I could make this blog entry really short. Meetings suck. But then I wouldn't get to use any humor, sarcasm, pontification or run-on sentences. What's the fun in that? So instead I will list my pet peeves when it comes to said subject.
Now before you get all wonky on me and ask me what, as a SAHM, I could possibly have to complain about when it comes to meetings, pipe down over there Tito. I'm Michael Jackson in this blog, and you're Tito, and I don't need to rattle off my resume of current pro bono positions that require me to go to more meetings each week than I care to even think about. So grab an agenda and go sit in the corner with LaToya.
Meetings for the Sake of Having a Meeting
This is the one where there are no clear cut agenda, objectives, outcomes or point for anyone to have gone through four rounds of "Evening Kid Activities Logistics" with your spouse in order to attend it.
Meetings Where the Materials are Read to You Point by Point
Uhhhhhh, I've been reading since I was five. Save some trees and my time, and just email me this stuff. If you want to also email me a follow up pop quiz, bring it on son!
"Breakfast", "Lunch" and "Dinner" Meetings
If you are trying to get me to come to your meeting by luring me with a meal, lemme break it down for you:
-Breakfast: Y'all had best be serving some hot food. Cantaloupe and some mini-muffins that are so dry they turn into an inedible mass of crumbs when I try and bite into one is NOT breakfast. And REAL 1/2 and 1/2 for the coffee, people. You don't put powdered gas treatment in your car to make it run more efficiently. I'm not putting any powdered crap in my coffee either for the same reason.
-Lunch: I have been to "lunch" meetings where I am given the same amount of food that I pack in my seven-year-old's lunch box. While I am not a big gal, I do appreciate enough food to keep my stomach full at least for the duration of the meeting.
Dinner: If it resembles anything that is part of the meal service on an airplane, rethink the budget and the caterer next time. Nuff said.
Endless Q&A Sessions in Meetings
I get it. You lead a meeting, some people are going to have a follow up question or two. By all means, let them ask. I said one or two. If someone goes beyond two, I'm likely to "accidently" kick her/him under the table with the pointy toe of my stiletto as I uncross my legs. Being the good Christian that I am, I will assist them out of the meeting and to their car so they can hurry on home and get some ice on that bump, and I will be praying for swift healing for them in the name of Jesus, and BUH-bye now!
And like with the presidential debates, set a time limit on the A. If you can't sufficiently answer someone's question in a minute or two, do some research and follow up with an email. And if you send the answer to everyone on the meeting roster, for heaven's sake, blind copy it. Otherwise the Q person will "reply all" with ANOTHER question, and now the meeting has spilled over into my inbox and has no end point.
-Loooooooooooooong Meetings
Sweet Mary and Joseph, no meeting should ever last longer than two hours. And you had better have some good stuff in that agenda packet if you are going longer than ninety minutes. Like some covers from "Men's Health" magazine interspersed throughout or a couple of crosswords and a "doodle" page. Some meetings you can get away with playing on your phone, but others you can't, and it would be nice to have something as an incentive to stay awake.
So if I come to your meeting, I promise I will be a good girl and pay attention if you adhere to the guidelines above. And I practice what I preach with the meetings I lead. Short, sweet, informative and punctuated with humor are my main objectives. And oftentimes, followed up with post-meeting "debriefings" on the patio of a local restaurant with daily drink specials. So thanks for letting me air my meeting grievances, and I hereby declare this meeting adjourned!
Sparkly Kisses,
D
Friday, May 10, 2013
Saturday, May 4, 2013
My Thoughts on: Cleaning My House
If you're the type of person who gets out of bed on Saturday morning, and your top priorities have nothing to do with a trip to the john and starting the coffeemaker, but instead of cleaning both of those, this blog entry is most certainly not for you. If cleaning for you is more of a "have to" and not a "get to", read on my friend.
