The Goal Guy

My name is Heather and I have a life coach.  As a disclaimer, I should say this just started a week ago.  Otherwise you might take a birds’ eye inventory of my life and think yikes, how much of a mess would she be without a life coach?

I know you’re wondering what kind of handicapped I am to need a coach for the basic function of living.  It’s one thing to need a soccer coach or a reading coach, since those are skills we have to learn, but a “life” coach?  And, even more alarming, this man approached me and offered his life coaching services pro bono.  That had a major “charity case” feel to it.  It’s sort of like someone saying, “Do you want me to do something with your hair for you?”  I guess I just have that “fixer-upper” look about me.

But, after talking with him, I’ve decided to look at it more along the lines of showing potential.  Like the first time someone saw Michael Phelps swimming laps in the pool and said, “Hey, with the right coach, he could be great.” 

The other reason this came about is that a friend of mine at church is currently getting credentialed to be a life coach and he needed guinea pigs experience.  He chose me and a basketball player from North Carolina playing professionally in Israel.  We’re both supposed to be shooting 90% from the free throw line by March.

This life coach knew me well enough to know I’ve failed some “life tests” in my past and that I can be very disciplined at achieving goals when I stay focused on the right things.  And, just like anyone who’s ever met me, he can see that I’m somewhat of a flibbertigibbet and lose focus easily.  So, he’s offering to help me be all I can be.  (I may have actually joined the United States Army; I’ll let you know.)

My coach was finishing lunch when I walked in for our first official “practice” yesterday.  As I took my seat, I asked him five or six questions in under twenty seconds, and he said lesson number one might need to be learning to ask one question at a time because not everyone thinks and responds at MACH III like me.  They don’t?  Well, that explains some things then.

In case you don’t have all the answers either, I’ll share my findings.  “How is a life coach different than a counselor?”  Not that I couldn’t use a counselor, just wondering.  Counselors deal a lot with the past, working through things that have happened.  Life coaches focus on the future, on things that could happen.  Flying cars, of course, but also on what I could achieve on a personal level if I apply myself.  There’s an outside shot that those will be one and the same, but don’t hold your breath.

I also wondered how a life coach helps a person succeed.  Would this be a trust fund situation?  Did he maybe have an executive at Random House in his back pocket?  Would he be shouting at me in the gym when I felt like I couldn't do one more pull-up?  Does the pro bono package include him preparing healthy snacks for me?

The answer to all of those is, sadly, NO.  He is an encourager and motivator.  I set goals and he guides me down the path to achieving them.  Turns out they have to be realistic goals, like setting aside two hours a week to developing characters for a new novel or maintaining my weight, not things like moving into the Governor’s mansion by the end of the year or separating calories from Reese’s peanut butter cups.

And probably the biggest appeal of having a life coach is that he helps me achieve goals in every area.  Which means I can now fire my career advisor, weight loss counselor, family therapist, and sensei – Mr. Miyagi.  (His Karate Kid money only went so far.)

This year I got an agent, a mentor, and a life coach.  Depending on how you look at it, I’m either one babysitter short of a strait jacket or one bodyguard short of an entourage.

In other news, I’m now accepting applications for the bodyguard position.

A Presidential Debate

I’ve never used my blog as a political forum.  You’ve probably been able to ascertain that freedom of speech is almost as important to me as frozen yogurt, but the only “party politics” I ever engage in on here have been along the lines of “I’m having a football party and you’re only invited if you’ll cheer for the Giants.”

But it’s hard to avoid political conversations with a Presidential election rapidly approaching.  I won’t go into all of my personal politics and defenses of them here.  I just want to make a couple of quick remarks regarding this election and then I’ll take three to five pre-approved questions from the audience that my team of writers has prepared answers for.

Number one, I am so sick of Mitt Romney being criticized for his wealth.  Why does the media keep insisting he isn’t qualified to be President because he’s too successful and out of touch with “normal” citizens?  They are essentially implying we should elect some minimum-wage earning, modestly educated, underinsured laborer to our highest office just because that person could understand us better.  Really?  Then they should nominate the assistant manager of my local Harris Teeter to be President of the United States of America.

