jennethink

2:30

Had ANOTHER dental appointment today.  Two fillings and another crown.  I mean really. When will it end? My whole face is numb except for my upper left lip.  When I laugh I look like a pirate.  Which makes me laugh harder.  It's not pretty.

I have a sneaking suspicion that my dentist is a quack.  I said as much to the husband, "Sometimes I think our dentist is a quack."  "Sometimes?"  he said, "Oh i think that ALL the time."  Ha ha aye matey!... that made me laugh.  We keep going to this dentist because he has massage chairs and tv monitors in the ceiling and DVDs you can watch while you are having your Long John Silver makeover. They also dip your hands in paraffin wax.  Which moisturizes your skin and is very relaxing.  Not as relaxing as the gas, but relaxing nonetheless. 

So our priorities may not be exactly in order but we do have soft hands. 

Which is nice.

JAZZERCISE

So one of my favorite forms of exercise is Jazzercise class.   It's basically a bunch of women in a room with music throwing their limbs around and occasionally their backs out.  It's a lot of fun.  No really, it is.

The instructor stands up front on a stage and tells you what to do.  She also does it at the same time.  That's impressive.  Also impressive is the fact that when she calls "right!" she actually moves left so that she's moving in the same direction you are.  I've never seen an instructor mess up on the left/right thing.  Not once.  Ever.

Last week, however, one of my instructors did chasse right off the stage.  Now that was funny.  Not for her, I'm sure. But man did my abs get a good workout.  She recovered nicely and continued to teach class.  I kept laughing all during class.  I kept seeing her "whoop whoops!" off the front of the stage.  I couldn't help myself.  Even later during the floor exercises I started chuckling again. 

I'm telling you all of this because I believe in karma.

Today my left boob fell out of my top during a fast grapevine right. Later, I heard the instructor giggle during the floor exercises.

JUST STUFF

Aren't blogs funny?

Funny peculiar, not funny put an artichoke in your shorts.  More than a year ago I started this blog.  I began it because... well, because Jeff Risley said I should.  And even though I wouldn't jump off a cliff if Jeff Risley did, it seemed like a good idea.

So I did it. 

Soon I found out what fun blogging could be.  And what a pain. It's like having a fish.  It's enjoyable - sure but it doesn't really give you much in return at times.  And also, you kind of have to pay attention to it or it can get pretty stinky after a long period of absence. 

I have all kinds of dilemmas about my blog.  Simple ones - like finding the time to post.  And more complex ones that all seem to center around The Voices.

If you write, you know about The Voices.  They talk to you while you type.  They tell you "you shouldn't be ... " and "ooh gosh that's bad ..." and "What if your mom reads this??"  They keep you from saying things like "masturbate" and "fuck" (sorry Mom)  and they stop you when you use a semi-colon because isn't it supposed to be just a comma?

One of The Voices in my bloglife is the I Link To My Blog From My Business Website Voice.  It tells me I can't post about anything that I wouldn't want a client to see.  So there go all my posts about ovulation and cervical mucus.

Another of The Voices is the What Will People Think Of Me If I Post That Voice.  That voice has kept me from posting about my support for the war in Iraq and my fascination with reading the Termination for Non-medical Reasons community board on babycenter.com.

Still another voice is the No One Really Cares About That Voice.  Which has kept me from posting at all for long periods of time.

Then there's the Try To Look Bigger Than You Are Voice.  That voice is the worst of all because I have to look down my nose while I type.   

There have been a number of times when I wished I never told anyone about this blog.  That I just posted under a name no one knew.  That my mom and sister and husband and clients didn't read this and I could say whatever I wanted.

So I mentioned this to my husband the other day.  I said "I wish I could post whatever I wanted."  and he said "Go ahead" and then gently pointed out that I teach about a thing called congruency and how important it is to be the same person at work, at home, at play.  "Don't you talk about that?" he said.  "Um."  I said and The Voices started.  Because he's right.  I do talk about that. 

"It's called 'The Mask'" I say in class and I wave my hand in front of my face.  "And when you put emotional energy into showing the world that you are something different than you really are you are trying to maintain The Mask."  Now here's the real kicker of what I say "And friends, you don't have that kind of time ... life is too short to waste one moment and one ounce of energy on maintaining The Mask.  Because

We

See

You

Anyway."

The "Tie It Up Real Nice And Give It A Snappy Title" Voice is talking to me now. 

I'm ignoring it.

FEEDBACK (AGAIN)

I was just reviewing a survey I sent out to evaluate my last leadership class.  The question was:  What is one thing you would do to improve the class or the learning process?

One of the answers was:

Nothing.  Yet.

That made me laugh.  Hard.  Okay, well you get back to me when you come up with something.

MOTIVATION

My newest chart/graph/visual

Should be self-explanatory.  The level of skill and the level of the challenge have to be balanced in a way to provide the greatest motivation.  Too much challenge and not enough skill and we're left frustrated and discouraged.  Too much skill and not enough challenge and we fall asleep at our desks (or in our souls).

By the way, that word on the graph is "bordem" my newest spelling of the word boredom. 

Do you realize how much work we do and give others to do that comes nowhere close to falling into the shaded area?  You can think of it task by task or you can think of your job as a whole (How do you feel about your job as a whole?  How do you feel about Uranus as a whole? har har).  When was the last time you felt your skill ON the job and the challenge OF the job lined up to create a happy, motivated you?

Yeah, been a while.

RED BLUE PROJECT

I love politics.

I hate discussing politics with friends.

Which is why I'm loving this concept.  Red Blue Project  Check out the spots when you get a chance. I laughed out loud.

I'M GOING TO START USING IT IN MY OWN LIFE

So I returned to my computer this morning only to find 87 new messages.  They were all from Daemon, the Mailer at Yahoo.  Apparently something I was sending was wrong or too big or had the potential to shut down the country so although he tried many (MANY) times, he was unable to complete my request.

I've gotten a lot of these "failure notices."  Yesterday, I actually read one.  This is what it said: 

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yahoo.com. I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses. This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out."

Isn't that funny? 

"I've given up."   

"Sorry it didn't work out." 

Doesn't this seem overly empathetic for a computer? Are you informing me of an error or breaking up with me?

I laughed.  I love it.  It is so plain. Daemon has no problems delivering his failure notices.  He's right out there with it.  There's no going back.  It's a permanent error.  Quit trying.   It's over.  I mean, I'm sorry and all but that's the way it is.  Period.  End of email.

I'm finally at a point in my life when I'm realizing how much easier it would be if I would adopt this same attitude about my failure notices.  I can think of many (MANY) times in the past when this language would have been helpful. Like when I mistakenly tried to play basketball all those years only to realize later I really sucked.  I should have just told the coach, "I've given up."  And then to my dad, "Sorry it didn't work out."

Or when I quit my job (that I held for two days) at the Burger King, I could have just said "I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your burgers.  Sorry it didn't work out."

And possibly my biggest failure notice of all, to my now ex-spouse, I should have looked him dead in the eyes and announced,  "This is a permanent error."

Instead I've spent so much time trying to convince everyone - mostly myself - that it wasn't as bad, as ugly, as permanent as it seemed.  Or maybe that it wasn't a failure at all.

Not anymore.  Me and Daemon.  We're on the same page.

CALL ME FRAGILE

You know what I hate?  I hate when my name comes up on spellcheck and I have to choose a key that says "Ignore always" in response to "What do you want to do with 'Jenne'?"

FEEDBACK

I'm working on a class I'm giving in the next couple of weeks about giving feedback.  It got me wondering about feedback - not the squealy-high-pitched-mic-too-close-to-the-speaker kind but the "hey can I talk to you for a second" kind.

I started wondering what was the best feedback I've ever gotten. I've gotten a lot of it.  Some good.  Some bad.  But the best was early in my career and it went like this:

Feebacker:  <after listening to 30 minutes of complaints about certain co-workers>  Well, Jenne, I'll just say this,  If Jenne and Becky have a problem and Jenne and Pam have a problem and Jenne and Bill have a problem, eventually I might think the problem is Jenne.

Feedbackee: <dumbfounded silence> 

You can see why it was effective.

Later in my career I was telling that story and someone in class spoke up and said that his father always made the same point only differently.  His quote:  "If everyone you know is an asshole, the asshole is probably you."

Isn't that great?

I mean, depending on your perspective.

MORE ABOUT THE ARTICHOKE

I have to believe I'm not the only person out there confused by the artichoke.  Instead of starting a support group (which I seriously considered doing yesterday afternoon) I'm writing down my experience.  Maybe others will speak out.

Like anyone faced with a cooking challenge, I first went to my mother's recipe box.  All of you who know my mother can stop laughing now.  I was surprise to find there were no mentions of artichokes in the box.  No artichoke dip.  No artichoke sauce.  No salads with a garnish of artichoke.  I did, however, find a recipe for how to boil water.  It was in my father's handwriting.  This is not a joke.

After that, I went to the next sensible place - the Internet.  Yes, I googled the artichoke.  Guess how many hits I got.  Guess.

