My Unlikely Addiction

Everyone knows that shuffleboard is for old people, right? You have to live in a retirement home to even begin to enjoy this silly and simple “sport” that involves pushing a disc, right?
WRONG! Either that, or I am old before my time, because I, age 53, am seriously addicted to this game.

It all started with moving to Florida, land of many retirees. We moved here to purchase and run a business, and early on we found ourselves with some amount of “spare time” that could be filled with recreation. Right up the street from us, at 109 E. Main Street (across the street from City Hall at 110 E. Main), was a facility that fascinated Stu, despite its sign reading “Avon Park Senior Activities Center,” because of its many visible shuffleboard courts. Upon inquiry, Stu discovered that the club is open to any adult of age 18 or older, although there aren’t currently many members under age 60.

Stu and I had some familiarity with shuffleboard in its court format, having once been members of the Jewish Community Centers Association, or J.C.C.A., back in St. Louis. The JCCA, or “the J” for short, is an organization similar to the YMCA (which started originally as the “Young Men’s Christian Association). They had these cryptic courts with the numbers on them that kind of looked like hopscotch. In fact, at least one year that Stu participated as a “youngster” (50+) in the St. Louis Senior Olympics at the “J”, he participated in the shuffleboard event there. He remembers that he didn’t do particularly well in that event and now he knows why-- it’s not as easy as it looks.

Shuffleboard courts are fairly rare in St. Louis, MO, at least to the degree that we were not aware of any shuffleboard CLUBS existing there during our residence. In Florida, however, shuffleboard is a VERY popular sport which many of its devotees take quite seriously. And there is good reason for this. As we grew to learn the sport, we found a great deal of mental strategy involved in being competitive at shuffleboard. Rather than a simple game where you try to shove discs into areas for score, shuffleboard turns out to be more like a cross between billiards and chess when you really start to learn the game.

Stu joined the Avon Park club in January of 2010, just one month after we moved to Avon Park, and quickly fell in love with the game. He convinced me to join shortly thereafter since it was amazingly inexpensive for a yearly membership that allowed unlimited play. He felt it would be something fun that we could do together, but he had no idea how addicted to it I would become.

The Avon Park club has what are called “scrambles” three times a week during winter season: 8:50 a.m. on Wednesdays (singles 16-frame), 8:50 a.m. on Saturdays (doubles 16-frame) and 1:00 p.m. on Sundays (doubles 12-frame, with ice cream and sometimes bingo thereafter). These are very informal sessions where you draw a disc from a bag indicating at which position you will play, either Head or Foot of a numbered court and a color, either Yellow or Black indicating the four discs you will use. You wind up playing against a variety of other people and in so doing, get to know them pretty well. We have met some of our closest friends in the area this way.

There are varying levels of expertise represented at the Avon Park shuffleboard club and at the Sebring Recreation Club, which are both part of Florida’s Central District. A Pro, or professional player, is someone who has placed 1st through 4th, or gotten a “point” as it’s also called, in 10 different district, state or national tournaments. Probably close to half of the players with whom we scramble several times a week are pros. There are levels of amateurs below pro, and our club even boasts at least one Hall of Fame pro, which I am told requires 100 points to achieve.

I played in my first all-amateur tournament this past Monday, partnering with Stu. Unfortunately for Stu, we not only did not place, but we lost four games in a row taking us completely out of the tournament quickly. On Thursday, Stu played in a Pro-Am mixed tournament, partnered with a pro named Esther, and they won their first four matches (8 games straight) to go into the finals. They not only placed, but won 2nd in that tournament. Stu is now up to two points of the 10 required to go pro.

I don’t see myself getting any points any time soon, but I certainly do love the game enough that it’s one of the main reasons I would be reluctant to move out of Florida. I know that some of the far northern states such as Ohio and Michigan (you know, the states whether the majority of snowbirds, or winter-only Florida residents, reside during the summer) have their own shuffleboard organizations, but if we were to move back to Missouri, I don’t believe there is a shuffleboard organization there.

While living in Florida, if I did get a regular office job, I could still shuffle on weekends, but as it is, I get to shuffle three to four times a week right up the street. Tomorrow I hope to participate in the all-day Monday mini-tournament. There is a small entry fee that goes into a pot to be divided among those who place. I don’t expect to place even in a mini at present, but if I keep practicing, someday I will do so; maybe even before I reach actual retirement age!

Better Living Through Chemistry

There are many people in this country that are not convinced that mental illness is a real, physical disability, which in many cases is very successfully treated by medication. I run into folks like this all the time. And frankly, I envy them their lack of hands-on experience in this area.

I am a survivor of what is often jokingly referred to as a dysfunctional family. My parents did the best they could do raising me, given the hand they were individually dealt in life. But my mother was seriously mentally ill, as were probably many of her ancestors before her, with what was then called Manic-Depressive Illness and is now known as Bipolar Disease. It affected her behavior in some pretty scary and unpredictable ways. I can honestly say that there were days I came home from school and put my key in the front door not knowing whether I was going to be offered some homemade hot chocolate or grabbed by the hair and screamed at about missing spots in whatever had been my assigned house cleaning chore the prior day.

