothing will be the same as it was when you started. Planning is only useful as a discipline to force people to think carefully about what they know and what they don’t. Once you start, throw the plan away and keep your eyes on reality.
   
9. Don’t let others use you to avoid being responsible for their own decisions. To hold yourself responsible for someone else’s success and happiness demeans them and proves you've lost the plot. It’s their life. They have to live it. You can’t do it for them; nor can you stop them from messing it up if they’re determined to do so. The job of a supervisor is to help and supervise. Only control-freaks and some others with a less serious mental disability fail to understand this.
   
10. Don’t worry about about your personality. You don’t really have one. Personality, like ego, is a concept invented by your mind. It doesn't exist in the real world. Personality is a word for the general impression that you give through your words and actions. If your personality isn't likable today, don’t worry. You can always change it, so long as you allow yourself to do so. What fixes someone’s personality in one place is a determined effort on their part-usually through continually telling themselves they’re this or that kind of person and acting on what they say. If you don’t like the way you are, make yourself different. You’re the only person who’s standing in your way.

Adrian Savage is a writer, an Englishman, and a retired business executive, in that order. He lives in Tucson, Arizona. You can read his other articles at Slow Leadership, the site for everyone who wants to build a civilized place to work and bring back the taste, zest and satisfaction to leadership and life, The Creativity Class: a place to discover the best ideas on having the best ideas, and Working Potential, where you’ll learn about great ideas for self-development.

LOST! LOST! LOST!

I love LOST.

Really, I do. But come on! How damn confusing does one stupid show need to be? I'm a notorious multi-tasker. With the Internet, Texas Hold 'em on my Blackberry, scribbling through the Sudoku puzzle book my mom bought me for Christmas, magazines, the daily mail... etc. I'm usually futzing around with one of those other things while I watch TV. But for LOST, I turn off my computer, put my phone out of reach, and I don't even think about what the postman stuffed in my box that day. Hell, I even bought a 47" HDTV which I intently watch, unblinking, fully engaged, scanning for any tiny hint, twitch, or twitter that may be a key or even a skimpy clue to the season's storyline. BUT NOTHING! Just one seemingly unfitting and unrelated jigsaw puzzle piece after the other.

My friend Wayne (who watches irritatingly little TV) is a master jigsaw puzzle uh... player? Not sure of the noun there. He gets jigsaw puzzles as gifts that have a higher piece count than Carter's has pills (I need to come up with a catchy quantity metaphor from this century). We're not talking a puzzle amature here. If there is such a thing as professional jigsaw puzzling, Wayne would kick ass. I know he can whip together the world's largest puzzle (an 18,000 piece mind-scrambling picture of ancient world maps) but if LOST were a jigsaw puzzle, I think it would reduce even my jigsaw puzzle savant friend to a weaping puddle.

In case you think I'm kidding about the insane map jigsaw puzzle I mentioned above, here's the proof. For most of the non-jigsaw-puzzle-savant universe, this cut up cardboard version of waterboarding (which the CIA will neither confirm nor deny "we don't talk about techniques, but we don't torture" -- yeah, right) can be yours for a mere $150. Quite a deal when you consider this one jigsaw puzzle would probably be a lifetime hobby for most humans. In case you're tempted, here's a link to 4 Historic World Maps Worlds Largest Jigsaw Puzzle 18000 pc .

So, back to LOST. Lest you think I'm a lazy viewer, let me tell you the lengths I've gone to trying to figure out this enigma. For one thing, I read through endless opining about the show on the LOST Message Boards at ABC. Like most fans obsessed with something, the LOST fans are no slackers in the energy they expend concocting theories about every jot and tittle of the show. These folks find deep and twisted meaning behind every scene of the show. I myself draw the line at watching even the more convoluted episodes only twice... I'm not nearly versed enough in every second of every episode to participate in the chatter, but it's fun to lurk.

A common tool that writers of these brain-twisting shows use is anagrams. You know, a word or words formed by rearranging the letters of another word. So, in last night's episode, in one of many mind-numbing flashbacks as Ben and his father first arrive on the island there is a sign welcoming them with the word "Namaste." A quick Wikipedia search revealed that the obvious definition of the word is "an Indian greeting or parting phrase as well as a gesture." But I'm not fooled by the obvious so I take this new clue word "Namaste" to an Anagram Generator to find out what this new clue really means!

