yuri milner in the role as genius.

Had a borderline boondoggle work trip last week. God it was fun. A soulcation. Can I coin that word, or maybe I need to Google it and see if I'm late to the party on that one too? Hmmm...just did. Seems it is being used, but with a hyphen: "soul-cation." As if we wouldn't be able to get it without the hyphen. Speaking of things that I don't get, here are some things that I think are kind of ridiculous right now. Definitely no order to this, outside of what comes to my head first, which maybe does mean that it has some sort of ranking. Although once I thought of #4, that one quickly moved to the top. Maybe this blog is ridiculous. Maggie reads it, but I think she's the only one. She doesn't even have time to read it so I am further perplexed. Hi Maggie. I love you. Ok, back to The List:

1. Getting your degree in your pajamas: earnyourdegreeinpjs.com

2. Airlines charging for checked baggage.

3. Typing in ALL CAPS (unless you MUST make a point.)

4. Over-hyphenating.

5. Overusing the word boondoggle, like I did on Twitter, Facebook and on a photo I posted on Facebook. Oh...and on here.

6. Updating your status in four different places.

7. Having a status.

8. Talking about myself and how I am doing.

9. Animated emoticons. I'm 37.

10. Paying, almost every day, an extra 50 cents for a soy latté. The margins are already RIDICULOUS (see number 3.)

11. John Mayer.

12. NBC's coverage of the Vancouver Olympics.

13. The fact that I leave Facebook open all day long because it's my best news source.

14. Making fun of Farmville and Mafia Wars. Yuri Milner is a genius.

15. Obamunism. The word. The T shirts. The bumper stickers.

16. My to-do list which cannot be reconciled with my schedule.

17. The fact that I really didn't know how dire the situation in the Congo has become.

18. The fact that the Congo and John Mayer are on the same list.

Ugh. I just re-read these and as usual, this all has a "late-to-the-party" feel (over-hyphenation and overuse of quotes to boot). I need to go. Someone just sent me a grouper for Fishville.

one million moments.

I had a tough conversation the other day. A good friend of mine is in that place where you know your marriage is falling apart and all you can think about are the moments with your child that you will miss if you get divorced. It's a horrible, dark place. If you think this blog entry will be about trying to keep it together to save those moments, it's not. However, I'm not really going to say the opposite either - some people say that staying, if it's just for the kids, is not the right thing either. I am separated from my husband, so when talking to my friend, I literally sobbed. I cried because there is no easy answer and maybe there's no answer, period, and my heart ached for my friend. I like to see progress, I like to work towards a solution and I like to see resolution and compromise. Maybe there are elements to all of that in these situations, but there is no right or wrong answer and it kills me. It's hard for me to wrap my brain and heart around the incredible complexity of these emotions. My dot's father and I love her dearly. I'm ridiculously over-the-moon about her, so I guess I hope that we will take that crazy love and give her a stable, loving foundation no matter what house or where she is in her life. That is the priority, no question. It will be about and for her. But can that be enough for me? How will I reconcile, or what do I do with the lost moments? I will say that it does get easier, and in the moments that we have together I'm a bit more awake and focused because I know they have to count. Maybe that's the hidden blessing in it all. If so, then my next goal is to be sure that I work to sustain that focus and give her and I those moments where I am really present as her mother, really listening to her, really enjoying and engaging in our relationship. My friend, in despair, said we may have one million moments, but we won't have two million. This is true and it's heart-breaking, but I think after all of this reflection, I am going to take my one million moments and make them count like maybe they didn't before. It's all I can do but I hope and believe it will be enough.

catching a ride.

I loved Bode Miller's quote today, a day after he won the bronze medal in the Vancouver Olympics by the equivalent of three hummingbird wing flaps, or approximately 21 inches. He said, (and give me a little latitude here, it's from memory) "I could have come in fourth and I would have felt just as good." There's so much hype around how close the race was, the fact that he is now the most decorated American male alpine skier, and four years of distance from his wildly laissez-faire Torino appearance, so I am thinking that for once he will be given a hall pass. NBC even charitably said he could "be called many things but he's definitely his own person." NOW it's ok to be your own person? I can just hear the tsk tsk tsk'ing of all the sports writers who, rightfully so, might give me a laundry list of reasons why he's deserved some, if not all, of the negative press. But I am in this place where I want to learn from things that are in my global thinking space and I want to learn something from Bode Miller.

