Little Things Mean A Lot

by Susan McBride

I find myself avoiding the evening news these days. I mostly tune in just to see the weather and hear any updates on off-season Blues hockey (hey, they just got a really good defenseman from Sweden who's about 19 and cute as a button!). I'm not even very keen on reading online news. It's like everywhere I look something awful's happening: economies are collapsing, wars are going on, a military coup's taken place, another celebrity has passed away, or a fat-cat financier's going to jail (okay, that last one isn't depressing at all really).

If anything good comes out of our own country's current mess, I hope it's people taking a look at their lives and realizing that little things mean a lot. I remember being in high school when Ralph Lauren was taking off, and we all begged our parents for anything with a tiny Polo man on it. "Greed is good," Gordon Gekko declared, and everyone bought it. Pretty soon, too many folks were living on credit, buying houses, cars, electronics, and other bling they couldn't afford. Right out of college, my sister had five major credit cards all charged to their limits. Meanwhile, post-university, I paid for everything in cash and had a heckuva time getting a Visa until I'd established a credit history. Then again, maybe that was a good thing as I don't rely on credit cards much now.

Don't get me wrong. I like nice things as much as the next gal. But once I was living off my own earnings, it was amazing how much I realized I could do without. What I couldn't pay for with cash, I didn't need. My grandfather had lived by that credo, and I see how right he was. I feel fortunate to have married a man who doesn't need a lot of "stuff" to be happy.

Unfortunately, these days everything that's affordable seems to be made in China. I'm sure tons of folks like me would rather buy "Made in the USA," only it's hard to find. Honestly, I've had enough T-shirts that fall apart at the seams after one wearing to be willing to pay more for something that's domestically produced by skillful adults, not by children in sweat shops. Wouldn't it be lovely if more companies returned from overseas and got the manufacturing biz humming in this country again?

As kids, we didn't care about labels or impressing anyone with status symbols. The simplest things were the most fun, like catching fireflies on a warm summer night; running through the sprinkler in our bathing suits; finding clover and weaving it into a necklace; baking cookies in grandma's kitchen. I'm not sure when the "gotta have it" syndrome sets in or what causes it. Too bad there's not a vaccine to inoculate us against it.

I still think the best things in life are free, like taking walks in the park, chillin' on the porch swing, going to art festivals, holding hands with your honey, or singing your lungs out to Def Leppard. Oh, and how cool is the sound of thunder and rain from a good old-fashioned summer storm (but not the kind that spawns tornadoes or knocks down power lines!)?

I'd like to hear some of the simple things in your lives that you love to do. And, whatever they are, I hope you get to do them plenty over this extended holiday weekend. Happy Fourth of July to everyone!


P.S. Speaking of fun free things: The Book Belles are giving away a tote bag full of signed books. Contest ends July 15 so there's still time!

Coming In for a Landing!

July 1, 2009, was the day of the big office move. I've mentioned before that my day job is with the Oklahoma Department of Mines. I've been there 25 years this month. About 20 of those years were spent in a rural field office. The building was nice when we moved in and after the landlord changed, became steadily less nice over the years. A total lack of maintenance will do that to a structure. Have you seen that television special on one of the science channels about would happen if all humans were gone tomorrow? It uses special photographic effects to show how long it would take for the plants and animals to remove all traces of human occupation. Doesn't really take long. I imagine if the landlord doesn't get a new renter in the next few months, that building will disappear as the plants and animals take it over.

The new office space was a long time coming. There is a standard 3-4 months of red-tape involved in any relocation of a state office. That's if everything goes smoothly and the new building is vacant, meets state building codes, and the price doesn't exceed price per square footage caps. The building we just moved into had to be remodeled before we could move in. The building was gutted, exterior walls removed, exposing the steel bones. The roof was left on, but before the remodel was over, it was replaced. All the plumbing was replaced. And while all that was going on – it rained. It rained for a couple of months straight. My carefully planned move schedule was doomed.

We moved out of our old building on the last working day of May. That's right, May. For the entire month of June, my office has been my car and home. My employees have been working from home and another field office 60 miles away. It was fun for just about two days. Then it was just a hassle. Each day I drove into the town where the new office was, picked up the office mail from the Post Office (we had it forwarded to new address, then held as it became clear we would not have a June 1 move-in date despite the contractor's assurances). After collecting the mail, I would go to the new building and check on the remodel progress. Most days there was very little.