There were at least as many good memories as bad ones for me, though; probably more good than bad, since apparently I tend to completely block out really bad events in my early life. But I digress.

Mom was a very tortured soul; in addition to her wild mood swings, she was addicted to cigarettes and to some degree to alcohol, the second being mostly in the form of self-medicating. From the 1950s, when my parents married, until the 1980s there were very few options for medications for mood leveling. My mother was under the care of three or four different psychiatrists during my early childhood before she found one that was really good.

There is apparently a very strong hereditary component to mental illness, as with so many other unfortunate traits (such as my late father’s poor distance vision and inability to play well with bifocal lenses). My only sister and I both suffer from some fairly severe mental illness and have since adolescence. In her case, she drew the shorter straw and got the full-blown bipolar nightmare. In my case, I lucked out with mere chronic depression – lows without euphoric highs.

I was able to be mostly functional despite my blackest depressions throughout my school years and into my working life. I rarely missed a day of work, although I’m sure some of my coworkers were less than enchanted with my tendency to complain about everything and turn my own life into the saddest story ever told. I was even able to get married and keep up some pretense of a successful romantic relationship for over 4 years in my late 20s and early 30s – but only my ex-husband knows the real truth. There’s a reason we didn’t stay married, and at least 50% of that was my moods. The other 50% was his moods; but that’s another whole story.

Sometime in my mid-30s, after my divorce in 1992 and the untimely death of my dear father in 1993, I was first introduced to an anti-depressant called Zoloft. This was not inexpensive, but my psychiatrist (who was also my mother’s excellent psychiatrist that did as well with her as anyone could) felt convinced that it would benefit me and help get my life back on track. Not that my life was all that far off track; I had a very successful career of over ten years working as a mainframe programmer and always got good reviews. Beneath the surface, however, was a lonely woman full of grief, self-doubt, and an endless supply of complaints to whoever would listen.

The Zoloft made a night and day difference in my behavior to those who were close enough to observe this difference. My mother and my best friend, who comprised my primary emotional support system at this time, were delighted in the change, as was I. Honestly, the medicine felt to me like being able to run and move freely in the fresh air and blue skies, after years of swimming through black water every day.

Variations on a mix of Zoloft and a later drug, Wellbutrin, were able to keep me well in the “normal” mood range for well over ten years, during which time I was able to handle the death of my mother in 1998 and actually meet a man shortly before that who was to become my second husband. I was also able to continue to excel in my career, even as I had doubts about whether I wanted to remain employed in the corporate world for life. Even after loss of my former livelihood and the move to Florida to buy a business that later turned out to be the worst investment of our lives, I remained optimistic.

However, after everything that has happened to us after buying this business, it’s not unexpected that the depression might return. I had known that in times of true life difficulty, sometimes these medications lose their effectiveness and require change or supplementation. With some urging from a great counselor here in town, who has helped me through a real crisis and been kind with the financial side as well, I made an appointment to see a psychiatrist in Lakeland, about 50 miles from here, in order to get on a new medication called Abilify. I knew it was a long drive, and I also knew that it was not going to be cheap – a serious consideration when one has no income at present like myself.

I have been on the new drug for about 10 days now, and I can already say that the visit to the psychiatrist was the best couple hundred bucks I have spent in a long time. So, Merry Christmas, everyone – I’m back among the emotional living this year.

The Almost Perfect Dog

After closing our bed and breakfast business, my husband and I decided that now would be the perfect time to adopt a second dog. We have been a two-dog family several times before, and always really enjoyed watching the dogs interact with each other. Now that we didn’t have people coming and going through our house, we decided it would be great to have a playmate for Jack, our greyhound/border collie/black lab mix, to run and play with him in our oversized fenced lot. We agreed it should be a young female who could bond with me the way Jack has bonded with Stu (he’s definitely a “daddy’s dog”).

Stu used the internet to review thousands of photos and descriptions, from many sources, of dogs available for adoption throughout Florida. He considered the necessary combination of size and weight (to run and play with Jack), gender (female), age (preferably housetrained but not much more than a year old), and personality, before emailing a select few of these for my review.

One of the dogs, Annie, captured my heart very quickly from the photo and description. She was a 45-pound border collie mix who loved to run, and her half-black-half-white face looked like a little harlequin and made me smile. With her mostly black coloring accented with white, she was also color-coordinated with Jack – a plus, although not a requirement.

I filled out an online application for adoption to at least get to meet Annie. Stu and I were certainly willing to drive to Bradenton to see her, which is just over one hour from our home. Within a day, Annie’s foster mother had called me and we had talked. Everything she said about Annie sounded perfect, and she offered to bring Annie to our house since they were with their dogs on the east coast and would be driving through this area anyway.