I grew up in a small town. Not Twin Peaks small, more like Davenport, IA small. By the early-80's the demographic had started to change, mostly due to the largely agricultural economic base, and the Hispanic population exploded. Many things about that shift shaped who I am today and it started, of course, by a fast lesson from my mother. I have told so many people this story, so if you are one of them, you can stop reading now. If you are still with me, here goes:

One weekend afternoon, driving with my mother, I casually pointed and laughed at the car next to us stopped at the same traffic light. Low-profile Chevy Monte Carlo, maroon in color, spit-shined and gleaming, maroon brushed velvet seats, spotless silver rims, and neatly trimming the interior of the front and rear windows were, what we called then, dingle berries. Those little decorative cotton balls strung from a line of lace, usually found on the bottom of an apron. I was maybe 13. Laughing and thinking that I knew that decorating your car in such a way was open season for you to be mocked. In my memory, my mom reached across the front of me, opened my door and shoved me out of the car. This isn't what happened. I know this because she's too short to really have that kind of reach (we were also in a Monte Carlo with a massive bench front seat), but she did pull the car over to the side of the road and she did give me a piece of her mind and she did make me get out of the car. She will say this didn't happen, but it did. (She will only say it didn't happen because she won't believe she left me on a street corner to teach me a lesson, but I say: Embrace it! You did it! It worked!)

The piece of her mind that I got was incredibly basic. She asked me if I knew why they decorated their car. Of course I didn't, I just knew we were supposed to think it was funny, and it kind of was, wasn't it? All she said was that they decorated the car because they were proud of it. That's how they did things in their culture. Those were their values. If I thought it was so funny, why don't I get out and walk home? Maybe I didn't need the luxury of a car ride if I thought it was so damn funny. Lesson completed and effective: try to understand someone else's point of view. Period.

Yesterday, Bode Miller was feeling good, motivated and went for it. He came up with a medal and is thus considered one of the best in the world. But Bode would have been fine with 4th place because he wasn't living in our heads, he was living in his. We only get to hear his perspective because he got 3rd, but I heard it and learned something from it. However, I can't end this entry by pretending that I am not, on a daily basis, still putting my foot in my mouth, or judging people unfairly, or forgetting how to practice intellectual humility, whatever that is. But I will say that I am trying to be the type of person that remembers what it felt like to be left alone on a street corner with a lesson swirling in my head. I would have appreciated and loved a ride in that decorated car. Period.

making the time count.

It drives me crazy, but kids these days (yep, that just happened, I said "kids these days") are losing some of the fundamentals. Like telling time from looking at a clock face or counting change. It's cliché to blame it on technology, but that is of course, the truth. I read an opinion piece awhile back claiming that some of these things are like the chalkboard, at one time arguably a piece of technology (by definition), and "so what" if we evolve past that? Why do kids need to be able to tell time on a clock face when the future is digital, period? We are not still trying to start fires in our kitchens to cook dinner, are we? I have no credibility on this issue, but I believe it fundamentally changes how our brain operates and it worries me.

For me, it's about problem-solving. Understanding the genesis of something. Having more than one way to ask and answer a question. If your iPhone craps out on you (which my Palm Pré did the other night and I about lost my marbles) how will you possibly know what time it is? Of course living in civilization would point you to your friend's iPhone and thus, problem solved. But what if you were, say, in the mountains and you needed to get your bearings on how much time you had to hike out? The clock face was based on the sun dial, the shadows that are created at various times of daylight. I know, I know - basic background. Useless today? I don't think so. I wonder...are we giving our kids the depth of information they need for them to develop strategies to solve problems?

Problem-solving is an intuitive and thoughtful process, isn't it? We either do it at lightening speed for easy issues, or go through a longer process for tougher ones. Intuition is partially based on experience and partially on free- thinking, both help to develop natural triggers. To be thoughtful, you have to have a basis of something to think about, ie: information. Anyway you look at it, the more we know and the more we think about something, the better prepared we are to see all alternatives and create a strategy to work through it.