Before we talk about my current stance on housecleaning, let me first take you on a short journey first through my childhood of the 70's and 80's and my twenty-something years in the 90's. I grew up with a chore list. Started when I was five, and every year, a chore was added. Now this was not stuff we got paid for or earned allowance for. This was a "you do this because you live here" type-deal. I dusted, vacuumed, cleaned bathrooms, washed floors, and a lot of other stuff that would leave some of you pampered children picturing a mini-me in a red curly wig singing "It's a Hard Knocks Life". Suffice it to say that by age 10, I could argue the use of Comet vs. Bon Ami with any housewife.
Moving along to my 20's. I got my first apartment in 1991, and I was all about keeping it spotless. Immaculate. Not a cobweb in the corner or dust bunny under the couch. My Saturday morning routine without fail was to clean my place from top to bottom, stem to stern. Whatever that means. I think it has something to do with boats. I grew up and live in Kansas, so the only experience I have as a boat captain is a part-time one as I'm driving it across the lake back to the dock, while holding the red Solo cup of the full-time captain we are boating with who has had to much to drink.
So from 1977-2002 (that's 25 years for those of you who get all confused counting years that span two centuries), I was all about getting behind a thorough cleaning of the house each and every week. Then in 2002, something happened that took that particular crazy train right off the rails. I became a mom. Nothing throws every routine you ever had completely out of whack like having a baby.
Oh, you used to clean the bathtub every day while you were in the shower? Yeah, well now you have 120 seconds to get in the shower and attempt to cleanse yourself before the baby takes the "Where's my mom?" whimper to a full-on "If someone doesn't pick me up RIGHT NOW, the neighbors are going to call Child Protective Services" scream. Aww, you used to have trouble going to sleep at night unless every dish in the sink was washed, dried and put away? Yeah, well now your husband has to pull your face out of your dinner plate because your sleep-deprived self passed out in it fifteen seconds after sitting down for the first time all day.
You get my drift. Babies change priorities. And that's a good thing. When I became a mom, I realized that I could not care less about dust bunnies and washing windows anymore. I would not trade one minute of time with my baby, then my baby and toddler, and now my kids, to spend the day cleaning every nook and cranny of my house.
Now, say you run a home daycare business like my friend Marty. Not keeping an immaculately clean house negatively impacts your business. And to clarify, CLEAN and ORGANIZED to me are not synonymous. I am all about an orderly house. I freely admit I am an anal-retentive OCD freak, just not about dust on the tops of the pictures hanging on the wall or people walking on the vacuum lines on the carpet. (Seriously, it's a thing for some people. What are you supposed to do, jump across the furniture to get around the room?) For me, keeping an immaculately clean house negatively impacts not my business, but my sanity, because I already have my hands full with the battle of "The Creep".
Everything in my house definitely has a designated place, and ideally, everything goes in said place. I said ideally. I live with three other people y'all, including Sandford and his son. Sandford is my Handsome Husband. Without my intervention, he and the Boy Child would maintain an existence that belongs in a homeless camp. Further details are not needed for you to effectively get the point.
Just believe me when I say it's an ongoing battle just to keep all their "stuff" (I would use a different word, but Jesus doesn't like it) from accumulating all over the house to the point where it looks like raccoons have taken up residence in our home. This would be the battle of "The Creep". Most of the moms reading this (and the 2% of the dads out there who care about such things) are nodding their heads right now because they too fight "The Creep" at their house.
With that ongoing struggle, who has the time or energy to CARE if the dining room light fixture is free of cobwebs, or heavens, when was the last time was I moved the fridge and cleaned behind it? But hey, I do have SOME standards for housekeeping. The laundry, vacuuming and de-toothpasting of the bathroom sinks get done on a weekly basis. Note that I did not say that ALL the laundry gets put away or that EVERY room in the house gets vacuumed every week. Just keepin' it real over here.
So if you come to my front door, you'd best check your judgy judgments about my housecleaning right there at it. Otherwise, I will hand you my cleaning supplies and tell you to go for it. Instead, I will be devoting my time to some other pursuit that, unlike house cleaning, doesn't leave me wondering one day and three family members later if I had done anything at all in the first place.