When the family brought Annie to our home, she was released into our large fenced yard and immediately began running and playing actively with Jack as if they were old friends. Their interaction was peaceful, since she was a little shy and willing to accept his “alpha dog” status immediately. And he was willing to let her get in his round plastic wading pool, of which he is normally very possessive. Annie was also very affectionate to both of us almost immediately, and of course I fell in love with her almost at first touch. The foster mother said she would leave Annie with us and if everything worked out would mail us the paperwork for completion. This was an act of trust that we appreciated.

The next two days were fun but crazy as we helped Annie acclimate to our routine. She was a little hesitant to eat her meals, and we had to put her and her food bowl in a closed room away from Jack to ensure that he would not scarf it down before she could touch it. She also seemed to have a great desire to be outdoors all the time; she would sit under the palm tree and gaze out at the lake as if she wanted to be out there herself. She had a quiet wistfulness about her behavior that touched me, and to which I could relate. And the interaction between the two dogs got better all the time, with Annie starting to assert herself a little bit. They provided such exercise and joy for each other in our large yard, and it was a delight to see.

The morning of the third day, I awoke to find that Stu had left both dogs outside in the yard for nearly an hour. We had been warned by the foster family that Annie had escaped several times from their makeshift yard fence, but that she had always returned home. The foster mother had looked at our professionally-installed 4-foot chain link fence and agreed that this should not be a problem, but we were all aware of the superior intelligence of dogs with border collie genes, so we were keeping watch.

Imagine my surprise (and Stu’s) to discover that Annie was walking around the OUTSIDE of the fenced yard, heading directly for busy Main Street on the side street. In fact, a car turning on to the side street literally had to stop mid-turn to avoid hitting her. We quickly went to the front of the house and coaxed her to us on the front porch and back inside the house.

Stu immediately went outside to begin his detective effort to find the weak place in the fence which had allowed Annie to escape. A few minutes later, he beckoned me outside where we could see a white lawn chair up against the fence with muddy paw prints on the seat and going up the back.

After carefully considering the situation, we knew we would need to send her back, despite the fact that she had bonded with me, with Stu and with Jack – and of course, we with her as well. An escape onto Main Street with its constant and often speeding traffic could be an immediate death sentence for a dog. When we are driving, we dislike having to watch constantly for a couple of small strays that always seem to be on the roads around here, so we would never wish that on other drivers. But worst of all, we knew that Jack was apt to learn habits from other dogs, and having another dog teach Jack to escape would risk his life as well. Jack is the best dog either of us has ever owned in our lives, and is so precious to us that we could not take that risk.

We contacted the former foster mother, who agreed to drive to us the next day and retrieve Annie. We’re certain she will find her a good home, since she was such a darling and mostly well behaved young dog. And some lucky family will get a great, affectionate, smart, active young dog in Annie.

While this story had a somewhat sad ending for me personally, it could have been a lot sadder had either dog been hit by a car. And we have decided that we will remain a one-dog family until such time as we can sell this big house on Main Street and move into a smaller house better suited for two adults. The new house, however, must have a decent sized fenced yard.

What Not To Watch

I must admit one thing right off the bat: Yes, I do partake of all things Oprah. I subscribe to O Magazine (although I didn't pay for it myself, it was a gift card redemption on Amazon.com for a two year subscription at a very low rate); I get her email newsletters and often visit her website. I especially love the OWN network, channel 279 on DirecTV in my area, and try to catch a lot of shows on that network. I have my favorites - and now I have a new "NOT" favorite.

While making the bed in one of our guest rooms, I turned on the TV to keep me company as I often do, and it was tuned to OWN, as it often is. It so happened that a show was on at that moment called "What Not To Wear". Now, I will be the first to admit that I often step out in clothing that would make the fashion police scream out loud. But that is not among my highest priorities at the moment, since I am unemployed and struggling. I have had weight problems all my life, and even though I try to keep my weight at 5'5" below 200 lbs., there has been a lot of fluctuation (not usually in the right direction) in the last 5 years of very stressful employment followed by the loss of three jobs and now one business. For economic and weight reasons, I tend to prefer slightly over-sized t-shirts and elastic waistbands on my slacks and shorts.

Many times I have seen those photos that used to have the face blocked out in magazines, or nowadays, the videos on YouTube and photos on the internet that are not so kind, showing women wearing things that really don't work fashion-wise. I'm sure fashion has its place in this world, and I am not without artistic sense. My late mother's dream career would have been clothing designer, and she had all the right skills - ability to sketch, great fashion ideas, and an amazing sense of color combinations and matching. She also could sew well enough to make all the clothing worn by her two daughters, as part of her "actual" career as homemaker. She loved my father, an independent business owner, well enough to do her part to keep food on the table and clothing on our backs while he worked 6 day weeks of 9 hour days to make a meager paycheck.