So believing all of that, how do we reconcile the influence of rapid technology and the loss of some fundamentals? Chuck Klosterman, in his book Eating the Dinosaur, lays out a fascinating look at the Unabomber, Ted Kaczinsky and his manifesto Industrial Society and Its Future. Fundamentally I think Klosterman's big idea in this essay is that we have lost our ability to be free (think "pure" not "political") thinkers because of the physical presence of technology and therefore the constant influx of messaging (from the media, friends, whatever). In other words, I think he's saying that we've lost the ability to think free-form. We no longer have the space, time or, to his point, lack of constant messaging from the technology in our lives in order to think more for and of ourselves. I think this is a sound argument and in my mind adds further fuel to the fire - loss of fundamentals plus influence and general "noise" of technology...where does that leave our kids and their problem-solving skills?

As I am known to do, when I am flummoxed, I think of what my mother is likely to say. I think I will ask her, but I am pretty sure she will say, "keep it simple stupid (k.i.s.s.)" Here I am blogging and filling the space with more noise. Email and the internet are my professional life lines. My cell phone, iTunes, facebook, Outlook calendar - all of it seemingly indispensable. I'm certainly not about to Kaczinsky-it and live out the remainder of my existence in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, so how can I "keep it simple, stupid?" How can I help my dot develop the fundamentals, think free-form, and develop stronger strategic and problem-solving thinking?

This question is being debated by people far smarter than me, in far more depth than I could ever imagine or absorb, but I need to parent now, real-time. So, I am going to employ the k.i.s.s. advice: I am going to start by shutting things off now and then, and asking my dot what time it is.

drinking the cool aid

I think today I am going to spend some time researching what happens to your brain above 5,000 feet. Or rather, at what elevation do you have to be at in order for euphoria to naturally set in? Maybe it's lower? Higher? Do people in Denver have a better quality of life than I do here at sea level simply because they are a little elevation-drugged?

I want some more of that drug. I have a love affair with the mountains, but not in the rain forest, black bear, snow-camping kind of way. I love the high-desert, thin-foliage, low-brush kind of mountains. Deep reddish brown soil, jutting rocks worn by ancient rivers. I am romanced by aspen trees, especially in the summer, riverside as the small round leaves twirl in the breeze. I like standing on a ridge and seeing a meadow laid out in front of me bursting with wildflowers. Again, I think this is the "elevation drug" speaking...I think.

I have not spent enough time taking the drug. Every time I get a taste of it, I am genuinely exasperated that I don't spend more of my life taking it all in. However, I am like the rest of us who don't live in Denver. Spending entire days in a desk chair, working to create the opportunity to get back up/out there. Last weekend, I was lucky enough to be skiing with my sixth grade dot, basking in the sun, happy and drugged. She drank the cool aid too and I nearly shed a tear when she said, on more than one occasion, "I'm so happy!" Those of us immersed in life with a tween know that this is a big exclamation. Her dad and I have separated after fifteen years together and the mountain drug was necessary and so good, for both of us.

This love affair and drug addiction aside, I am not one of those people who is especially adept or equipped to spend all of this time outdoors. I am a mediocre skier, would rather wear my tank top and tevas than real hiking boots, and like mountain biking on lovely, wide trails (aka - low impact/injury). However, I have always followed my mother's lead: get out there no matter what. She is NOT a skier, hiker or biker but when I was young, she did it all..for me. She was even worse than I was at all of it. One time on the slopes, she was bowled over at the bottom of the bunny hill by an out of control skier - - - who happened to have been my father. That was it. Ski bus was next (and a divorce as well, but that's another blog entry). We rode road bikes nearly every Sunday and my mother wore rubber bands around the bottom of her jeans so they wouldn't get stuck in the chains. (Yes, I said "road biking" and "jeans" in the same sentence.) With the purchase of our first four-wheel drive car, she could finally say goodbye to the dusty hikes, but still hello to the fields of wildflowers, and our car picnics on the top of windy ridges are still embedded in my brain. I like to imagine that she was chanting, "get the kid the cool aid!" to motivate her more indoor-inclined self to get out there. Largely due to her efforts, I have improved on her skill level in all of those areas, and in turn, my dot will be even more adept and skilled than me. This is as it should be.

Now that I am alone and cannot rely on her father to jump on the bike, I am trying to remember my mother's lesson. I will have to remind myself what it feels like to be outdoors, to be on the bike, to have that head-clearing clarity, that moment of endorphin or fresh-air-fueled bliss and make sure my dot has plenty of it in her life. I want that kid to drink the cool aid. She deserves it.