Category: 2014

All posts published in 2014

2014, character, Christian life, family, inspiration, life

The circle of praise…

circle of praise blog

 

My son just got offered a promotion. It would mean working more hours in a congested city away from those he loves, but he is proud of the offer and should be. In his case, a promotion means a significant raise and a leadership role in his profession. It is a vote of confidence, a round of applause, a hat’s off, and any other idiom that means “good job!” His company is offering him praise in a tangible way.

And a chance to get his parents’ affirmation.

He called both my husband and me to give us the news individually. He then visited us at home and gave us more details. It was THE topic of conversation through the weekend. Why? In addition to our advice, my son wanted our praise.

Likewise, my youngest son, knowing that his older brother was coming to visit, casually placed his last two trophies earned on the coffee table. In May, he had been awarded “Best Pitcher” from the varsity baseball coach; the next day he was named “Best Actor” for his role as the Beast in “Beauty and the Beast.”

He has since graduated from high school and begun college, but he thought enough of those accolades to get them from his bedroom and place them conspicuously in the family room where they were sure to be seen.

When his older brother didn’t seem to notice them anyway, my youngest son pointed them out.

“Did you see my trophies?” he asked, as he lifted them for his brother’s inspection while explaining their significance.

“You graduated, right?” the older one said, as if the significance of these trophies had diminished with the passing of a few months.

My youngest had just wanted his brother’s affirmation. I’m not sure he got it.

This week at work, the Marketing Associate began sending emails to celebrate the number of inventions that our office had licensed or optioned. My job is creating marketing campaigns for those inventions, and I was curious as to whether our marketing campaigns had influenced the various companies’ decisions to purchase the licenses to market our inventors’ ideas. Part of my desire to know is just good business: Does marketing make a difference? Is the paper campaign effective or are we attracting more potential licensees via our online efforts and social media?

But part of me wanted credit. I wanted at least the personal knowledge that my efforts had contributed to the numbers marking our company’s success. I wanted praise.

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2014, all in a day's work, education, life, memories, teaching

Dear new golden sick days…

Sick days, sick days

Dear new golden sick days

Sniffling and sneezing and hacking cough

Kept me at home on a rare day off.

Were I a teacher I’d go to work

Share all my germs, make my illness worse.

But the job I have now I can duty shirk

Without hurting a classroom of kids.

— (my revised, working girl version of the 1907 song “School Days”)

My current list of home remedies: coconut oil in lukewarm orange juice, hot tea with raw honey, apple cider vinegar, and cinnamon, and Zicam.
My current list of home remedies: coconut oil in lukewarm orange juice; hot tea with raw honey, apple cider vinegar, and cinnamon; and Zicam spray.

Yesterday I went to work even though I felt terrible. My head was aching, my throat was sore, and I knew I was battling something. But I had an afternoon meeting I didn’t want to reschedule, and I knew I could muscle through the day with a little help from ibuprofen and friends. My symptoms weren’t visually apparent, and I tried to keep mostly to myself so as not to share the joy. But when I mentioned to my supervisor that I was feeling a bit under the weather, she said, “Go home!”

I didn’t, but it struck me that I could.

I am a technical editor with eight hours of work daily. I get to work early and sometimes scrimp on my personal lunch hour because I like to get work done. But I have generous deadlines, an equally generous, perpetual pile of work, and I leave work daily knowing I did the best I could and that I can take up tomorrow where I left off today.

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2014, Humor, life, memories

Sincerely selfie…

I was hastily looking through my post-high school photo albums searching for a picture of me when I first wore glasses. Apparently, I wasn’t that proud of my bespectacled look, for I never found one. But what I did find, not surprisingly, was a “selfie” or, rather, an “usie” (a selfie for two):

2014-09-11 17.47.17

This photo includes me (at a slightly younger age) on a date with my beloved Bill. (My first husband died of complications from ulcer surgery at age 25, too few years after we shot this precious selfie while on a date.) We had too few photo opportunities — as we mostly dated long-distance via cards and letters and infrequent, expensive phone calls and even less frequent, expensive visits — and, though we had the occasional friend or stranger shoot a photo of us in those cherished moments together, we often resorted to selfies, our cheek to cheek “usies.”

Just looking at this photo and its caption brought back the precious memories — but it also made me laugh at myself. Not only was I happy to be in the photo with Bill (who became my husband), clearly I also was proud of my ability to shoot such a photo, for I included the “secret” of the shot in my caption. (I should have patented it. Obviously, more people have looked through my photo album than I thought.)

The photo was shot in the late 1980s, back in the days when a camera’s lens only pointed away from you. (Why do I feel the need to explain this?) If you were using the viewfinder on the camera, you were not shooting a photo of yourself. If you were shooting a photo of yourself, you were not framing the shot by anything but guesswork.  This was so long ago that we used film; we had no idea what we’d shot (or the quality of the shot) until we developed the film. This was also before such luxuries as one-hour photo developing, or at least before one-hour photo developing became affordable. 

The funny thing?

Though I shot this photo back in the ’80s, I didn’t put it in an album until 10 years later… and I still thought shooting a selfie unique and unknown enough to include the “how to.” Just ten years after that I would be putting together my daughter’s life album as a high school graduation present — and find I had to make it a two-volume tome because she had so many selfies of herself alone and with friends to fit within the pages. The first fourteen years of her life were in one album; her high school (and selfie) years were in another the same size.