But I digress. It often occurred to me later in life that I could easily appear in these photos or videos the way I leave home. However, once I got through my first divorce and then the death of my father when I was 34 years old, I realized I didn't have a whole lot of control over anything, and I let my weight and my fashion consciousness go in favor of practicality.

So today I happened upon this show, "What Not To Wear", on Oprah's network while doing housework. I had avoided seeing this show for obvious reasons, but what I happened on today was nothing short of cruel. There was a cute woman being chided by a "fashionable" man and woman for her existing wardrobe, as things were being thrown out. Mind you, the victim was neither overweight nor unattractive at all - she appeared to be in her mid-30s with wavy chin-length hair, and had a face I would describe as at least "cute" and perhaps "pretty". The victim was wanting to keep her beloved leather jacket which was apparently no longer fitting her. Lady Fashion said, regarding the size, "yes, but SMALL? MEN's small, maybe..." to which Gentleman Fashion laughed and Victim just looked chastised.

I put myself in Victim's place for just a moment. She didn't look like she was enjoying what was going on at all. I personally would NEVER allow myself to get insulted like this in front of many viewers (at least not for anything less than a substantial sum of money at this moment of unemployment - no, probably not even that; I do have some pride). One wonders how she received this dubious "honor". Was it a friend who staged a "Fashion Intervention" of some sort? Hey, in my world, that would be an EX-friend pretty quickly.

One also wonders why Oprah saw fit to air a show like this on her network which is all about "Living Your Best Life." In what best life does a woman willingly submit to this type of put-downs in the name of, excuse me, fashion? But then I remember having seen what type of clothing often appears in O Magazine, including the $700-plus handbag, and I must realize that Wealthy Oprah has a pretty large blind spot when it comes to the less-than-wealthy (struggling) women out there.

I'm not going to get all preachy, nor will I pretend to have a better idea than Her Highness Oprah Winfrey what constitutes good TV. But what I will say is that there is so much wrong with a show like this, in my mind, that I wouldn't even know where to start. In this case, I started by turning off the TV and deciding my housework could wait, and taking a walk around the lake with my dog Jack.

P.S. on Facebook - HELP FIXING IT

Good news for anyone who, like me, uses Google Chrome as their primary browser. There are also some suggestions in here for Firefox. Hooray for people out there developing counter-software, my hat is off to you.

http://lifehacker.com/5842578/how-to-kill-the-facebook-news-ticker

Facebook and Me: "It's Complicated"

OK, Facebook, you have just about made me divorce myself from you once and for all.

It's bad enough that I can't read my "most recent", from EVERYONE (not just the ones YOU think I care the most about), in ORDER. But now – oh, the worst of all – you have somehow modified which items send me automatic emails to my “real” email when people comment or “Like” threads in which I have participated.

I now have to get into your stupid ass user-hostile application to call up all my notifications for the past however many hours since I have last been on, and follow up with each item from there. And that doesn’t even TELL me about all the many threads from other friends in which I have participated and might want to continue the discussion!!!

And please, oh, please. Do NOT cause my mouse “hovering” (mostly accidentally in my case) to bring up a whole bunch of other moving or popping crap in my right margin. The world already moves way too fast for this old woman. I don’t need any additional animations, graphics, flashing stuff, noise or anything else out of my computer. It is here TO SERVE ME, not vice versa. I choose what I hear (lots of mute use) and see (yes, I have actually put a yellow sticky over a place on a screen which insisted on blinking during an online game I used to play).

My hearing is still pretty good, but I do like to control the volume on my computer, and I do so way more often than your advertisers would like. Mostly, I mute stuff that’s too loud.

My vision, alas, is not so good, and never has been. I wore glasses for distance (astigmatism) from about the age of twelve, and now, in my (substantially) post-age-40 reality, the near vision is becoming equally bad. Middle range is my worst, between contact lenses (multi-focals primarily for my near-sightedness) and glasses (single strength for my distance vision). Therefore, I need to be able to control size of things like fonts and game pieces whenever possible. You would be amazed at the lengths I go to so that I can read and see clearly what’s on my screen.

I like to look at one thing at a time – I am not 20 anymore and do not need the very best resolution so that I can have 65 things on my screen simultaneously. I have a pretty large monitor, but I need to be able to read the text, and most of it is WAY too small, partly due to the need to cram infinite amounts of advertising (flashing and making noise) onto your “free” application.

I have over 190 Facebook friends, about whom I genuinely care. The last thing in the world that I need now is for some damn computer program to help me to accidentally be rude to them, or seem to ignore them.

I know, I know… you have all kinds of wonderful documentation online to explain to idiot old users like me exactly how to change all my settings to get back whatever emails I want, or whatever. But I have two problems with that. First, in your infinite corporate youth, I find that a lot of your documentation is simply not kept up to date, and the Help items often refer to a prior version of Facebook – you know, the way I used to LIKE it. Secondly, it’s just too damn much work.