Before leaving the old office we had "surplussed" a lot of our elderly furniture and ordered some new stuff- some matching stuff. Note: a field office usually gets castoff furniture from the main office and the main office gets new furniture. Our field office was no exception. I was using some furniture given to the state from the federal government when they closed an office in the early 1980s. The furniture itself was from the post-WWII era. My desk was big – you could land a plane on it. It was all metal – the heavy stuff – with the soft gummy top that is usually covered with a sheet of glass. My desk didn't come with the glass so you had to be careful with what you set on the surface. A coffee cup ring was permanent if you didn't use a coaster. Anything heavier, you had a permanent indention.

My boss encouraged me to pick out a new desk – of course it was going to be smaller (they stopped making the big ones) but the new office was going to be smaller too. So I agreed. Reluctantly. My old desk is gone. My new desk is still on order. I'm using a computer table as a desk now. Talk about small! By the time I get my new desk – another week maybe – I'll probably be thrilled with the size.

On July 2, we hope not only be in the new office with all our boxes and furniture, but to have internet service. When that happens, maybe the new place will feel like home – so to speak.

There are still about 100 boxes to unpack.

Rhonda
aka The Southern Half of Evelyn David

Too Many Days of Rain

No, this post isn't about the weather. It has been a strange couple of days in the celebrity world in terms of deaths, what with the losses of Ed McMahon (not so surprising at 82), Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and pitchman Billy Mays and I had some thoughts I wanted to share.

I’m finding myself having a hard time getting worked up about the death of Michael Jackson and I’m wondering why that is. Well, deep down inside, I know what it is, but for right now, let’s just leave it alone. I do feel terrible for the surviving family members, and particularly, his children—two of who have their collective future hanging in the balance while their birth mother decides whether or not she wants to be a participating mother as opposed to someone who carried them for nine months and then left shortly thereafter. The whole situation has a decidedly carnival air about it, just as the poor man’s life did. And that leaves me sad, but not with a grief that I can’t overcome, which is how I’m seeing some people depicted on television.

I can’t say that I was surprised by the too early and untimely demise of Michael Jackson at all. Part of me was surprised that it hadn’t happened sooner.

We also, as a media-hungry society, watched as Farrah Fawcett died a slow and painful death from cancer. I felt worse about her passing, maybe because I know the pain of being a cancer patient, or maybe because I related to the fact that despite being perfect looking, she had a less than perfect life marred by the addictions of a grown son who had to visit her in shackles. Although her family and friends claimed that she had no idea that her son was in jail, I think she knew. I think that she was fully aware until the end that her little boy had lived a less than stellar life and was suffering the consequences. Don’t ask me how I know this or why I think this but I think that behind that glorious smile was a pain that only a parent with a dark secret like that can hide.

It was with great sadness that I had to let child #2 know that Billy Mays, champion pitchman, had died. Nothing gives child #2 more joy than the “Mighty-Putty” commercial in which with just a piece of this magic putty, an elephant can pull an eighteen wheeler. Kid begs me—and I mean BEGS me—every time the commercial comes on to buy Mighty Putty, going on to list the innumerable uses it might have in our own home. They are too embarrassing to list but put end to end, amount to a punch list that would probably stretch down our street to the Hudson River below. He was crestfallen when he heard that his hero had died. I think I may actually get the kid some Mighty Putty to alleviate his grief.

Between these celebrity deaths, plane crashes, the fallen troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the pictures of protestors being gunned down in the middle of the streets of Iraqi protesting the election (I hope this gives the non-voting Americans—and you know who you are—pause), I can barely stand to watch the news. You would think that all around us was death. But truly, all around us is life. And that, we should celebrate. Because every day is a gift to be treasured and too often, we treat as something that we are owed.

And so finally, I’d like to remember someone who wasn’t a celebrity, but just a very kind man and someone who our family considered one of a kind. John “Mac” McVeigh died on Friday at the age of 67, of an untimely and massive heart attack. He was my father’s oldest and dearest friend and was someone who could light up a room without sucking all of the oxygen out of it. He once told me when I was very small that “God never gives you more than you can handle” and I remembered those words, even as they were used as mere platitudes throughout the years by lesser men and women to describe situations that didn’t rival the ones he faced. He loved his “Reezie,” his kids, and his grandkids. And he loved his friends and treated them like special gifts bestowed upon him. He told the longest, most meandering stories that you could imagine, but eventually, those stories would come to an end, and you would be richer for having heard them. To say that he will be missed is a massive understatement, but if we can all carry around just a little piece of John’s love of life around with us in our hearts, we will all be just a little bit better. And happier.

Maggie Barbieri