It’s ridiculous.  Why wouldn’t we want someone who knows how to grow a business and amass a fortune?  He’s good with money and our economy is broken, seems like a good fit to me.  And you don’t have to experience unemployment to help find a solution for it.  Jonas Salk cured polio even though he’d never had it himself. 

And even if Romney didn’t care about low-income families out of a spirit of humanity or moral obligation as a leader, he would still want to improve their circumstances because it’s guys like him (multi-millionaires) who are giving up nearly 50% of their income to support the government assistance programs that sustain (and at times coddle) these citizens. 

And, yes, Romney will give rich people a tax break, because he sees the injustice of punishing people for their success.  But even with tax cuts, wealthy Americans will contribute way more to the federal budget than the rest of us.  As it should be.  If Kobe Bryant paid 15% of his annual income in taxes and I paid 15% of my annual income in taxes, he’d be giving about 4.2 million and I’d toss in another twelve dollars.  That seems fair.

Number two, I don’t want to hear Barack Obama and his peeps telling us he needs more time to make that change he promised four years ago.  Four years is a LONG time.  Maybe not long enough to fix everything, but certainly long enough to fix some things.  Four years should be enough time to instill confidence in your nation that you are definitely the right man for the job. 

This isn’t about what Obama did or didn’t do.  It isn’t even necessarily a remark on this election and Presidency.  I just think that politicians can’t ask for more time to do what they said they’d do.  The length of a Presidential term was chosen because that’s long enough to make a positive impact on our country, long enough to achieve your goals if you’re capable of achieving them.  And if you do a great job, there is the option (not right) of doing it again.  A second term is meant for repeating successes, not still trying to accomplish the first ones.

And even if a President is phenomenal and we wanted to elect him a third time, we can’t.  Because the framers of our constitution realized that our country can and will benefit from changes in leadership, from fresh ideas and perspectives.

I don’t agree with everything that Mitt Romney has said and done in his life.  And I don’t agree with everything Barack Obama has said and done in his life either.  Honestly, I don’t agree with about half of what I’ve said and done in my own life.  But I’ve seen how effective Barack Obama is as our President and I’m not very impressed. 

If this was football, and oh how I wish it were, and our team had a man at quarterback for four years and we hadn’t won very many games, wouldn’t we put in a replacement quarterback?  Maybe we didn’t even have a losing record, but we failed to make the playoffs for four consecutive years and our fans were disheartened.  We’d try out someone new at quarterback, right?  We’d probably sign some new wide receivers and safeties in the off-season too.  It would come down to who on our roster impresses us and where was there room for improvement.

But one thing’s for sure, I wouldn’t discount a potential quarterback because he had only played in Super Bowl games and never thrown a regular season pass.  Or because he didn’t know what it was like to be an offensive lineman.  It’s not his job to be an offensive lineman.  Obviously any quarterback would want his offensive line to be successful, because his success is dependent on their success, just as a President’s success is dependent on the success of American citizens. 

A quarterback understands and appreciates the role that the offensive line plays in winning a game even if he’s never been on that line himself, just like Mitt Romney can understand the need for a strong middle class and the plight of low-income families despite having never been in those positions. 

I’m sure there are legitimate arguments for why neither of these men should be President, but Mitt Romney being wealthy and successful isn’t one of them.

Pro-Life and Anti-Histamine

We have had the most amazing weather here in Raleigh these last few days.  Sunshine that makes you smile, but not sweat.  Air that moves enough to tickle any exposed skin, but not so much that you have to cover every last inch of it up.  Each day lately there is a perfect cerulean sky with a few splashes of marshmallow fluff white for effect.  We’ve had no rain, no humidity, and zero volcanic activity which is an important part of any good weather pattern.

There’s only one problem with this welcome weather change – I’m allergic to it!  My body is designed for the extremes of 100 or 10 degree temperatures and the lack of sustainable horticulture that accompany them.  Because all of this 75 degree comfort and goodness is toppling my sinuses.

This happens every September.  I long for a break in the heat, a chance to wear jeans, an excuse for a sweater, all of the hallmarks of fall, which is just slang for football season.  But they’re always delivered with a side of sneezing and topped with watery eyes.  I’m usually crying because of allergies, though, admittedly, I’ve been known to do it over an early season loss by the Hokies or the Giants.