So here’s the thing. I have friends trying to convert me to Google Plus, saying it’s much better. Now, granted, these friends are much younger than I, and may not have some of the same issues that I have about wanting things slower and one at a time, but at this point, I am tempted.

And then I have other friends who are either NOT on Facebook at all or who are barely there (new to Facebook). These friends are mostly older than I and less tech-savvy, and they like things even slower and simpler than I. They send me emails or they read my Facebook feed, but that’s about all they choose to do. And that’s fine. If I choose to divorce Facebook, though, I need to find a way to keep in touch with all of THOSE friends.

I’m beginning to think that I just need to bite the bullet and send one last FB Message to every one of my FB Friends, and include in that message MY EMAIL ADDRESS. Therefore, if they want to communicate with me, they can type and send an old-fashioned email directly to me without your damn application deciding what I should see and should not see. (Of course, there is a whole other issue I have with my Yahoo mail related to what is Spam and what is not Spam, not to mention the animated commercials that take away my use of the the right side of each screen and occasionally lock the entire application – but that’s not YOUR problem.)

In closing, Facebook, old friend, you need to adapt or you will lose MY friendship. Here are two suggestions.

1. Stop trying to be all things to all young people. You are NOT Google Plus; you might be a bad imitation at best and a broken wanna-be at worst. I know that software development is a discipline (repeat after me, kids: “di-si-plin” DISCIPLINE) and the more quick fixes you throw at it to be like someone else, the more broken and screwed up it will get. I know what I’m talking about here; I am, after all, an old mainframe developer myself. As a Murphy’s Law poster I owned put it beautifully, “If builders built buildings the way programmers build systems, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization”.

2. Stop doing things to piss off a large number of your current demographic. Like I said before, you are NOT Google Plus. However, you do have many older people who have found you and obviously like you better than MySpace for what they want to do. Why not cultivate that demographic and slow it down a bit? Oh, I know why – cause it’s not cool to be old. Old people have problems with their bodies and their minds and worst of all, they die. Well, guess what, Einstein. You kids are gonna get old and die someday too. It’s called life. And when you get a little bit closer to that, after some number of years of experience, you might just begin to understand what I am trying to say here.

Discrimination

Once upon a time, the word “discrimination” had a very positive meaning; it indicated the ability to detect differences, sometimes subtle, with great skill. For example, someone with a discriminating palate might be able to tell the difference, blindfolded, between food items with similar texture or feel. Any fan of television cooking “reality” TV has seen Gordon Ramsay administer palate tests of this type to many a would-be chef.

It’s sad what happens to things when government gets involved. A word with a perfectly good meaning like “discrimination” has been perverted to mean nearly the opposite of its original intent. Rather than detecting subtle differences in similar individuals and using this sense to make the best choice, discrimination often involves generalizing people, or even animals, into large groups without taking the time to get to know each enough to make the best decision. Whatever happened to not judging a book by its cover? Even as laws to “protect” us try to turn the meter the other way (with such misguided attempts as “affirmative action”), the person making the choice often uses the most obvious and sometimes least important criterion to exclude entire groups.

The other day while getting most of my news from Facebook (as I do daily), I got a feed that I felt compelled to pass along to all my Facebook friends. It was from an animal advocate page called “Shifting the Odds” and was an article from the online Examiner entitled “Black shelter dogs face tougher odds for adoption”. I had actually become aware of a bias against black dogs quite by accident in St. Louis Missouri, shortly after we adopted our black dog, Jack, who is truly the best dog either of us has ever owned in our lifetimes. The Humane Society started sending us newsletters inviting us to join meetings of something called the Black Dog Club, and making us aware of the bias against black dogs. At the time I thought “how strange” – but let’s face it, people are strange in their choices for “discrimination”, aren’t they? Anyway, after recently sharing the article on my Facebook page, the overwhelming majority of my friends indicated that their experience with black dogs has been quite the opposite; in many cases, a black dog was the best dog they had ever owned. I know that’s true of my own experience with Jack.

My Facebook status proudly lists my employment as “UNEMPLOYED!!!!!” – yes, in all caps with five exclamation points – and everyone who knows me also knows that it’s not necessarily by choice. The fact is that I want very badly to work, preferably for a paycheck, since it costs money to live. But let’s face it: a woman over 50 who is overweight is automatically given certain labels by potential employers. Maybe they don’t know my actual age or weight in the interview, but appearance does give some things away. And while they don’t normally put me on a scale anywhere but the doctor’s office, it’s amazing to me how many job applications REQUIRE date of graduation from college as well as the degree and the institution name. If that doesn’t get them at least close to knowing how old you are, their ability to do basic mathematics is lacking.

Today while driving back from the airport in Orlando, I was “surfing” the AM dial for talk radio that sounded interesting. Along with all the usual dire information about what’s happening to our once-great country, there was an item of personal interest: Employers are showing a tendency to “discriminate” (there’s that word again) against the unemployed when hiring. In a normal economy, I could see their point: if you’re not working, you might just be lazy. But in this economy, there are so very many reasons why a closer look at someone who appears to have been “unemployed” for any length of time could be an excellent choice. Here are three reasons to consider.

