Beyond Words

What the heck is right?!   R u either guilty of sending or tired of getting txts from ppl who don’t spell out words?  I am definitely in the first group, and I m starting to worry!  U c, txting has pretty much taken ovr our society and, as stylish and pretty the woman looks in the above pic, a lot of chilling and ugly effects are resulting from this somewhat dominant social trend.

Perhaps first and foremost is the fact that “Generation Text” is lagging in grammar and spelling skills.  Yes, it’s official and not just a “they say” thing anymore.  A new study by Penn State University revealed that so-called “techspeak” is eroding users’ basic grammar foundations.  In fact, the more kids (ages 13-to-17 were used in the study) send and receive texts, the worse their grammar skills become.  Findings were so alarming that this age group is systematically being robbed of a fundamental understanding of English grammar.  For many of them, abbreviated words and entire sentences have become, well, words and entire sentences! 

Although I often text and sometimes even abbreviate, thankfully I don’t need to worry about losing my grasp of English.  Apparently adults not raised on text-friendly abbreviations are able to switch more readily from formal spelling to informal texting.  Sadly, kids today are not.  Computer spell-check programs certainly don’t help the problem. 

Face-to-phone communication is also severely eroding another essential element of a unified society:  the ability to converse in person. 

Eating dinner recently with my friend Ann I was shocked to hear her story about this sad truth.  In a nutshell, she was on a boat with friends and their college-aged kids.  One of them was constantly texting away.  They pulled up to get gas for the boat and Ann noticed an adorable girl at the pump meekly wave to her friend’s son; the texter.  When Ann asked him who the cute girl was, he said, “oh she’s the one I’ve been texting.”  WTH??????   So you can text for minutes and hours on end, but when it comes time to actually talking, both parties shy away?  Something is wrong with this non-Instagrammed picture and it’s affecting how our world conducts business.

It is no longer essential for sales reps to call on clients; they just simply text or email them.  Public speaking used to be an art, now it’s somewhat gone the way of conference calls and webcasts.  What’s most alarming is that those who this applies to the most are the very ones who comprise our developing work force.  They might be able to develop the technology to send a text but will they be able to explain it to the masses face-to-face?  It just might be those same text-aholics who complain some day that they were let go…via a text.  Careful what you ask for; careful what you ask for.  It is indeed a sad, sad day when making a phone call is someone’s third choice of contacting someone.

Remember the days when the home phone would ring and family members would scream, “I’ll get it!”  Today, if that home even has a landline, those same people ask “who is it?” (meaning check Caller ID before even thinking of picking it up), or “let it go.”  Most kids today don’t even know what a “landline” is.  They all, it seems, have cell phones.  A recent study by Mediamark found that in 2009, 80.5 percent of kids between 10-and-11-years-old had a cell phone; up from 36 percent in 2005.  What, pray tell, do that many 10-year-olds need a cell phone for?  Safety is the number one reason parents state, followed by keeping track of them during afterschool and social activities. 

I’ve never been a big phone-talker but my husband is – or was.  Up until maybe just a year ago, he was the first one to complain that “no one ever picks up the phone” and rarely, if ever, texted.  But, today you’ll find him doing just that.  Constantly.  Maybe it’s his Blackberry.  Maybe it’s inescapable.  I think it’s both.

One thing he is not doing…yet…is Tweeting.  If you asked him, he’d probably say it has something to do with birds, not a technological wonder that is picking up where texting hasn’t left off.  Tweets are now even more popular than Facebook status updates among college students.  They “follow” each other.  They “follow” famous people.  And, they follow Twitter’s strict 140-character limit per tweet.  To cram their thoughts into tweets, tweeters turn “with” into “w/” and “love” becomes “luv.”  They also omit “needless” words like “a,” “the,” and pronouns.  Rarely, if ever, do they use the word “I.”  Not only do grammar and spelling take a hit, so does punctuation, as Twitter counts double spaces between words so the ends of sentences often have only one space.  Ugh!!!!

I will admit I truly appreciate the advantage and convenience of texting.  Just last night I was out with three girlfriends of mine and we all guiltily chuckled as, in one fell swoop, we were all either texting or posting.  It’s how everyone communicates.  It’s how we do business.  I know it’s also the most certain method of getting a reply from my daughter. Here she is in an art museum we recently visited:

An ART MUSEUM mind you!  Monet is rolling over in his grave.

There are, however, instances when you are somewhere and you just can’t pick up or place a call, so a text can be an effective way to communicate.  And, I will admit that I’m most guilty of texting when all I really want is a quick comment or answer from someone rather than a long, drawn-out conversation.

I know texting is not going away and I don’t have any magic solutions.  So for now all I can suggest is spell out your words, pick up the phone every so often, call a friend or colleague, and NEVER TEXT AND DRIVE.   TTYL or maybe evn tmrw.  <3. 