I tend to let the sneezing situation get pretty out of control before I take medicinal action.  Often to the point of, “Heather, oh no, what’s wrong?  Are you okay?  Did something happen?  Is it one of the kids?  Did Timmy fall down the well?”  I would interrupt the concerned party to reassure them that I’m fine, but I can’t because I’m choking on histamine and my own reactionary secretions.  (You weren’t eating dinner while reading this, I hope.)

So today I broke down and took my first Claritin of the season.  The box promised 24-hour relief of allergy symptoms with just one tiny pill.  Was it presumptuous to think that would be the 24 hours immediately after taking it?  Because I’ve sneezed another 217 times since I swallowed that pill, that lie.

Perhaps my naivety is assuming it meant 24-hour relief for me.  I mean, it didn’t explicitly say it would relieve MY symptoms.  It just said 24-hour relief of allergy symptoms.  Maybe someone else’s?  Maybe yours?  If you’re out there frolicking in this autumn preview, all wide-eyed and completely unaffected by allergens, then you’re welcome.  Clearly I’m fighting them for you.  Oh, and you owe me eighteen dollars for the Claritin.

Harmful Myths

I realize I’m not a wizened senior citizen or repository of all medical knowledge, but I’ve been here for 35 years now – enough time to make it around the block.  And therefore I knew that if a foot were broken, you couldn’t walk on it.  It would probably also be black and blue and hurt intolerably.

I’m not so shocked that I was wrong, thirty-five years is also enough time to figure out my own fallibility.  I’m shocked that I erroneously believed the “can’t move it if it’s broken” lie so thoroughly and for so long.  Do you know how many times my three kids have gotten hurt and I assured them their arm, hand, knee, foot, etc. weren’t broken because they could still move them and they looked fine?  Well, at least one too many.  Stretch has been walking around for eight days on a foot that is broken in two places.

She fell down about half of our stairs last week.  Not for the first time, but she did cry longer than she usually did.   But, for the record, my criminal one, she was already crying before she fell down the stairs because she suffered a serious blow to the head during a pillow fight she got into with her brother and his friend.  (No charges were filed in that case because the plaintiff hit herself in the head with her own pillow.  So glad I didn’t name that one Grace!)

No matter how many kids are doing something questionable that could end in tears, it’s always Stretch who gets hurt.  There could be three or thirty of them running at the pool, or jumping on the beds, or throwing things, but having Stretch take part guarantees the safety of the others because she consistently sustains the token injury.

After hobbling around for a day or two, she returned to her normal awkward, long-legged, uncoordinated gait.  I considered a trip to the pediatrician, but we go for so many obvious illnesses that I didn’t want to throw another twenty-five dollars at them just so they could say she had a sprain or a strain or a flair for drama.  And, as I already stated, she could move it, walk on it, and even skip when giving chase to butterflies or cupcakes.

But today we went in for the twins’ six year check-up, so I had their doctor look at Stretch’s foot because it was a little swollen and still bothered her sometimes.  She gave me a transparent look of reassurance as she suggested we get an x-ray.  A harmless little x-ray.  As a precaution, right?

When the orthopedic doctor announced it showed two small fractures, I needed a new kind of doctor that could prescribe me the antidote to being sick with parental guilt.  I failed one of my kids.  Again.  “God, please let that be the last time.  So, you know, make me perfect, please.”

I had three alarmed and very hungry children waiting for a good chunk of the afternoon on a pink cast to be built from her toes to just below her knee.  We tried to distract Stretch from the pain by discussing what we would eat for lunch.  Or dinner, if our ordeal dragged on much longer.  But all the talk of milkshakes and French fries made our growling stomachs louder than her crying.  It wasn’t helping.  Instead, we talked about where we might purchase her rainbow colored flying unicorn kittens instead, since Mommy blew it and desperately needed to make it up to her. 

The doctor said it really didn’t matter that I waited a week; the breaks weren’t that severe.  I reminded him that it wasn’t his job to assuage my guilt; he’s an orthopedist, not a priest.  “No really,” he said, “it was easy to miss and it probably didn’t make it worse at all to wait.”