1. A person who is living without a paycheck has to get very creative to survive.
Even those of us who have some savings know that we can’t live indefinitely on that without any income, so we do odd jobs like writing or proofreading on Craigslist, or we drive people to the airport for pay.

2. A person who is not working at a job has to figure out ways to structure his or her days to give them meaning.
Contrary to popular belief, there are MANY of us out there who would truly love to have someone giving them money just to show up somewhere and do what they are told for a certain number of hours a day. Imagine the mind-numbing boredom of every week day seeming the same as every weekend. Every day is a vacation – yes – but without any budget to spend on entertainment or diversions. There are only so many hours many of us can scour the internet job boards searching for places we can send resumes and cover letters so that we can be ignored or at best receive those form rejection emails. It’s very hard to stay upbeat under these circumstances.

3. A person who doesn’t have a job might just be more appreciative of being given a job than someone who already has one.
I know in my case, the one paying job that I had for two months got every bit of effort, dedication, reliability, ingenuity and energy that I had to give during the hours I was there. It was a hard decision for me to reach that I just wasn’t able to meet certain performance criteria to the level they demanded, but I certainly gave it my best shot.

The bottom line for employers should be this: Ask those probing questions to discover the reason for the long term unemployment before assuming the worst. A person who bought a small business that turned out not to make the income that the prior owner indicated, and then worked very hard to make it something much better, but still didn’t make a living at it, may have learned some extremely valuable life lessons during his or her time of unemployment. Look beneath the surface and you might find your next great employee: well-rounded, hard working, and extremely grateful to be hired.

One More Obstacle

Shortly after we moved here and I started going barefoot some ridiculously large percentage of the time, I began having occasional foot pain. At the time, I shrugged it off along with a lot of other pains encountered while cleaning, treating it with ibuprofen when necessary. When you want to keep floors clean of sand and your eyesight isn’t all that great (even with contact lenses and good lighting), it’s very useful to be barefoot when you clean them. Besides, this is Florida, it’s usually hot, and who wants the constriction of shoes?

During the summer, we have had the Bed & Breakfast shut down for conservation purposes. After last summer, with the very minimum number of occasional paying guests and their desire to have the two “best” guest rooms in this old house (with windows on three sides and only one air conditioning vent) chilled to the comfy low 70’s, we decided that maybe it would be more cost effective to close off the upstairs entirely and the two of us live downstairs with higher thermostat settings. Sure enough, where last summer’s electric bills approached $500 monthly, this summer’s bills have been under $200. So we are probably saving more money than we would have taken in, had we remained “fully open” all summer.

However, there is another hidden cost of being closed for business (other than the fact that we are both bored out of our minds). When I am not having to do daily, constant aerobic house cleaning, my weight tends to, um, get out of control. Combine with that the fact that I was off my thyroid meds for several months (I was hoping to get health insurance on a short-lived job so I could see a “real” doctor, as opposed to the county health clinic where us po’ folk go) and the 10-plus additional pounds on the scale make perfect sense. I’m not happy about them, but they do make sense.

In the absence of a bunch of housecleaning to keep me active, I had started once again walking daily on the treadmill while watching recorded episodes of Dr. Phil. Between the untimely death of our prior DVR, losing many of my beloved saved shows, and the summer rerun season, it was hard enough to get motivated to walk daily, and when I did get motivated, perhaps I walked overenthusiastically to “make up for” the days I hadn’t. But during the past week or so, after one particularly enthusiastic walking session, the foot pain has become a real hindrance to my spending any more time than necessary on my feet.

So off I went to the other “po’ folks doctor” besides the county clinic – the internet – for a diagnosis. It’s called “Metatarsalgia” and is more commonly known as “pain in the ball of the foot”. It is in fact aggravated by the following: wearing improper footwear (these New Balance are ones I bought in 2009 before leaving St. Louis so admittedly they have a few miles on them); fast walking or any activity causing impact on the foot; going barefoot; and last but not least, being over “a healthy weight”. Well, yeah, the last time I was by anyone’s definition a “healthy weight” was either briefly in 2003, or back in late 80’s, depending on your definition of “healthy weight”. That was the whole reason I was on the treadmill!

This morning I was indulging in my current favorite sport, shuffleboard, which can usually be played without creating or aggravating physical injury. And for the second time, I, by far the youngest person in the shuffleboard club, was the exception to that rule (the prior time was when my back flared up and I had to stop playing a few weeks ago). How embarrassing is that? I made it all the way through the first two matches without any pain, and was actually playing well. Third match, not so lucky, and it distracted me enough that my game was off more than usual. But I tried to be a good sport and not call attention to my “issue”. On the way out of the shuffleboard courts to the car, however, Stu asked me “do you want to stop somewhere and see if you can get something for your foot?” I guess I can no longer call him Mr. Oblivious because he, on a completely different court on the other side, had observed my limping slightly – that must be love or something.