Sparkly Kisses,
D
Before we talk about my current stance on housecleaning, let me first take you on a short journey first through my childhood of the 70's and 80's and my twenty-something years in the 90's. I grew up with a chore list. Started when I was five, and every year, a chore was added. Now this was not stuff we got paid for or earned allowance for. This was a "you do this because you live here" type-deal. I dusted, vacuumed, cleaned bathrooms, washed floors, and a lot of other stuff that would leave some of you pampered children picturing a mini-me in a red curly wig singing "It's a Hard Knocks Life". Suffice it to say that by age 10, I could argue the use of Comet vs. Bon Ami with any housewife.
Moving along to my 20's. I got my first apartment in 1991, and I was all about keeping it spotless. Immaculate. Not a cobweb in the corner or dust bunny under the couch. My Saturday morning routine without fail was to clean my place from top to bottom, stem to stern. Whatever that means. I think it has something to do with boats. I grew up and live in Kansas, so the only experience I have as a boat captain is a part-time one as I'm driving it across the lake back to the dock, while holding the red Solo cup of the full-time captain we are boating with who has had to much to drink.
So from 1977-2002 (that's 25 years for those of you who get all confused counting years that span two centuries), I was all about getting behind a thorough cleaning of the house each and every week. Then in 2002, something happened that took that particular crazy train right off the rails. I became a mom. Nothing throws every routine you ever had completely out of whack like having a baby.
Oh, you used to clean the bathtub every day while you were in the shower? Yeah, well now you have 120 seconds to get in the shower and attempt to cleanse yourself before the baby takes the "Where's my mom?" whimper to a full-on "If someone doesn't pick me up RIGHT NOW, the neighbors are going to call Child Protective Services" scream. Aww, you used to have trouble going to sleep at night unless every dish in the sink was washed, dried and put away? Yeah, well now your husband has to pull your face out of your dinner plate because your sleep-deprived self passed out in it fifteen seconds after sitting down for the first time all day.
You get my drift. Babies change priorities. And that's a good thing. When I became a mom, I realized that I could not care less about dust bunnies and washing windows anymore. I would not trade one minute of time with my baby, then my baby and toddler, and now my kids, to spend the day cleaning every nook and cranny of my house.
Now, say you run a home daycare business like my friend Marty. Not keeping an immaculately clean house negatively impacts your business. And to clarify, CLEAN and ORGANIZED to me are not synonymous. I am all about an orderly house. I freely admit I am an anal-retentive OCD freak, just not about dust on the tops of the pictures hanging on the wall or people walking on the vacuum lines on the carpet. (Seriously, it's a thing for some people. What are you supposed to do, jump across the furniture to get around the room?) For me, keeping an immaculately clean house negatively impacts not my business, but my sanity, because I already have my hands full with the battle of "The Creep".
Everything in my house definitely has a designated place, and ideally, everything goes in said place. I said ideally. I live with three other people y'all, including Sandford and his son. Sandford is my Handsome Husband. Without my intervention, he and the Boy Child would maintain an existence that belongs in a homeless camp. Further details are not needed for you to effectively get the point.
Just believe me when I say it's an ongoing battle just to keep all their "stuff" (I would use a different word, but Jesus doesn't like it) from accumulating all over the house to the point where it looks like raccoons have taken up residence in our home. This would be the battle of "The Creep". Most of the moms reading this (and the 2% of the dads out there who care about such things) are nodding their heads right now because they too fight "The Creep" at their house.
With that ongoing struggle, who has the time or energy to CARE if the dining room light fixture is free of cobwebs, or heavens, when was the last time was I moved the fridge and cleaned behind it? But hey, I do have SOME standards for housekeeping. The laundry, vacuuming and de-toothpasting of the bathroom sinks get done on a weekly basis. Note that I did not say that ALL the laundry gets put away or that EVERY room in the house gets vacuumed every week. Just keepin' it real over here.
So if you come to my front door, you'd best check your judgy judgments about my housecleaning right there at it. Otherwise, I will hand you my cleaning supplies and tell you to go for it. Instead, I will be devoting my time to some other pursuit that, unlike house cleaning, doesn't leave me wondering one day and three family members later if I had done anything at all in the first place.
Sparkly Kisses,
D
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