I’ve been letting work and people from the work world live rent free in my head this entire weekend. Starting Tuesday night and full steam ahead until this very moment.
I’m uneasy, anxious, sideways, and have a general unshakeable funk.
This is the feeling I get when
a) I’ve done something wrong and need to correct it.
b) I’m surrounded by toxic energy.
In this case the answer is c) all of the above.
I’ve worked in the garden, researched the way to make my ill feeling/looking plants feel better and taken long gorgeous walks that broke a sweat. We went and bought a few bird feeders for the yard and I’m excited about that. I’ve spent time with friends who knew me when, gazed out on glorious vistas, laughed and relaxed for consecutive moments. I’ve been good not to emotionally eat (not counting the leftover cornbread salad that I just scarfed for brunch) or to imbibe in the alcohol. I don’t want to waste any points.
(did I tell you I went back to Weight Watchers a few weeks ago? All is going well on that front. Maybe I’ll say more about it later. Maybe not.)
Bonus Mom lost her brother to fucking cancer this weekend. Bonus Dad has his melanoma removal surgery on the 3rd. As is with most things cancer related, I’m furious that both of these events are happening, and completely shut down on the entire issue.
However, underlying all of the above is this constant prattle of voices. Rewriting a meeting that happened. Rewriting another meeting that happened. Thinking about what I really want. Thinking about what is the root of this anxiety and unease. Trying to dissect behavior and choices and conversations to get to the real root of the funk.
It comes down to personalities that are extremely negative and toxic that are doing everything in their power to remove focus from the target goal of serving girls. It’s seeping into all of the other work that is happening and I am watching the last year’s work dissolve the way those giant buildings go down after the explosives have been detonated. One giant kaboom, then things just slowly melt before your eyes.
That’s what I see happening.
I’m at a loss to stop it.
I should’ve made different choices in the beginning. Maybe that would’ve helped.
Maybe not.
Right now, today, I am so sideways that if it really weren’t for believing in the mission of this work, I would walk away in a heartbeat. If it weren’t for the staff that I work alongside, I would walk away without looking back. I might give a big fat Fuck You to three or four people or I might never acknowledge their existence again. Who knows. It doesn’t mean that’s what I’m going to do. It’s just the space I’m living in since Tuesday.
Learning lessons. Managing expectations. Getting clear on what I need in order to live a life that isn’t consumed by toxic energy.
I guess that’s what’s happening here this weekend.
Really, I just would like a week or weekend away, where true relaxation happens, disconnection from the phone and texts and messages that come through that work phone. (Thank God I keep a real life phone too. I usually let the work phone die on the weekend which I believe saves my life)
Last night I got to sit outside in the glorious place with Jack and Sarah and Isabella and Julie and Mark and we talked and laughed and ate and spent time just being. In 10 days I leave for NYC. I’m holding on to those with both hands.
Just a few more days and this month full of crazy will be another page that we turn on the calendar. I swear this year, May has been the month that I thought for sure would kill us all in this house. Between Listen To Your Mother, the tornado event that served over 400 people, delivering the anti bullying program to 80 plus girls and getting Summer Breeze up and running, and a long four day holiday weekend with Mark’s family from TN and his family here in Norman…I am ready for a break. Some quiet time with no obligations.
It has been exhausting, for everyone here. Even the livestock are worn out. Naps are happening at the drop of a corgi. Literally.
I’m pleased we are on this side of it, that summer is literally right around the corner. I’m ready to dust out the trailer and get our “moment’s notice camp supply” box stocked and ready. I want outdoor movie nights with my friends and some time where there is no stress, no negativity or feeling judged. (That’s a whole other post that I’m working on. I don’t know if it will post here or if I will guest blog it on someone else’s site but it’s really such a bullshit waste of time.)
Anyway, I’m looking forward to some joy and laughter. Positive living. That’s what I’m looking for.