We went to CVS and I purchased a pair of Dr. Scholl inserts for my shoes of choice. Since they already contained some drug store insole inserts for foot pain, I had to tape them to the inserts already there since they wouldn’t stick any other way. But hopefully they will prevent pain during shuffleboard. If I have to give up my shuffleboard someone might very well have to put me out of my (their) misery because it’s the one thing I can look forward to at least twice a week.

It does, however, look like for the time being at least, my “fitness walking” days are over. And this is truly a shame, because it is the one free aerobic exercise available to me, the chronically overweight woman. So here I am, no job, no health insurance, no income, overweight, and now no fitness walking. I now have one more obstacle between me and my ideal life. But those among us who appreciate clichés will undoubtedly snap back something like “God never gives us more than we can handle” or “When God closes a door, he opens a window”.

With that in mind, my next plan is to get very creative about a very structured food plan for myself and possibly Stu (who will admit that he too could stand to lose some weight). Without spending actual money to re-join (for the fourth time) Weight Watchers, I am going to have to start measuring and counting calories again, which I dread but I also know I must do. At this point, especially without regular doctor visits, I know that keeping my weight as low as possible is literally a matter of my life or death. Will I succeed, or will I again go from my current 180 pounds back to the treacherous 205 that I maintained during my most stressful years, working full time and caring for family? That depends on my willpower, my creativity, staying out of debilitating mental depression, and the grace of God. Stay tuned.

Wanting To Be Different

I have always been amazed and impressed by people who compose music – the words chosen, their own cadence, the melody and harmony carefully laid into the cadence of the words – or perhaps the melody and harmony developed and the words crafted into that structure. It has always fascinated me. I used to do a little songwriting of my own, back in the day when I was an angst-ridden teen and twenty-something, but very little of it has any critical value in either the poetry or melody areas. At least that was my thinking when, in October and November of 2009, I gave all those old handwritten lyrics one last look before shredding them for recycling. There was just no room in our new home for all those boxes of sentiment that I could hardly ever bear to look at anyway. Those plus all my many journals of personal thoughts over the years gave me buckets of tears as I said goodbye to my old life in Missouri and prepared for the whole new life awaiting me in Florida.

Some of my favorite music of all time, though, is music composed by my younger step-son. Knowing Josh the way I do, the lyrics take me inside his head and help me understand what’s really going on with him. I often cry, but I can always relate. He is a great talent and I hope he will be able to achieve some level of financial success with his chosen career of sound engineering or some such thing – closely related to music, of course. His ability to craft words and melody, harmony and counter-melody is already a success in my mind (whether or not the public at large would agree, and I have no way of knowing that). These are beautiful and yet disturbing songs that haunt your brain and move your heart.

Yesterday while I was at the library, after checking out the latest Ruth Rendell novel in large print (double treat!), I browsed through the music CDs and right in front was Maroon 5’s “Songs About Jane”. This CD was apparently released in 2003 (according to the tiny print on the disc itself and my trusty magnifying glass) but it’s still a real landmark piece of music, at least in my mind. I remember sometime around that time, maybe 2004, attending the wedding of a friend’s daughter and sitting with a friend, Bonnie, who had been a member of St. Louis Harmony Chorus with the bride’s mother Diane and me. I believe the DJ played “This Love” along with other songs of that era, including “Let’s Get It Started” and some other very youthful party songs. As we sat there, a bunch of “old people” sipping champagne and nibbling hors d’oevres, Bonnie told me she had the Maroon 5 CD and she listened to it over and over. I thought at the time, she knows her stuff and maybe I should check that one out, but never quite got around to it. Perhaps June of 2011 isn’t too late, so yesterday I did quite literally “check it out”.

This is a great CD in so many ways. In watching “The Voice”, the new reality show and singing competition, I feel like I have gotten to know Adam Levine, lead singer of Maroon 5. He is an interesting character and obviously very knowledgeable about music in addition to being a great singer and performer in his own right. His high-register singing voice has such a unique tonal quality that it comes close, in my opinion, to being an audio trademark – it is instantly recognizable and beautiful. And yet, while coaching on “The Voice”, Adam has commented to more than one of the male contestants about their nice deep singing voices or some such thing, in a way that bordered on wistful. That got me thinking. A man with a beautiful, iconic voice wishes he had a more “manly” deep voice? Why would he change anything?

In listening to the lyrics on this CD, even before digging out the magnifying glass yet again to read the liner notes regarding who composed the songs, I recognized a very familiar character in the emotional terrain of these compositions: the shy, self-doubting, intelligent and sensitive nerd. Usually thin, rarely successful with “the ladies”, and always wishing to be someone else.

For the last two years of my college days, I attended an engineering school where men outnumbered women 4 to 1 (I believe it had been 10 to 1 two years prior). I was one of those young ladies who was very attractive, maybe even considered pretty by some, but just didn’t realize it. My self esteem was so very low that I was always willing (at least initially) to accept whatever male attention happened to come my way. After getting to know some of these guys, I would change my mind and try to disengage, but a select few of them would follow me wistfully around campus in a sort of hero worship thereafter. Nowadays we call that “stalking”, but at the time, it seemed harmless if somewhat annoying. I eventually had quite the collection of those wonderful nerdy guys who were hopelessly in love with me and whom I had rejected after the initial attraction, whose self esteem was as bad as my own but whose obsession sent me running the other direction.

If you think about it, how many songs, and for that matter, how many people, spend their lives wanting to be something or someone else? The man with the beautiful, iconic voice wants to sound more “manly” – really? The young intelligent lady with the self-dyed carrot red hair, blue eyes, body out of a Vargas artwork and amazing radio voice wants to be a thin, tan girl with clear skin and straight hair – again, really? The same lady, now truly heavy and middle-aged, wonders what the heck she was thinking. But now she is married to a man who truly loves her with all his heart, a very talented, sensitive, intelligent, beautifully-tanned and handsome man who wishes he were 6 inches taller and had his hair back. Really? Once again, it’s a shame we can’t all see ourselves, just for a moment, the way someone else who loves us sees us, and treasure the value that is already there, instead of wanting to be different.

No, I Don't Miss St. Louis

I have only been a resident of Florida since early December 2009, when my husband and I moved here from the suburbs of St. Louis, MO. From my birth in 1958 until November 30, 2009, the St. Louis MO metropolitan area was my nearly continuous home. I say “nearly” because I attended two years of college in Rolla, MO – a whole two hours’ drive away!

The story of our move here and our circumstances back in Missouri that caused us to buy a business and home in Florida have been told and written numerous times already, so I will skip that part here.

A question that I have been asked by many of my new friends, on many occasions, is “So, do you miss St. Louis?”

My answer in December 2009, when we first arrived to the 70 degree temperatures, sunshine and palm trees, was a resounding “NO”.

I guess I realized early on that while I didn’t miss St. Louis per se, I did miss a few select people living there, and certain other aspects of St. Louis just a tiny bit almost immediately.

First was Food. Bandana’s, Imo’s Pizza, Anything on The Hill, Fortel’s Pizza, and a number of other smaller St. Louis restaurants and chains, became the stuff of fantasies that Stu and I shared. We had a craving for toasted ravioli one evening and Stu found a recipe on the internet to use with frozen ravioli from the store. They turned out pretty close to authentic, actually, and no doubt at least as fattening. “Toasted” is such a nice euphemism for the actual cooking method which is more like deep-fried and sprinkled with parmesan cheese. I don’t know whether the high quality of restaurants in St. Louis is due more to its being a major metropolitan area (as opposed to Highlands County, FL), but in hindsight, St. Louis MO sure seems like a food Mecca.

St. Louis is also known for its quality barbershop-style acappella vocal groups. Both the Barbershop Harmony Society (men) and Sweet Adelines (women) are very well represented in the area with both choruses and quartets. A number of those have won first place in regional competitions numerous times; a few have even won first place internationally. I used to sing with St. Louis Harmony Chorus, one of THREE good-sized women’s choruses in the area (the other two are River Blenders and City Voices) with different sizes, philosophies and music but many common goals. I had the privilege of singing with St. Louis Harmony for five years, culminating in a Region 5 first place in 2007 – a medal that is my prized possession along with a second place medal for each year. Every time I am on Facebook and see a post about my old chorus, or read about a show that’s being put on by the Ambassadors of Harmony (the 160+ member men’s chorus which is a several time International champion), I experience that twinge of “wish I was back there”.

It almost goes without saying that there are a lot of people back there with whom I keep in touch (at least on Facebook) regularly, and I do miss having them physically around sometimes. But their online presence is reassuring when I need it.

I also get to read about things on Facebook like last winter’s snow and ice, the tornado that touched down about 5 miles from our former home in St. Louis county, and of course the changeability of spring and fall weather. One Facebook friend literally bemoans that she is tired of switching from heat to air conditioning. Honestly, in central Florida, I have almost forgotten what heat is! I do know that even as nice as it is today in May here (windows open and nice breeze), it’s going to be part steam bath and part blast furnace, with an almost daily brief electrical storm of frightening intensity, just any second now. We have already had those 90 degree days and we will see our fair share of 100’s. We have taken drastic measures to insulate and seal off our upstairs with its thermostat set firmly at 88, hoping that by living downstairs only during the summer we will not have any of those over $400 a month electric bills that we saw last summer.

So, do I miss St. Louis? No. Well, yes, maybe a little. But I’m not moving back anytime soon. Maybe a visit when the airfares get more reasonable. But not during the winter.