…and Steinbeck, and Michener, and Scottoline, and even Sparks.

I recently saw this and, in honor of the Olympics, thought it was fitting for today!

Heaven is where…

            The police are British

            The chefs are Italian

            The mechanics are German

            The lovers are French

            And it’s all organized by the Swiss

Hell is where…

            The police are German

            The chefs are British

            The mechanics are French

            The lovers are Swiss

            And it’s all organized by the Italians

What role would the Americans play in both?!

 Have you ever heard that someone has an “exquisite palate?”  Sounds awesome but what exactly does that mean and how can you acquire one? 

According to “Bon Appetit” magazine, when it comes to professional chefs, a “great palate” is the ability to create or refine dishes simply by instinct.

For professional eaters like the rest of us, or for those who just love food, it means the ability to identify flavors, ingredients, and even cooking techniques in a particular dish. 

Happy eating!

“Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what.  If you don’t listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won’t tell you the big stuff when they are big.  To them, all of it has always been big stuff.”  Catherine M. Wallace

Filling My Nest

Empty Nest.  Two simple words that bring about a sense of trepidation or a spirit of triumph.  For me, it is a little of both.

Just this week my husband and I dropped off our daughter Kristen back at college for her sophomore year.  I thought maybe this time it would be easier than last year, but no such luck.  It pained us not being able to give her a hug and kiss goodbye before we left because she’s in sorority work week “lock down,” and I cried the minute I walked in the house and saw her pile of dirty clothes.  I miss her already.  Who am I going to get pedis with?  Who will I watch late night TV with?  Who will I laugh with?  Who, am I?

I think part of the pain is that I feel I only had her home for a very short time.  I was so excited for her come home for the summer and then, poof, she was gone again.  Last year I’d had her home for 18 years prior.  This year it seemed like 18 hours.  On top of that, for the first time in my life, I feel like maybe I need her now more than she needs me.  Ouch.

Kristen is literally living her dream:  attending her “dream” school and my alma mater Oklahoma, and loving life.  She is thriving, happy, and calls me almost every day.  I’ve also learned to Skype!  Our only daughter is doing what my husband and I hoped she would:  go to college, learn and grow, meet new people, and become a successful contributor to society and the world as a whole.  You’d think I’d be jumping  for joy.  In a sense, I am, but still my heart aches.

It seems like just yesterday a friend told me “hang on tight because high school flies by,” as Kristen trotted of to high school.  I thought to myself, “how can it fly by…it’s FOUR years?!”  Well, I’m here to tell you, they not only flew by, they flew at lightning speed, as did her first year of college!  

As many before me know, sending your baby off to college isn’t easy.  Satisfying, yes.  Easy, no.  Oh, some say they couldn’t wait to do “me” things and have “couple time,” but in their heart of hearts they have to admit those very hearts, just like mine, hurt even if ever so slightly.   

I distinctly remember Kristen dancing to the “Monday Night Football” theme song at 3, jumping horses at 9, and becoming her school’s sports director at 17.  She grew into my buddy and now she’s grown into a young lady who is at a familiar yet far away place meeting friends I don’t know and going to places it seems like just yesterday I was frequenting.   The house is quiet.  Her friends aren’t coming and going, playing loud music, and invading my pantry.  The house, feels empty

There is a silver lining though.  I don’t cringe every time I hear a siren and am not up at midnight waiting for the front door to open.  Instead of my calendar having her activities and dates penciled  in, my days are filled with my life!  I get to set new priorities.  I reflect on my past and my future.  It’s both bittersweet and liberating.  It is a chance to, in a sense, start anew, even though I loved what I was doing before.  I now have time to attempt and accomplish things I haven’t.   This blog is something I’ve thought about trying for a long time, and now I’m doing it!  Yay me!!!!  I’m also volunteering and reading more.  My husband and I immediately took advantage of little couple get-aways last fall, something I hope we continue to do this time around. 

 Empty Nesting, I’ve discovered, can be anything but empty. To the contrary, it can actually be quite full.  Full of fun.  Full of friendships.  Full of memories.  Full of dreams.  This Empty Nester has big plans for the coming months.  Grow and expand my blog?  Yep!  Annual college friends reunion trip?  Of course!    Gun lessons?  You betcha!.  Hold a plank for 3 minutes and lose weight?  Most definitely.  Take horseback riding lessons?  Giddy up!  Just don’t ask me to watch “Toy Story 3,” which Kristen gave me for Mother’s Day right before she went off to OU, “Gilmore Girls,” or “Little Bear!”  I might be newly motivated but I’m still highly emotional.   As John Schaar once said, “the future is not some place we are going, but one we are creating.”  My nest may feel empty but my life runneth over with opportunity.