The good things that are happening? They’re pretty good! Go THUNDER!
Many of you have made a tax-deductible donation to send me Over the Edge for Girl Scouts! Thank you Thank you Thank you!!! If you would like to give, or if you would like to help promote this wackadoo endeavor, here’s the link.
Our allstaff meeting for the month is happening tomorrow. We will be spending the day at our camp. The one where we will build the storm shelter. I’ve never been so I’m looking forward to seeing it. Tomorrow night is my final (until Fall) CST meeting, and the thought of not having to do these meetings five nights a month makes me giddy. Everyone needs a break!
So as we roll out the rest of this week, finishing up a month that brought another amazing day of storytelling and fundraising for our local cause (we raised over $1800.00 ya’ll!!!) and major milestones in work and life, I look forward to June. I am ready for some weekends filled with friends and sunshine and travel.
First and foremost, Bonusdad’s melanoma scare has taken a turn for the good. His Pet Scan came back clear yesterday. No spreading internally. This was the best of the best of the best. He will have surgery to remove the spot off of his face and hopefully that will be the end of that book.
Second, WonderBoy is in a contest! He has decided that he wants to attend Nerd Camp and he up and entered himself into a contest for a scholarship. Of course, being 12, we didn’t *quite have all of the details correct. The voting continues thru May 31st. Comments and recommendations count. The top five vote getters get the scholarship. If you haven’t voted yet, please take a moment and go here and vote for the little nerd.
The thought of him a) being excited about something. period. and b) being around like-minded kids makes me feel like I did when I discovered the theatre. Maybe we were a bunch of little freaks, but we were also a band of brothers and that grew into family. For him to find his own little tribe at this point in his life? Priceless.
Third and finally, I have done something terribly ridiculous. The MOST ridiculous of anything. I’ve signed myself up to rappel off of a 244 ft building in downtown OKC.
It’s all a part of our Storm Shelter Campaign at GSWESTOK. See, we don’t have a storm shelter/safe room out at our resident camp. It’s way out in the boonies, a 20 minute drive from any humanity. One of our troops started this project after they had a weekend of camp cancelled due to impending storms.
After last year, storm shelters are at the beginning of every conversation in Oklahoma. If you are in the business of serving girls, of protecting and keeping them safe? Storm shelters are at the front, center and end of conversations. We have launched a grassroots campaign to raise $265,000 in 10 months that will provide a shelter and two passenger vans for our camp. The shelter will be built to withstand an EF5 tornado, and can be used for programming as well. It will hold up to 300 people, so we’re not talking just digging a fraidy hole. This is legit.
The final piece of this campaign has to do with my ridiculous moment. We are partnering with a company called Over The Edge. Check them out here. If I raise 1000.00 or more, and I’m one of the first 75 people to do that, I will rappel down the side of Leadership Square in downtown OKC.
Deep breath.
I’m pretty scared of heights. I’m really scared of falling. My hands are sweating right this minute typing this whole thing.
But you know what would be worse?
Not to try.
Not to help do my part to make this campaign a success.
Wanna help me? Go here. Any little bit will help! This is tax-deductible as well so there’s a bonus for ya!
Wanna join me? Go here. Sign up to be a fundraiser.
Wanna just come on down to OKC and watch? Mark your calendar for August 23rd and listen for the screams.
It’s been a big big week here in my little world. We have Mark’s family coming in from TN tomorrow. I’ve taken the day off, getting my hair done, cleaning the house. I got to see my best good friend Trish and the rest of the gang last night, got to see where she will be living come the end of July. There are more things happening here but this is quite enough for one post.
Thanks for your votes, for your money, for your support.
I hope you have a lovely lovely long weekend, the beginning of Summer is upon us!
I’m taking a cue from Elephant Soap and doing a Thankful Friday entry this week.
Because I oh soooo am, Oh SOOO Thankful.
