On the Importance of Houseplants

A houseplant is something no one consciously notices unless it is in bloom.

Think of a professional office space you've recently visited.  It could be where you work, a doctor's office, the mall.  Try to recall if you saw any plants in the foyer, atrium, or common areas.  Now, think of the executives in your company and their office space.  Which offices have plants?

Plants are barometers of professionalism and employee engagement with the company.  The presence of plants in the common spaces of an office show attention to detail and a value in company image.  Any company would do well to make sure 1) they are not artificial and 2) in good health with no browning leaves.  Think of the message either of those would send?!

Plants on a worker's desk are a barometer of that person's outlook.  Adding plants to your workspace improves your own mood and unconsciously makes others around you feel more comfortable.   But plants are something that need tending.  Well-cared for plants in a personal workspace show that you are engaged in the big picture and outlook of the company, and also aware that small daily gestures contribute to the larger goal.  Moreover, a plant in bloom sends a message to the company executives:  you are invested in your own success.  You have an eye to the big picture and are invested in the company's well-being (i.e. having plants on your desk to make it a peaceful environment), but will do what it takes to make sure you profit from it, too (i.e. you water and fertilize said plants to make pretty flowers for you to look at all day long).

What are you doing to bloom where you are planted?

A Day in the Life of a DINK

A typical weekday...

12:54am:  Go to bed.  Sleep uninterrupted until...
7:00am:  Dog stomps around bedroom and sighs loudly until she is fed.  Make another mental note that fish can't make noise.  Promise myself tonight I'll go to bed at 8-o'clock.
7:30am: Shower.  Clean, white fluffy towels warmed over the heating vent await.  House is silent when I turn off the water.
7:45am:  Dress in professional attire, including stockings, shoes and jewelry.  Apply make-up.  Style hair.  Promise myself tomorrow I will wake-up early to start running again.
8:15am: Drive to work.  Maybe stop and get a Starbuck's small chai-extra-hot-with-soy-no-water depending on traffic.  Run into BIL at Starbuck's if I do stop.  Listen to WXPN on the drive or a podcast of TAL or Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!  Pointedly do not listen to the news because I want to be in a happy place when I arrive at work.

9:00am-Xpm:  a blur of meetings, emails, phone calls, and panicked attempts to plan, research, and write regulatory documents interrupted by respites for tea with Sweetest Co-Worker Ever or a call home to check-in.  Promise myself I'll use this weekend to get caught-up.

Xpm-7:00pm: Work late or run errands, depending on work. Errands include:  drinking beer with my homies, returning impulse buys at Target, or grocery shopping.
7:00pm-7:40pm:  Commute home.  Mind still ablaze with work.  Listen to NPR News and Terri Gross.  Connect with distant family and friends on the phone while inching through stop-n-go traffic.
7:40pm-7:45pm:  Several deep breaths while sitting in the driveway to put away the day.
7:45pm: Warmly greeted and received at home by an adoring husband and Dog.  Give silent thanks for a blessed life.
7:45pm-8:10pm: Cook or eat dinner prepared by husband.
8:10pm-11:00pm:  Homework or work.
11:00pm-12:54am: Update blog.  Check Facebook.  Lay out clothes and computer for tomorrow.  Watch a re-run of Arrested Development on Hulu in bed with husband.


A typical weekend...

12:54am: Go to bed.
7:00am:  Curse the dog who can't tell a Saturday from a Monday.  Feed and take out Dog.
7:15am: Return to warm bed and quietly drooling husband.
11:36am: Wake up.  Give silent thanks I don't have kids.  Make tea.
12:00pm-2:00pm:  Domestic chores.
2:00pm-9:00pm: Errands/work/write/craft/nap
9:00pm-11:00pm: Watch Movie of the Week with Patrick Stoner on WHYY on Saturdays or Masterpiece Theatre on Sundays
11:00pm: Regret having wasted an entire day.  Deliciously savor the opportunity to do it again tomorrow.

Usefulness

I read another blogger's blog today in which she recommended that bloggers write about something useful to their readers.  Otherwise, she suggested, the blog is just a diary.

Even though this is my second blog, my purpose is very different my first.  This blog is place to practice my writing. (Please don't comment that you haven't noticed a difference compared to At The Bench version 1.0 b/c I'll be crushed.  Do you have any idea how much time I spend editing my posts!)  At one point, I stopped blogging in version 1.0 b/c the vernacular I used was contaminating how I wrote at work.  In At The Bench version 2.0 (which is this), I'm raising the bar of my writing on the blog.

Of course, crafting blog posts at 12:30am doesn't make for good writing or good vernacular :)

I'll ponder ("yeah! you ponder!") improving my writing while being generous to my audience by finding useful things to blog about.  Suggestions are always welcome.  Please leave your ideas at the beep.

Alien Nausea

Scout (aka Lumpy aka Pickle aka Stinky) has been puking her little guts out all afternoon.  It's hard on her (obviously), but also hard on My Beloved who has to bear helpless witness to her lethargy and clean up all the mess.  Working in an office is a mixed blessing:  on one hand, um, ewww!  on the other, I'd like to be home to help out.