Right before Kristen left for college, my friend Jeannie gave me the book “Beyond the Mommy Years.”  I love baths, I love wine, and I love rubber duckies so it spoke to me before I ever opened it or read a word. 

In the book, which I enjoyed and recommend, author Carin Rubenstein writes candidly about “filling the void” once your nest is empty.  It’s all about learning how to fill both your time and your hearts.  Research has shown that American moms spend 107 minutes a day caring for children, so it should come as no surprise that Rubenstein reports 1 in 10 moms feel a lingering sense of grief when their children move out.  It’s natural.  It’s normal.  Moms just instinctively put their children first and once those children leave the nest, momma bird sometimes doesn’t quite know how to fly on her own.  We miss their hugs.  We miss their messes.  We miss them next to us in the car.  We even miss not grocery shopping for them…something that brought tears to my eyes the first time I attempted it. 

One of Rubenstein’s friends detests the phrase “empty nest” because it sounds too much like “emptiness.”  Things do seem empty though; there’s no denying it.  But, as Rubenstein writes, we need to remember that our time with our children is borrowed time.  We will know our kids longer as adults than we will as kids.  It’s time to give them those wings (and the responsibilities that go with them!) and learn to be a different kind of mom:  the mom of an adult child.  Rubenstein reminds us that it’s a blessing to have children who can leave home and that we should be grateful and proud. 

I am extremely grateful and extremely proud of Kristen.  She is beginning  her new life; a life I pray is filled with joy, health, success, love, and friendship.   As she learns to fly on her own, I leave her with Christopher Robin’s famous words to Winnie the Pooh:  “Promise me you’ll always remember you’re braver than you believe and stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.”

“The hardest math to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.”   Eric Hoffer

Actually, I’m really good at counting my blessings; it’s the math part that’s tough for me.  Always has, always will.  This, somewhat confuses me.  Literally and figuratively.  You see, I have forever loved reading, writing and anything to do with words.  (Maybe that’s why I married a Smith – so I could be a wordsmith!)   So, by looking at the chart below, this would make me a left brain thinker.

Yes, I use logic, I’m detail-oriented, love facts, am nostalgic, prefer order, am realistic and practical, and I’m not a risk taker.  Why then, am I so bad with numbers???  It just doesn’t seem fair.  Am I alone in this quandary?  Are you great with either words or numbers, but not both?

And by bad, I’m mean very bad.   I remember always struggling with math and most sciences.  Once I had to learn how to divide two digit divisors, I was lost.  Forever.  Geometry is probably the only math that made any sense to me, maybe because I could see how I might apply it in the “real world” someday.  Algebra?  Forget it.  I might as well have tried to learn Russian…speaking, writing, and a whole new alphabet!  Trig?  No way, Jose.  Science was a little more bearable for me.  My favorite high school teacher was Mr. Muir, who taught Biology.  I didn’t love the course subject matter per se (dissecting frogs?  Eeeewww!!!!) But, I enjoyed the class as a whole.  I also really liked the Astronomy course I took my first year of college.  But Chemistry?  Ugh!  It’s the perfect yet terrifying storm of science and math!

Speaking of college, my Journalism major meant I only had to take one Business class, i.e.:  a math and number class.  Back then we were allowed to take one “Pass/Fail” course so I, of course, chose to use that golden ticket on my “Personal Finance” class.  Other than the fact that I had a famous OU football player in class with me, the course will forever be lodged in my left brain knowing section because I would have gotten a B.  To this day I still languish over the fact that my official college transcript could have had a B in a Business class! 

Yep, that was me and sadly, my daughter Kristen has inherited my lack of number knowledge.  I felt so bad for her growing up because she had a mom who couldn’t help her with the simplest of homework assignments.  As a matter of fact, I was totally lost once she got to around third or fourth grade.  From there on it was either “ask dad” or hire a tutor.  I remember when we had to buy her her first $100 calculator for Algebra – I panicked just looking at it.  There’s no way I would know how to even start using it!  I don’t even like calculators!

If I’m in charge of tipping, you can bet that person is going to get either 20% (if he or she is good or very good) or maybe a tad more then 10 percent if the service is bad, as figuring out 15 percent of anything just doesn’t happen in my brain.  Decimals?  Can’t help you.   And Pi?  If it’s not pumpkin or apple, I’m lost.  Who knew it’s really a mathematical constant  that is the ratio  of a circle’s circumference  to its diameter?   Whaaaat?  There’s even a Pi Day, the unofficial holiday commemorating the mathematical constant.  Pi Day is observed on March 14  (or 3/14) since 3, 1 and 4 are the three most significant digits of π in the decimal form.  Here’s how I like to remember that: 

What confuses me even more about the “Left Brain/Right Brain” so-called logic is that I’m very emotional or “feeling,” and philosophy and religion are very important to me.  I’m also slightly creative yet not at all artistic.  I guess things aren’t always black and white and easily analyzed and rationalized.

What about you?  Do you have both right and left brain functions and sometimes wonder how you function with them?  What “other side of the brain” trait do you wish you had? 

I’ll take my love of words and lack of number sense and be happy.   I may be schizophrenic but at least I have each other.

It is believed that the phrase “Do not be afraid” can be found 365 times in the Bible.  That’s one for every day, meaning we should live everyday fearless and in total trust.

“Sport is friendship.  Sport is health.  Sport is education.  Sport is life.  Sport brings the world together.”

— Juan Antonio Samaranch, 1996 Olympics

I had no plans to do a blog on the Olympics, but after watching last night’s Opening Ceremonies I just couldn’t resist.  I’m a sucker for the games.  It would be a dream to cover them as a journalist.  Guess I need to study Journalism at PennState like my daughter’s high school buddy who is doing just that…as a student!  How awesome!

So, what did you think about London’s Opening Ceremonies?  I’ve heard grumbling about them in comparison to China’s most recent games but I actually kind of liked the historical and somewhat low-key tone of them.  HRH the Queen as a “Bond Girl” was brilliant, but can she not smile, ever?  I know there’s been controversy over the U.S.A. team’s outfits being made in China, but personally, I think the debate should be that they were pretty dreadful style-wise!  I loved Sweden’s festive yellow and blue uniforms and fittingly, Bermuda’s Bermuda shorts. 

What I really loved about the Opening Ceremonies was the prominent role children had and in watching Muhammad Ali’s wife tell him “grab the flag” and “wave” as the legend tried his hardest to take part in it all.  Seeing basketball superstars Kobe and LeBron videotaping it all on their phones as they walked in was also memorable, if for no other reason even American multimillionaire icons consider the games special.   I also loved the “honor guard” of Olympic site construction workers as the torch entered the stadium.  The torch itself was unique and impressive, but I still think the best torch lighting ever was Barcelona’s shooting of the arrow in 1992.  Who can also ever forget that Spanish city’s diving venue?  I have a feeling neither of those will ever be topped.  It’s like trying to top Al Michael’s famous “Do you believe in miracles?”

I remember that amazing Lake Placid event, and I have lots of Olympic memories in my memory bank.  I actually remember Nadia’s “Perfect 10” in Montreal and I had posters of Mark Spitz with all his medals hanging in my room.  What memories do you have?   Do you have favorite Olympic sports and/or athletes?  I like all of the sports, but I particularly enjoy women’s gymnastics.  Cathy Rigby; Nadia; Mary Lou; Kerri Strug and Shannon Miller and the entire 1996 gold medal winning “Magnificent Seven; and most recently, gold medalists Carly Patterson and Nastia Liukin.  I love them all. 

I even remember famous Soviet gymnasts like Olga Korbut, Svetlana Khorkina and Svetlana Boginskaya.  I will admit that I’m happy with today’s political state of affairs in the world, but the Olympics have never felt quite the same without the former Soviet bloc teams. I respected Soviet gymnasts and East German swimmers, but boy did I want the U.S.A. to beat them!  It’s just not the same rooting against Japanese gymnasts and Australian swimmers.

As always, I think Bob Costas did an outstanding job last night.  Ditto for Matt Lauer.  I thought they were both entertaining and informative.  Who knew Denmark was extremely competitive in table tennis and that the country of Tuvalu sold its tv.com domain to a California company for millions?!  Who even knew there was a country called Tuvalu?! 

Maybe my friend Jane’s son does now, as he had a giant world map out last night and found every country on it as the teams entered the stadium.  What a bright idea!   He might also know that Nicaragua is Central America’s largest country, even though I didn’t despite the fact one of my dearest friends is from there!

What an honor it must be to represent your country – small countries like Liechtenstein, war-torn nations like Syria, and the home team Brits.  And what about the women of Saudi Arabia?  This is the first Olympics ever that women will be competing for that  Arabian kingdom.  Speaking of women, 2012 marks the first time there are more women than men on the U.S. team.  You go girls! 

There’s nothing like the Olympics and there’s nothing like rooting for the red, white and blue home team.  Who doesn’t get misty-eyed watching the stars and stripes rise as the National Anthem is played for one of our treasured gold medal winners?  There are also others worth cheering on, like the South African runner with prosthetic legs, athletes who are their nation’s sole representative, and any nation that has never won an Olympic medal.  The thrill of victory is always matched by the agony of defeat though.  I’ve always said the two loneliest people in the world just might high school freshmen boys and anyone who finishes fourth in the Olympics.

Let those games begin and let’s root for everyone.  Let’s hope for faster, higher, and stronger.  For us.  For the world.

Mount Rushmore from the Canadian side!  😉

I found this amazing.  Hope you do too!