“Oh yeah,” I countered, “even when her sister accidentally sat on it in the toy room this weekend or when her brother stepped on it trying to get around her in the hallway yesterday.”  Because she walks slow, because she’s crippled, because her mother doesn’t take good care of her!

“Those things aren’t great for a broken foot trying to heal,” he admitted, “so we’ll avoid them for a few weeks with this cast.”  He didn’t mention how to avoid making this same mistake again, so I guess anytime one of them says something hurts, we’ll go get x-rays just in case.  Because who knows how many broken bones they’ve already had that have gone untreated just because they could still move something.  Apparently, I’m only qualified to diagnose paralysis, not broken bones.

For The Love Of Reading

I feel like I just came out the other side of a sandstorm of school fundraisers, and birthday parties, and writing assignments, and my own crippling sinus infection, which probably qualified for medical research but not blog material.  Though, to be honest, for the last four days, a lot of my free time has gone into Greg Heffley and his repeated diaries about life as a Wimpy Kid.

My son asked if he could start reading these books last week.  Apparently they're all the rage amongst the literate third grade crowd.  I had my suspicions that anything that popular with little boys probably contained messages that are contradictory to some of the actual good parenting I've attempted, so I told him we'd read them together.

I was right.  The main character/narrator promotes laziness and selfishness and general dishonesty.  But, the fans are right too - he's hilarious.  I don't exactly have to force myself to read them.  I still can't keep up with my son though, who is currently holding two very nice librarians hostage until they deliver into his hands the fifth book in the series.  They promised him they'd call as soon as they got a copy returned or transferred into our library branch, but he wouldn't budge from in front of their desk, so I just left him there to wait it out.

We've discussed a couple of scenes in each of the books that I decided to use as examples of what not to do, but I pretty much gave a broad warning of, "If you start acting like Greg, you'll stop reading about him."  And, fortunately, the mom in the books, Susan, does some decent parenting of her own and tries to instill some values into her sons and the readers.

And I'm willing to talk through the bad to benefit from the good.  Because my son has never been this excited about reading.  He's never been this excited about anything other than sports and dessert.  If a sarcastic, scheming, sullen middle-schooler is what it takes to spark his interest in books, so be it.  Now I just need to find a series to bridge the gap between this elaborate cartoon and C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series.

Since Brainy is tracked out right now, we practiced some of the laziness this wimpy kid preaches and watched the first two movies on Tuesday.  Which, as always, aren't as good as the books.  But my son's reward for getting through four full weeks of nightly football practice (and tackling a lot of teammates to the ground) is that I'm taking him and a friend to see the third movie at the theater tomorrow.  If I can get him to abandon his post at the library that is.

Technological Entanglements

This is sort of embarrassing to say as a “writer”, but I didn’t own a laptop until last week.  I know most people over the age of twelve have one already, but I’m slow to warm up to advancements in technology.  I try new flavors of M&Ms the minute they hit the shelves, but that’s because I’m comfortable with chocolate.  Computers, phones, and Blu-Ray players baffle me.

I have to take this opportunity to mention that we owned a Blu-Ray player for almost six months before I realized it.  I was actually at a Redbox renting a movie for the kids and I said, “Oh, they only have this one on Blu-Ray.  We’ll have to pick something else out.”  Brainy looked at me sympathetically (because I’m mentally handicapped and he’s kind) and said, “Mom, we have one of those.  The white Sony player downstairs.”  Oh.

Anyway, my career is looking more promising, so my husband bought me an Ultrabook.  I would tell you that’s another word for a laptop, but I’d get in trouble.

I’ve been really busy lately, so it wasn’t until today that I had a chance to take it for a spin.  (Just kidding, honey, I handled it more carefully than I did our children as newborns.)  And, well, things didn’t go so smoothly.  I had the whole thing locked up inside of twenty minutes and I was probably crying out of frustration after ten.

First of all, I’m not very adept at avoiding an invisible mouse that’s playing possum underneath my wrists.  And I’m just typing along, crafting beautiful prose and whatnot and then the bottom falls out and suddenly my fonts change, or my margins, or I’m knee deep in a find and replace edit that I never even started!  Sometimes my paragraphs would go rogue and set themselves up like poetry stanzas.  For every three words I typed, I was hitting the undo button or backspace ten times.