About 2,660,000.  I put the about on there because that's what Google says. I guess that number is give or take a million or so.

So I decided to narrow it down.  "Recipe for artichoke" gave me about a million and a half hits.  Still a little overwhelming so I tried "how to cook an artichoke the easy way"  and got that number down to about 366,000.  (In between there I tried some other searches.  One of which only came back with one hit.  Upon further inspection I realized I had misspelled both "steam" and "artichoke".  Google: did you mean steam artichoke?  Me:  duh.)

Eventually I found a recipe to cook the bastard. Now, keep in mind, I'm a smart woman.  I have degrees and all of that.  I've fixed tractors and old phonographs in my time - so the fact that I had trouble with an artichoke recipe is disheartening to me.

First it said: Cut off the top third of the artichoke.

Right off the bat, I had trouble.  Um .. have you seen an artichoke?  The part that seems to be the top doesn't seem like I should be cutting it off.  I mean it is very ... um ... organic.  You know it isn't like it has a solid THIRD to speak of.  It's all sticking out and such.  It was like being asked to cut off the top third of a jellyfish.  How EXACTLY do I figure out where to make the cut?  I didn't know.  I view it from all angles.  Eventually I figured it can't be that hard so I grabbed it round the middle and hacked the pointy top off.  It, in turn, put some kind of thorny thing in my thumb.  We parted ways for a few minutes after that.

The next step said to cut off the stem.  I know what a stem is but I wasn't keen about a rematch.  I got wise this time and put an oven mitt on the hand I was going to use to hold the artichoke down.  I approached with this hand behind my back.  One quick slice and it was over.  I moved on to step three.

Which said: Bend back dark green outer leaves and snap off until only pale green leaves remain. Cut any dark green areas off base.

Those are leaves?  Huh.  Well, couple of problems here.  1) The artichoke leaves don't suddenly turn colors.  It's a gradual thing.  I was unable to tell where the "dark green outer leaves" ended and the "pale green" leaves began.  I couldn't tell if I was leaving too many leaves or snatching the poor thing bald-headed.  I began to feel guilty at this point and apologized to the artichoke.  And 2) the instructions said to cut off any dark green areas off base.  What's the base?  I'm assuming it's the thing the artichoke is going to sit on but didn't I just get done removing all the dark green leaves?  Unsure how to proceed, I did what any one with half a brain who's taken the SAT would do, I skipped this step to return to at a later time.

Then it said: If the artichokes have little thorns on the end of the leaves, take kitchen scissors and cut of the thorned tips of all of the leaves.  Really?  Do that now?  Don't you think that would have been a good FIRST step?  Regardless, I got out my scissors and began snipping the thorny part of the leaves.  I unfortunately forgot to put my oven mitt back on first and took another thorn in the thumb.  I could hardly blame the fella though - it's been a rough day for both of us.

I was then instructed to "plunge" the artichoke into cold water.  Plunge?  I don't know about you but plunge, to me, indicates a lot of force.  It also makes me think I'm going to have to hold it there, underwater.  Am I cooking it or drowning it?  Is it going to fight back?  Anyway, I filled a bowl and plunged away.  It went quietly.

The rest was pretty easy.  Put some water in a pot. Put the artichoke in the water.  Put the whole thing on the stove and bring it to a boil.  Cover and let steam.  Easy greasy. I went to the living room to wait until it was done.  It was then I began to contemplate the artichoke.  What the hell is it?  Does it grow out of the ground?  Does it grow ON something else, like on a stalk, like corn?  Is it housed in something else and then broken open and harvested - like a walnut or a lobster? I've never seen one in the wild so I have no idea.  For all I know there are packs of them roaming the desert somewhere that have to be wrangled up.

I have no idea how long I cooked it.  I kept going back to the kitchen and checking on him.  The recipe said it was done when the leaves near the center pulled out easily.  I burned my fingers twice trying to figure that out.  Eventually I got tired of checking on it and turned it off.

Later I came back and removed a leaf and ate it.  I fully expected to choke and sputter and heave into the sink.  It was delicious.  I was thrilled.  I kept removing and eating.  In the back of my mind I was wondering if I was eating the wrong leaves but I didn't care.  I couldn't stop myself.  I ate the whole thing standing at the stove.

When I got to the middle I began to get scared.  It was starting to look different.  The more I explored, the scarier it got.  Pointy, thorny things were folded up on other pointy thorny things.  They all looked like they were trying to hide something.  I left it there, in the pot on the stove for my husband to throw away.  I've heard they have hearts.  Artichokes, I mean, not husbands.