The first part of this year has been spent at a kind of madcap pace, hospitals and major surgeries for Dad, funerals and grief, Listen To Your Mother, and two events on the work front. There were moments in the last three weeks where I couldn’t breathe. It was gurgling up in my throat, this overwhelming To Do List and it was choking me.
The production value that I expect and demand from the things I’m involved in…is high. And this past month I felt like I was arriving for opening night having never seen the script or been fitted for a costume.
THAT level of panic and stress.
Deep breathing and ambien got me through to today.
There are major things on the horizon, sure.
Mark’s big project Summer Breeze concert series opens Sunday.
Mark’s uncle and his family arrive at our house next week for a visit. They’re visiting the whole family of course but will be staying with us. That was unexpected, and while I was crossing my fingers good and tight to take the teardrop out for our first weekend with no concerts or Girl Scout functions for Memorial Day…family is family.
So the cleaning will commence, the middle room will finally get unpacked, we’ll drag the extra bed up from the basement. So much work to do before they get here. Sigh.
But I’m thankful for family. I miss mine so much, and would give anything if they lived here as Mark’s does. These out of state contingents are welcome here and I’m looking forward to meeting them.
This weekend also brings Trisha back into my breathing space. They’re here house hunting for a few days, and on Sunday night she and I will kick back on the lawn of the park, open a cool beverage and be transported into the magic of the Giving Tree Band on the stage. I’m sooo thankful for that.
Listen To Your Mother is wrapping up, post show tasks are getting checked off the list and that’s good. Just a few more bits, some banking and we close the book for another year. Heather, Julie and I are already talking about next year, about what we want to change and why and that in itself makes me giddy. I’m so thankful for this production team both local and national. There’s no way I would do this gig if it brought drama and grief.
This week brought finalization on the NYC trip. Our Hedwig tickets were purchased, my flight is booked. This is a “whorecation” (remember Taos?) and I’m giddy. As with most trips and a group of 13 people, not everyone can go, but Elizabeth will finally get to meet these friends that we’ve had for 4 years and it’s been almost 4 since I’ve been to NYC and soaked up the love. I’m beyond thankful to get back to the City, to be with friends, to see faces that I’ve missed.
It’s been a good week. Mostly in that we in this house have survived to see it. I’m thankful for all the good we’ve seen, the milestones and benchmarks we’ve achieved and for the fun weekend ahead.
That first day was a blur. Then 4 days later the tornados came. I look back on that time now and think…holy crap. That was one helluva on-boarding.
I haven’t worked this hard for something that I believed in this strongly, since I was auditioning and touring as an actor. (The benefits are better, in that there ARE some.) This job though is just more than that. I feel like we are truly delivering opportunities for our girls to create and dream and believe in themselves.
Sure we have those negative spaces where many people tend to live, sure we have stumbling blocks and big gaping failures. This year has been full of those for me. Even when I feel like I’m succeeding and managing expectations it turns out that I’m not really. So the learning curve? Still steep. But I’m navigating it better, and that seems like progress to me.
There are successes that balance out the failures. The reason we need to continue this work, to continue to deliver this program to our girls is glaringly clear. Just spend five minutes at a school around them.
“What are the boys doing? why aren’t we with them?”–4th grade girl.
“No one will talk to me in my group. It’s ok, no one talked to me at my old school either. I’m used to it.” –5th grade girl
“I hate her. She hates me. I am SO SICK of being here.” gulped through tears by a 5th grade girl. One has to wonder if by HERE she meant at the program, at school or on Earth.
Girls need to hear how amazing they are. Likely for some of them, the only place that they will hear it is from their Girl Scout Leader.
It’s as simple as that.
The processes and procedures required of a volunteer? Yeah. They exist and are sometimes enough to make one pull out their hair. But look at the end game. What’s the price you would put on giving a girl the confidence to make it through another day without anyone talking to her?