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2014, character, exercise, Humor, inspiration, life

Sara Beara, not Yogi Berra…

Yogi Berra quote with background 2editedSara Beara.

That may be the first time I have typed that term of endearment, occasionally bestowed on me (and likely many other Saras or Sarahs the world over). But it never stuck. One of my nephews, when he was learning to talk, called me “S’ra,” which his mother then affectionately used for me at times. One of my nieces called me “ReeRa” before she could pronounce my name. But no nickname ever stuck.

Certainly no nickname that included “Yogi.”

That was reserved for baseball player Yogi Berra (and the cartoon character Yogi Bear, which led to a defamation lawsuit against creators Hanna-Barbera, later dropped when the producers declared the name similarity a coincidence. I have a niece named Hannah Barbara, just in case the producers want to file a suit against her.)

Yogi Berra, who played for the New York Yankees for nearly two decades, was born Lawrence Peter Berra but was nicknamed Yogi because he sat like a yogi while waiting to bat or after losing a game. Many consider him to be the best catcher ever, and he also had amazing stats out in the field and at bat. After playing ball from 1946-1965 and spending time coaching, Berra was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972.  Since Yogi played his last game of baseball before I was born, I admit I was more familiar with Yogi Bear than Yogi Berra, but my Bing commercial moment during yoga class this week — and the subsequent search that followed — has left me fascinated with this player.

This was my computer search engine overloaded brain at work during yoga (and, yes, I know I am supposed to be “completely present” and a mere spectator of those thoughts when practicing yoga). My train of thought:

  • I hate yoga. Why? Because whatever we do on one side, we will do to the other. It’s like the Golden Rule for exercise. “Do unto the left side what you did unto the right.” I personally hate knowing that something difficult on the right side has to be repeated on the left. “It’s like deja vu all over again.” Who said that?
  • [Breathe and focus, Sara. That is the key to yoga.] I hate yoga. Yoga. Yogi. Yogi Bear. Yogi Berra. Sara Beara. Nicknames. Sara Yogi Beara. Like never ever. Was Yogi Berra his real name? Yogi Berra. Yogi Bear. “Hey, now, Boo Boo…”

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2014, character, Christian life, Humor, inspiration, life

Four eyes or why I see clearly…

12 photos in glasses“How many pairs do you have now?” my friend Connie asked me.

(She hadn’t noticed I was wearing a new pair of glasses until I mentioned them.)

I had gotten this pair the day before in the mail. The mail, you ask? Yes. I “tried on glasses” via a website, where I uploaded my photo, looked intently at frame specs (ha! see what I did there?), and made a decision — after deliberating for two months.

This is the fifth — and, my husband hopes, last — pair of glasses I have ordered online for my current prescription. Five. For me. In just over one year. I know, it sounds rather ridiculous that a person would need that many glasses. Four should be enough, right? The everyday pair, the polarized sunglasses, and a pair of reading (computer) glasses for home and a pair for work.

It’s just that the pair I originally chose for everyday use kept stretching out of shape and threatening to fall off my face if I looked down or sweated, which I make a practice of doing, apparently. I wanted a pair of beautiful, light, strong, hypoallergenic stainless steel frames that would flatter my face and hold up to the wear and tear my klutzy self likely will deal them.

I think I got them.

Stainless steel frames with progressive, no-line bifocal lenses that are photochromatic and have a premium oleophobic anti-reflective coating for a mere $136.26 shipped to my mailbox in two weeks or less. Zenni, you should hire me to advertise for you.)
Stainless steel frames with progressive, no-line bifocal lenses that are photochromatic and have a premium oleophobic anti-reflective coating for a mere $136.26 shipped to my mailbox in two weeks or less. Zenni, you should hire me to advertise for you.)

Actually, I know I got them. I have been wearing them.

My first full day with the glasses, I walked the stairs at work — which I do often to relieve my back from the torment of sitting in front of a computer all day — and then slipped outside to walk for a few minutes, smiling because I was so silly.

“Did you just go outside and walk after climbing the stairs?” the receptionist asked me when I returned. He was utterly amazed, of course, at my physical prowess.

I then confessed the purpose of my mini jaunt to the outside world:  I just wanted to test my photochromatic lenses. The lenses are so clear when I’m inside I was afraid the manufacturer had made a mistake and sent me regular lenses. But to my delight, they turned dark outside in the sunlight (I took them off in the sun to check; I wanted to see their darkness rather than just see through their darkness) and became clear swiftly when I returned inside.

Amazing technology. I am not going to throw away my polarized sunglasses, mind you, but I will keep them in my car instead of my purse, trusting the photochromatic lenses to get me to and from the parking lot. No more awkward transitioning from one pair of glasses to another when walking from sunlight into store light. No more awkward wearing of sunglasses in the grocery store because I forgot my regular glasses in the car.

When I first started wearing glasses, I could see without them. Now, twenty years later, not so much. Just last week I had to have a friend open my locker at the health club when I returned from the shower, sans eyeglasses, because I couldn’t see the numbers on the combination lock. As much as I hate wearing glasses, I love being able to see.

Just this week I read a blog post by Alicia Bruxvoort in which she admitted rifling through her craft supply closet and using her hot glue gun to attach “googly eyes” and “wobbly watchers” to the salsa jar and the milk jug, tissue box, egg carton, and tubes of toothpaste. She wasn’t pulling a prank on her family; she was merely reminding herself that God was watching.

 For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chronicles 16:9).

Continue reading “Four eyes or why I see clearly…”