AH-HA! If you watch the show you know that one of the more popular theories about the plot is that the "survivors" are actually all dead (confirmed by a new arrival to the island last week who said the outside world believes them all dead and that the plane was found at the bottom of the ocean someplace else). The theory is that they are actually in Hell or pergetory or something. If you didn't know that and I just spoiled it for you, sorry.

So, back to the anagram. It's so obvious now! The letters of the word Namaste rearrange into the words "Satan Me." WOW! That must mean something, right? Hell-->Satan Me. Right? OK, OK, so the letters of the word Namaste also rearrange into the words "Santa Me," and "Same Ant," but what the hell would that mean?

Oh, I give up. I guess I'm just going to have to keep watching and hope that the writers aren't sadistic enough to keep digging this hole of confusion until we all give up and tune into CSI NY on Wednesday nights. At least those CSI blood-soaked mysteries are solved at the end of every hour. In the meantime, maybe I'll send away for this jigsaw puzzle and invite Wayne over. Who knows, maybe this is where all the real clues are and at a measly 1000 pieces he should have it knocked out in 10 or 15 minutes.

Season Premier of "Almost Lifelike"!

I know what you're saying... what kind of a guy sets up a big Blog cliffhanger about impending layoff, possible new job, and a big health problem and then doesn't follow-up with regular updates? Well, this kind of person, apparently. Sorry for the extended absence, but just think of how long we had to wait for The Sopranos new season!

It's Spring! The sun has returned to gorgeous Seattle. OK, not so much today, but at least we're out of the deep gloom that was so unusually long this winter. How much am I loving the back yard again! A lot. :-)


So, here is the update I'm sure you've been anxiously awaiting.

I started back to work at Cingular (Now the New AT&T -- as opposed to the old AT&T that I first started working for over 7 years ago, but whatever) in November on the same team and in the same position I left in August. The team was very happy to have me back and after the nightmare of Infospace I was (and continue to be) quite happy to be back.

Don't misunderstand, neither the job nor the company is perfect. But in the grand scheme of things as long as I'm going to work in IT it's nice to be someplace I am knowledgeable, know the teams, and have the confidence of my business partners. Until I can find a nice small business and can unplug from the high-stress tech merry-go-round, this isn't a bad place to be.

So, there's the job taken care of; on to the health update. After some web research on liver function, I decided to try and improve mine with some changes to diet and exercise. My time line for seeing results was 6 months. When I went back in for a checkup I found out that my GP at Evergreen had left abruptly so I started seeing a new doctor. Had a blood workup and went in to review the results with the new doctor. He looked at the current liver function and compared it to my past results and had 2 important observations:
1. The liver function has remained very stable over the past several years. It is not worsening.
2. While the liver function is slightly elevated above "normal." The key word there is "slightly" and is not unusual in obese patients.

Bottom line, slightly above normal is not unusual in patients with a weight history such as mine (been overweight since I was 7 and have been dieting my whole life), AND it's not getting progressively worse which would be the real red flag. Very good news and quite a relief. I also found an herbal remedy that has a long history of improving liver function called Milk Thistle. I've started taking that and will get tested again in a few months to see if it's helping.

Additionally, I've finally gotten over the whole idea of "dieting." PBS aired a fascinating special on obesity a few weeks ago called Fat: What No One Is Telling You that reviewed the latest medical research and presented various individuals dealing with weight issues. You can watch it online here http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/takeonestep/fat/index.html. The bottom line, which should surprise no one, is that calorie restrictive diets do not work. The statistics on the number of dieters who regain all or more of the weight they've lost are devastating.

The advice? Stop dieting. Gradually improve your food choices and move your body more. Sounds ridiculously simple, doesn't it? No potions, powders, or magical machines required to improve your health? Nope. The medical community is finally coming to terms with the reality that genetically -- yes, at a molecular level -- we are all predisposed to a particular body type.

I hear you asking, "if it's genetic then why alter my behavior?" Is weight/health impacted by actions and environment? Of course! First off, dieting is a medically proven way to ensure that you will become an obese adult. On the positive side, just because you don't fall within the insurance company guidelines for healthy weight (which a precious few people actually do), it doesn't mean you can't be healthy! We MUST get over this idea that thinness = health. It simply isn't true and is destroying the health of millions who starve themselves thin only to end up much fatter than they were before they started.

Several startling studies found that overweight adults who had never been on a calorie restricted diet had a better overall health profile than those overweight adults who had been on one or more restrictive diets. Again, diets not only don't help, they do harm.

Well, there's hopefully the start of more consistent blogging. Encouragement may help... :-)