I do what I can. I stopped at the grocery store (see Rant #155) on my way home and picked up some hamburger (to be boiled for aforementioned dog) and some steak (to be grilled for aforementioned Beloved).  By the time I got home, Scout was ravenous and overjoyed at the retch(!)ed smell of boiling hamburger.  My Beloved was happy to have a hot dinner, but still pretty shook up.  While eating dinner, we started watching "District 9"in the hopes it would be engaging enough to distract us both from a very stressful day.  I was excited to finally see the movie because I am intrigued by the plot and also have a soft spot for the producer, Peter Jackson.  Unfortunately, I have such a sensitive vagal response that the combination of worrying about Scout, the smell of cooked meat, and the graphic nature of the film has left both Scout and I curled up in bed wishing the world would stop moving.  At least we have each other!

Time Machine

Mac has this great little feature called Time Machine.  It's back-up software for your computer.  I love it because it's so brainless: plug in the external hard drive and click Go.  Easy-peasy, right?

Except what I really need, apparently, is an honest-to-God time machine so I can go back two months and use this ridiculously easy software to back-up my computer.  Blurgh.

Re-Solved

So.....yeah.

It's January 23rd.

Might be time to get started with those resolutions, no?

You Don't Want to Shop in My Store

A hundred years ago, My Beloved and I used to take turns bringing the garbage out to the curb.  Because he's such a gentleman, to be nice, he often put it out for me.  More often, however, he put it out because I had forgotten and "Trash comes on Wednesday" was like a felt-tip marker on wax paper to my memory: it just wouldn't write.  Finally fed up, we brokered a new deal:  I would do all the grocery shopping, he would do all the trash duty.  And, lo, happiness reigned in the land of Joie de Vivre.

Until...

Until something happened to my brain and I stopped thinking like 93.2% of the rest of people who shop at grocery stores.  The logic used to layout the store and its bounty defies my reasoning abilities.  I try, I really do.  I shop with a list.  I'm even so OCD that I organize my list according to products found together (all dairy in one column, produce in another, etc.)  And yet, still I come home every Tuesday night cursing.  Am I crazy that I think Koolaid should be in the aisle labeled "POWDERED DRINK MIX" and not the aisle labeled "SODA"?  Where are the other 6.8% of the population who, like me, search for adobo chiles in the "MEXICAN" aisle and not among the "CANNED VEGETABLES"?  I miss items on the list that I just wrote down 30 mins before.  I walk right by the dried cranberries, all the while muttering to myself "cranberries, cranberries, cranberries" while scanning the shelves.  It's so frustrating.  I want to put down my basket and pitch a tantrum like a 3yo: "I can't find honey!  This is such a stoopid store!  Whaaa!  I hate it here!  I want my chocolate NOW!"

Can you imagine if I had my own store to layout?  Seriously, this is becoming one of my favorite fantasies.  In my store, organics would be shuffled in with the regulars.  Organic breads do not need their own aisle, people.  Bread is bread.  Raw materials would be organized together: spices, sugar, teas.  All the processed, fake food (things your grandmother wouldn't recognize) would be in a separate aisle all together and I would never go there.  Better yet, since I shop from a list but, apparently, can't seem to navigate a list and walk at the same time, in my store you could place your order online and then go to the store to pick it up.  (Wait...do they already have that?)  As My Beloved says, "I have issues."

Good grief.  You know who I am?  I'm one of those moronic turds-on-the-street seen on "Jay Leno Show".

Borodin: Quartet #2 in D major

I promised myself that one day when I had expendable income I would get me some violin lessons.  I've played classical musical on the piano all my life.  It has been a powerful emotional outlet for me, and good recordings of Chopin - my all time favorite composer - make my heart go pitter-patter.  Yet, the piano remains a percussion instrument and can never achieve the lyrical emotions of the cello or viola.

A hundred years ago, My Beloved and I were driving in the car listening to an NPR review of a new recording of Mozart for two violins and a viola.  The reviewer commented that Mozart, speaking generally, was a pretty up-beat composer...with the exception of this one piece.  And then they played an excerpt of the four saddest bars of music ever heard in all the world.  In seconds, tears were streaming down my face and I felt like I would never be happy ever again.  And then it was just as quickly over.  It was an amazing experience.

For Christmas, my parents - who have always fostered and fed this love of the classics - gave me a recording of select string quartets by Tchaikovsky, Borodin, and Shostoakovich. Without exaggeration, it has been YEARS since I listened to this kind of music.  And now (I'm listening to it as I write this) I can't imagine why I would listen to anything else?  Singer-songwriter (my popular default) is so obvious.  This?  This is layers of call/recall, excitement, chase, longing, playfulness!  It's like listening to a recording of Churchill, then listening to Dubyah!  It's like wine after years of water!

In particular, I'm swooning over the Nolturno: Andante mov't of Borodin's Quartet #2 in D Major.  Mom said it was used as a song in the movie "Kismet" (no longer available) for a duet with Anne Blythe and Howard Keel.  My mom chokes up thinking about how these two singers harmonized with each other.  (I get it from her :)  Turns out, Borodin wrote the symphony as a gift for his wife.  She is represented by the violin, he by the cello.  The liner notes proclaim this to be "one of the most exquisite anniversary presents ever given by a man to his wife."

skip to 0:30 and picture yourself watching your beloved across the room, caught in the vicissitudes of his world, as his beauty fills you to your fingertips and you are so full of love that if you opened your mouth to speak this music is the very sound that you would make.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

See that space above the shower walls?  And the gap between the wainscoting and the rest of the plaster?  That's 100% pure Bond-O, my friends.  It's like duct tape to My Beloved.  Gotta crack? