Interview with the internet

I hear you asking... "OK Lori.   We underestimated you.  Again!  You obviously aren't going to abort this effort as quickly as you have abandoned so many other obsessions and bright ideas you've had.  So, tell us then.  What exactly is this 29 Gifts project all about, anyway?" 

And I will answer you with, "HEY!  Be nice!  We are all 'works in progress', after all."  The 29 Gifts project was started by a woman named Cami Walker.  Cami was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and, in her search for understanding and healing, Cami consulted with a South African medicine woman, who told her that she needed to give something away each day for 29 days.  Following that advice, Cami found that many things in her life changed dramatically.   She blogged about her experiences, wrote a book about her experiences, and, eventually, built a website around the idea.   You can visit that website to read a lot more about the project here:

http://www.29gifts.org/

Or, you can read a very little bit about the project here:  

GIVE A LITTLE EACH DAY. MAKE A BIG IMPACT.


Give one thing away each day for 29 days. Share your stories about how it impacts your life to focus on giving. Join the 29-Day Giving Challenge today. Why? Because to see our world change, we have to do something to change our world. Plus, the best way to attract abundance into your life is to be in a perpetual state of giving and gratitude. Be an important part of the global giving movement that inspires more generosity on our planet.


HOW IT WORKS:


Sign up and then give away 29 gifts in 29 days. Your 29 Gifts can be anything given to anyone... money, food, old sweaters, smiles, your time, kind words or thoughts. You can start your own personal 29-Day Giving Challenge at any time—there’s no official begin or end date. To complete the challenge, submit a story, post a piece of your original artwork, create a short film or write a song. Tell us about your favorite gives and the impact it made on your life to focus on giving.

Oh, and speaking of my obsessions, make sure to scroll to the bottom of this screen and see the owl picture of the day, OK??  How perfect is it that blogger had this gadget for me to add to my blog?? 

And now I hear you asking: "OK, the 29 gift thing sounds kind of funky and all new-agey, but cool.  What's the deal with 29 days?  Why not 30, or 31, or just say a month?"  RIGHT?  I'm so glad you asked that question.   Because I have no clue.  I asked the same question of the person who introduced me to the project.  He didn't know either.  Maybe the book, when I read it, will explain why 29 is such a big deal.  If you get there first, by all means, please enlighten me!   

I hear you asking, "Lori, tell me.  How did you hear about the 29 Gifts project?"  That's a great question.  Thank you for asking me!   My very good friend got involved, and started blogging about his experiences giving a gift each day for 29 days.  This particular friend is someone who already has so much generosity and love in his heart, that I was curious about any initiative that could move him to do even more for others than he already does.   Turns out, this one was particularly meaningful to him, because there are two very special people in his own life who, like Cami Walker, have multiple sclerosis.  Over the years, this friend has become very involved as a volunteer, then board member, then Chairman of the Board of the local chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.  It is my guess that he spends at least as much time volunteering for that organization as he does doing anything else (and, with a career, a family, and a fixation on Notre Dame sports, he has lots to keep him busy).  I began following his blog.  One day I went to his blog to see what he'd been giving away lately, and read that one of his 29 gifts is a copy of Cami Walker's book, which he gave to me.  Or at least, I am told, "it's in the mail."  I was very moved and, as I often am by him anyway, very inspired.  So, I decided not to wait for the book, and to just get going. 

So today, Day 5 of my (first) 29 days, I'm writing a check to support the MS Society, because the Society and its cause are very important to my friend, and so it matters a lot to me, too.   And, I want him to know that he has kept the momentum of the project going by spreading it to at least one other person, and that I hope to do the same. 

I hear you asking, "Lori!  How are you ever going to think of 29 gifts to give in a row, and how will you find time to follow through?" and I will be glad to answer that.  I DON'T KNOW!  But it's awfully nice to spend time every day looking around, and wondering how you can help make the world just a little bit brighter for someone else today.  

Now you are asking me, "uh, shouldn't you be getting back to work?"  

Oh... Yeah.  Totally. 

"Kentucky girls, we have fire and ice in our blood. We can ride horses, be a debutante, throw left hooks, and drink with the boys, all the while making sweet tea, darlin'. And if we have an opinion, you know you're gonna hear it.” -- Ashley Judd

It is very hard to capture my mother in law in a blog post.  I first met Peggy over 20 years ago.  She was the first woman I'd ever met with such a long, slow, southern drawl.  That is saying something, given that I grew up in Kentucky.  Peggy, born in Parma, Missouri, raised in the small rural town of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and a regular Sunday church worshiper in her adopted big city of Paducah, Kentucky, had never met a Jew before she met me.  We bonded immediately!  Peggy is smart, funny, warm and loving, and, if you sit and listen for awhile, you can learn an awful lot.  After raising two boys, she was really happy to have another girl in the crowd.  Not long after Tim and I got married, Peggy started referring to me as her "daughter Lori Ellen".  I still feel incredibly touched and honored, every time I hear it. 

Last December, Peggy turned 80.  In some ways, it hasn't been an easy 80 years.  In just the 20 years that I have known her, I have seen her face two types of aggressive cancer, brave chemo with incredible grace and strength, struggle with severe and now debilitating osteoporosis, and endure an array of other physical challenges.  I have watched Peggy grieve over the loss of her sister following an accident, and the loss of her grand nephew from neuroblastoma.  Over the past couple of years, Peggy has lost more than 8 inches in height, and her back is very bent.  She is in almost constant pain and discomfort.    It is so hard for us to witness, especially being so far away, the physical decline of this active, strong woman who taught anatomy and physiology, zoology and biology to nursing students for years, raised two amazing sons, enjoyed gardening, refinishing antiques, hiking, camping, boating, and traveling, and who can sit across the table from me in a Mexican cantina and match me margarita for margarita, as we salute (her version of a toast) everyone we've ever known and loved (and even some who we have neither known nor loved).  Yesterday, Tim spoke with his brother, who lives near Peggy in Colorado, and heard that she seems unsteady, unwell, and not very much like herself.   It sounds like she's feeling very poorly, and like maybe she's lost a bit of her incredible will. 

I've never been particularly good at communicating my care and concern and thoughts to my loved ones.  Frankly, I'm terrible about cards, gifts, and phone calls, and I am sort of lousy at letting others know that I am thinking about them, or just how important they are to me.  My gift today, Day 4 in the 29 Gifts endeavor, will not be any grand gesture.  It will be a simple card to Peggy from me and Tim and the kids -- letting her know in the most open way just how much we love her, and how incredible we think she is.  We will all write in it and sign it, and maybe the kids can add some artwork.  We hope you feel better soon, Peggy.  As you have said to me so many times, Illegitimi Noncarborundum. 

Tra La Laaa!!!!

Our family, on both sides, is dispersed.  This set up has its benefits.  For example, we rarely fight about negotiate over which house we will visit for which holiday.  But, there are downsides, too.  When we go on vacation, we must pay the neighbor kid to feed the cat.  And the kids.  Also, we get precious little opportunity to spend time, and develop relationships with, our six nieces and nephews - two in Kentucky, two in Washington, and two (soon to be three!) in Colorado.

Recently, my sister told us that her 7 year old is loving the Captain Underpants series by David Pilkey.  For those of you who do not have 7 year old sons, or who have been raising your 7 year old sons in a cave, Captain Underpants is a comic-book style potty humor-filled series about George and Harold, two 4th grade pranksters who hypnotize their principal into believing that he is a superhero named Captain Underpants, a caped crusader fighting for truth and justice, employing wedgie power, and wielding rubber doggie doo.   Also these books are controversial and occasionally banned by school librarians, for being irreverent and talking about toilets.  And butts.  If you do not enjoy laughing with your young kids, or if you live in Naugatuck, Connecticut, definitely do not read these books with your children.  (but still read them on your own, at night, under the covers, with a flashlight). 

I promised my sister I'd get our (over-read but sadly outgrown!) Captain Underpants books into the mail to Adrian, so that she he could enjoy the rest of the series.  As days flew by, I kept forgetting to look for them.  Then I carried them around in my work bag for a few days, and didn't find the time to get to the post office.  Today, off they go to Kentucky, just in time for April Fools day!  Look out, little sister.  These books have been known to influence kids to behave like pranksters and use bathroom words.  But, Adrian could probably teach Harold and George a thing or two.  I hope the next time Adrian models George and Harold's bad behavior, you think of his Aunt Lori, and say a small prayer of gratitude that I stay so far away.

p.s.  Isabella and Adrian, Professor Poopypants put your names into the name change-o chart, and from here on out, you two will be known as Chim-Chim Picklechunks and Stinky Picklechunks, respectively. 

Springing forward.

Its funny -- there must be something about March. Spring is in the air, families are gardening again, baby birds are hatching, and Lori's thoughts turn to ... blogging. It's been on my mind of late to give it another go, so I pulled Blogger up on my laptop, wondering if I could still find the old blog that I began on impulse (then abandoned just as quickly) so long ago. And, there it was... staring back at me from the screen, blinking quietly, whispering, "I was wondering whether and when you were going to show your fingers around here again". The second (and final!) post, was about one year ago, almost exactly to the date. There must be something about March... the short span of my brain's vitality between the slow thaw from the New England winter freeze, and the rapid rot from Boston's summer sun.

Today I will blog with a specific purpose. A very close friend has inspired me to give of myself. I try to give where I can, but this new effort is focused, and specific. It is in the spirit of a (hopefully) growing movement called 29 Gifts. You can read about here:

http://www.29gifts.org/

Yesterday began my 29 days. Last night I took my 13 year old son out to dinner. Just the two of us, to Legal Seafood. The boy loves him some lobster. We waited a very long time for our table, but passed the time roaming the mall that housed the restaurant. We fought the crowd at the hostess stand a couple of times to check on our status, and as time passed, he grew increasingly hungry and a felt bit ill, but insisted still that he preferred to wait rather than opt for a different choice.

We were relieved when we were at last led to our table, and we looked forward to the famous Legal Seafood clam chowder (which, incidentally, should probably be ILlegal, like other substances that feel so good but are so bad for you ... ). Unfortunately, service was slow. Even more unfortunately, halfway through his bowl of chowder, the son pulled a long, cream-covered hair from his mouth. Not his. Not mine. I don't need to detail it further. We were both a little upset.

I hated to raise it with the waitress, because she looked like she was having a hard night. She must have been around my age. She looked tired, and had been apologetic for the long wait and slow service. She seemed to be trying hard to make sure we had what we needed. Still. The hair. It needed to be addressed, despite protests from my son, who is generally mortified by the slightest bit of attention, and certainly not inclined to draw any attention to himself while out to dinner, with his mother, on a Saturday night. Still. Hair. In the chowder. Ew.

After numerous apologies from the waitress and a visit from the manager and an accommodation on our check, somehow my son was still talking to me and we managed to eat and truly enjoy the rest of our dinner.

My first of 29 gifts was a large tip for our server. Thirty percent, based on the check we would have received sans hair, not based on the actual check. It felt great to walk away knowing that she probably looked for her tip after we left, maybe expecting that we'd forgotten to tip based on what the check should have been, and maybe anticipating a poor tip anyway, based on the challenging experience we'd had. I hope I brought her a pleasant surprise, and maybe added some joy to an evening that looked like it was a difficult one for her.

I can't wait to see what today will bring. Thank you friend, for getting me involved, and for inspiring me with your own generosity. I can't wait to receive the book in the mail and read it (I read your blog, and I know that I'm on the receiving end of some of that generosity. I feel incredibly touched and honored). Today, my gift will be to try to spread the word, and the joy, of giving. That may not be the sort of "direct benefit" contemplated by the initiative. I'll know more, I suppose, when I read the book. In the meantime, it feels right, and good.

Maybe I'll manage to keep this blog alive, too. At least into April.