My job…the long hours and modest paycheck, the punching bag for volunteers that I seem to be some weeks, nasty emails and demanding texts that come at 10pm…they are the dark side.
The bright side?
Just look at these girls smile when you tell them they can change the world.
It’s been a week and a day since the curtain dropped on Oklahoma City’s 2nd Annual Listen To Your Mother Show.
I haven’t even had time to process the event yet, my real life work had TWO giant events back to back that I had to just jump right in and get finished. The second one was completed yesterday at about 3:30 pm. I stumbled home and managed to put together a salad and baked potato supper for us before crashing around 9:30 pm.
9 hours of unmedicated sleep is unheard of for me…and yet it happened.
And there in my unfuzzy, undrugged dream world was LTYM:OKC. The beauty of the stories, the sharp vivid color of the red shoes, the crisp sound of applause and the warmth of each embrace. It was a beautiful dream!
If you came to our show, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts! Thank you for buying a ticket and helping to support our amazing cause ReMerge! If you brought shampoo and soap and toothpaste to the show to donate, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts! The outpouring of support for ReMerge was the most beautiful and touching thing ever.
Our sponsors, both local and national, were our lifeline. I don’t think anyone truly understands that we could absolutely not put this show on without them. This is a volunteer gig for the production staff, we put heart, soul and personal finances into producing this show and we don’t get a salary. This happens because of sponsors and people who want to be a part of something that gets bigger and bigger every year.
THIRTY TWO shows went up in the past three weeks all over the country, and OKC was one of them.
In the aftermath of paying the bills, and sending the paperwork to national and getting the video uploaded to our rockstar team for our YouTube premiere, to sending thank you notes and debriefing for next year, let’s all just take a hot minute to think about the enormity of what we did.
We did this, we put this together and told our stories and laughed and cried and connected. We remembered and we wished and we now have new faces in our lives that are deeper than a Facebook friend. Ann put it perfectly this week:
Our fridges are empty, our inboxes imploding, the piles threaten to erupt. But let’s pause a moment and bask in the satisfaction of DONE and DONE WELL–DONE BEAUTIFULLY
That’s one of my favorite lines of one of this year’s LTYM stories.
Ya’ll, the show was amazing. The cast was flawless, and funny, and vulnerable, and open with their telling of their stories. The audience was engaged, and open and received each story as if it were a newborn baby, caring for it with the most precious sense of grace and awe. The combination of the energy from the stage and the audience was euphoric.
Everything was wonderful.
Thank you.
Our cause, ReMerge left the theatre that day with an amazing day of show donation and supplies. We are working on post show book keeping and I’ll announce our final total contribution soon.
I’m jumping right back into the fire and working fervherently this week on two major major major events for work. One is a community wide day of fun that is happening this Saturday and the other is a full day of teaching our GS anti-bullying programming to a school on Monday. This week is for those things. In addition to managing volunteer issues and daily chores.
We still haven’t had more than a grilled cheese sandwich in terms of home cooking in this house in over two weeks. I work tonight, but have high hopes for Wednesday!
So I’m gulping coffee, trying to shake off the LTYM hangover and dive back into the work week. I’m going to put some beans into it…and carry these stories with my every single second.
Here’s a link to our photos! Look at the beauty! Every print ordered? Sheradee is donating the proceeds to ReMere. How great is that?
Last week was a beast of burdens. Truthfully I think it was that way for everyone. In Girl Scout world, I can testify that no one was sane, or getting enough sleep, or feeling like they were going to survive.
I don’t know how many times we can blame this shit on Mars in Retrograde.
Projects and trainings and real life and deadlines and events. All in one week.
I got the opportunity to go to a Work Smart training on Wednesday night. Do you know about this program? It is PHENOMONEAL. I wish I’d had this knowledge back when. Check out The Wage Project here. We were trained by the founder, Evelyn Murphy. She was amazing. GS West invested in three staff members to be trained as facillitators, so that we can actually take this program and offer it to others. I want to take it to USAO immediately, we want to offer it as a professional development for our adult volunteers, there are SO many options for this program.