And it isn’t just the mouse that’s sensitive.  The keys are too.  I was trying to think of the appropriate adjective for a thought I was trying to convey, and I left my fingers hovering over the keys for a moment while I looked up and pondered.  When I conjured the word I was looking for and returned to my document, there was half a page of Ls.  And don’t even think about breathing too hard near the caps lock button.  Or CapsLk as he goes by in Ultra circles.

So, I got this great gift and I can’t use it.  Not effectively.  Once The Voice of Reason unlocked my keyboard, I started typing this blog.  That was four score and a fortnight ago.  I’m hoping practice will make possible – perfect being too far of a reach at this point.  I had a similar learning curve with my smart phone when I got it for Christmas.  I still don’t take advantage of most of its features, but I’ve learned to use the ones I need, like checking the weather and quicktexts and getting gmail updates.

The plan was to use this contraption to blog, do my writing assignments, and create amazing works of fiction on the go.  You know, like writing the next New York Times bestseller on the sidelines of football practice or in carpool, obvious places for great ideas and inspiration.  But none of that is going to be possible if I don’t conquer this mouse pad.

My mother-in-law was asking me tonight if there was something she could get me for my birthday to go along with my new Ultrabook.  Why yes, some patience and an IT specialist to travel around with would be lovely.

Spare Parts

There are storage facilities everywhere and I’ve always wondered why there’s such a big demand for them.  Are there really that many people with homeless possessions?  Isn’t it just a way to pay rent without actually using your things?  Doesn’t that mean that you don’t really need those things?

Storage facilities were a mystery to me because I’ve never needed one.  But based on the prevalence of them, I assumed I was one of the few people who don’t.

Well, mystery solved.  Almost.  I still don’t know how so many of them end up abandoned and on A&E’s Storage Wars, where odd people come in and bid on the units at auction with only a glimpse and a guess from the outside.  (I’ve never actually watched Storage Wars, but I have friends that watch it and have told me more than I ever cared to know about it, so I’m semi-qualified to mention it in this blog.  Clearly I’m also “semi-qualified” to choose friends.)

But at least now I know why a normal person would need to rent one of those.  My brother, who is arguably the most normal person in my family, invested in not one, but two storage units because he’s moving.  He put his house on the market and it sold in the first week, sooner than expected, too soon to move into his new home.  This stroke of luck (who sells their house after one showing these days?) left him with three months of homelessness that he’s decided to wait out in an apartment.  An apartment that can’t even come close to holding all of their things.

So, The Voice of Reason and I spent two sunny and muscle-testing days helping him move, store, and arrange.  And I got my first experience with self-storage.  It’s a different game than Storage Wars, where someone wants to get everything out of a unit.  Our game was how to fit as much as possible into one.  Well, two.

It reminded me of my true calling as a structural engineer.  Because for a girl who has always loved to pack a trunk like I’m assembling a puzzle, this was like the world championships of that event.  Standing with one foot on the back of a sofa and the other atop a bookcase, I was able to drop rolls of Christmas wrapping paper into a cylindrical slot between workout equipment and a high chair, winning me the gold medal in acrobatics and mental acuity.

But all the while, I was wondering why a guy who has never wrapped a Christmas present in his life had so many rolls of Christmas paper.  I used to earn extra Christmas presents from him by wrapping all of his to other people.  

I had one of those he-doesn’t-need-me-anymore moments because I realized that his wife wraps their Christmas presents now.  But then I figured out how to thread his weed eater between the two kayaks and it reminded both of us that I’m still useful.

And that’s good.  Because if there’s one place you don’t want to find out you’re expendable, it’s a storage facility.  Someone could knock you off and toss your body into one of those units and it probably wouldn’t ever be discovered.  Unless those Storage Wars weirdos show up and bid on the leather recliner and mahogany table they see from outside and then get burned not only by too much wrapping paper, but also a dead person.  Because who needs more of those?

So, storage facilities exist for in-between stages of life and homicides, mystery solved.