The training on the program was Wednesday night from 6-8pm. The facilitator training was at 8am the next morning at Council. I tell you this to set up the day.
Training at 8am that lead directly into our monthly All Staff meeting. I was late to All Staff because I took Evelyn back to the airport. It was at this meeting that I was awarded the EPIC award for working with Empathy Productivity Integrity and Curiosity. It was such a surprise and so sweet and nice and I didn’t even have a minute to thank people or bask in the honor because a few of us had to leave and drive downtown for an awards luncheon. GSWEST was receiving an award from OK Ethics for being a community agency that stands for and works with ethics. Or something like that. Several of the staff were asked to join as a recognition and I was one of them. I also got to invite one of my volunteers to join us. We drove downtown and as usual were running late so we dropped Shannon (the CEO) off at the door of the Chase Tower and we drove around looking for parking. We finally found a space and got inside and into the elevator with two other people and the doors closed. Buttons were pushed for the 34th floor to the Petroleum Club and we all did the thing you do in elevators. We got quiet and we looked up.
Then the giant lurch happened. Like airplane turbulence but almost worse.
And then nothing.
No movement.
We still had lights. We still had cell service. But we were not moving.
The woman in the elevator went right into panic mode in her most outside voice.
OH NO OH NO OH NO THIS ISNT GOOD OH NO.
There was a guy, Bobby, also in with the three of us from GS Staff.
I don’t know if I’ve always been good in a crisis, or if there have just been so many in these last five to ten years that I have just become aware that it’s a skill, but I went into that mode. Super calm, cool and collected. I opened the little emergency phone and pushed the button and explained to the voice in the box that we were stuck, 5 of us total, no one was hurt but we were not going anywhere.
She promised to call the technicians and be back in touch.
So then we waited. We waited. And we continued to wait.
The man and woman knew each other and were only talking to each other at first. I kicked off my shoes (I’d worn heels because we were going to a fancy lunch that had sauce on the menu) and sat down. I didnt care that my dress was on the floor. I opened my purse and gave out mints to everyone. We all texted the people we were supposed to meet, and began our social media coverage as well. My friend Phil gave us our hashtag: #elevatapocolypse2014 and that was awesome. We were so thankful that we had service. That would’ve made it so much worse. Poor Terree C. didn’t go to the bathroom before we left and it was the worst for her.
Conversations began around us all.
We spoke of Girl Scout cookies and our current political system and education system and the Common Core. Cyndi told them she was running for the House seat and that was some awesome discussion. It was fantastic to see her deliver her points and listen so vigilantly. Turns out the guy? Used to be the Secretary of Energy under our previous governor. He and I had met before somewhere, neither of us could remember, but we had friends in common. Conversations around Listen To Your Mother and girls in Oklahoma and little league and Overboard quotes and life in general filled our time together.
After about an hour I called back to the little voice in the box. She assured me that help was there now the OTIS technician was working on it. When I asked how long he’d been working on it she said, “Can you hang on and I’ll go ask?”
Sure. I’m not going anywhere.
“He’s been working on it for 8 minutes.”
And that’s when the lady started to get louder. She was loud talking about how pissed she was at this building and quite frankly, it did seem pretty shitty that no one was in contact with us, no one was checking on us and NO ONE started to work on the issue until we’d been stuck for an hour.
All of the ladies finally sat down. Bobby did not as he had on immaculate creme colored pants. Sorry Bobby.
More conversation. I passed around the mints and gum a second and third time. Because we were HUNGRY damnit. My hands were starting to get sweaty but I stayed focused. Loud lady was getting louder. Terree got out her gratitude journal and made her daily list. She and I were singing “stuck in an elevator..we can’t go up and we can’t go down” on loop in our heads and laughing about it.
We were in the middle elevator and so you could hear the ones on either side of us going up and down.
“ARE WE MOVING? ARE WE?” she would shout in the little box we were in.
No. No. We’re not moving.
And let me be clear, she wasn’t shouting on purpose. She’s like me. She has a naturally loud voice and with the nerves and the anxiety, it just got worse.
The box was starting to get warm. Really warm at this point.
Bobby called the voice in the box again. Because NO ONE WAS CHECKING ON US. He was pissed. Take down my number and get someone to call me back with updates.
Then the elevator did a big freefall lurch thing again and the lights flickered.
HELP US! HELP US! HEEEEEEEEEEEEELP US!!!! she screamed.
In my head she was this lady:
Things were boarderline panicky then because of the lurching and the yelling and the warmth. It was starting to wear on us that we’d been in there for two hours and damnit no one in the building other than Shannon, our CEO who was still waiting on us seemed to care that this was happening.
Then suddenly, the doors opened.
Terree C just dissipated into thin air and got to the bathroom. Like, seriously. It was some Star Trek shit that she did.
We were taken to the bottom floor, the concourse. There was no one waiting on us. There were no camera crews or representatives from the building saying, “are you ok?”
In fact, there were people in the concourse waiting for the elevator who started to get on and the lady yells NO! NO! NO! WE’VE BEEN STUCK FOR TWO HOURS IN THERE!!!
We hugged. We shook hands. It felt a little like the end of Breakfast Club, these connections were made that were not present before, and likely they would not be active again after.
As we made it up to the ground floor, once again there was NO ONE THERE asking if we were ok, except for our trusty CEO. Bless her for staying. The others had boxed up food for us and taken it back to Council. We laughed and talked all the way back to the office.
Membership department was in the middle of a meeting that I was supposed to be in, and when I returned there was much laughter as the story was retold.
But that’s when I kind of started to feel it. I had the sweaty palms, I was dizzy and had a horrific headache. Ann said that I was really flushed too.
For the most part? We decided that we did the getting stuck in the elevator thing the right way.
There weren’t too many people in it. 5 was the right number.
No one was pregnant. Or stinky. And no one threw up.
We never lost power or cell service.
It could’ve been worse.
My night finally ended after our Moore/Norman volunteer relations dinner so I got home about 8:30ish and I had work to do for LTYM rehearsal that is happening today so I worked on that a bit before collapsing.
Thinking back on it, I’m proud that I have the crisis cool skill set. I have no idea where it came from but I’m glad I have it.
Teachable moments are everywhere. So are connections.
The teachable moment for us was pee before you ride.
Mark and I had started building the container garden (Mark had started building the container garden) and Winnie and I came outside to see and I got so excited I focused solely on that and paid no heed to my dog. Probably ten minutes later we realized it and started the search on foot. Mark went back and got on his bicycle and I ran in and put on shoes and got in the car.
The gurgling panic was this close to
choking me when I saw two women walking towards my car at the entire other end of our street, holding a dog.
Winnie went on a neighborhood walk about ending up on the porch of the last house on the street staring into their home.
Relief and fear and relief and nausea filled me up.
This morning I got up before dawn. Sleep for me, was over and I just gave in. Is it a sign of old age? Likely. And the LTYM dreams and work dreams that chased me all night. Mark was still asleep but he talked all night so I know he wasn’t restful either. Anyways I made coffee and Winnie and I decided to plant the garden.
I got my hands in the dirt, loosened the roots of the vegetable plants we bought last night and created a new space for myself at this house. The morning was quiet and still and it was a moment of renewal and peace. It was holy.
I thought of Easter weekend and of my faith. I thought about John and where he is now and how I miss him. I wept with joy and profound gracefulness for this life and all the light and shadows that are part of the package. I remembered all those years ago when our downtown was scarred from the bombing and how that changed us.
And then I looked up and saw my garden. And my dog.
Misti Ridiculous 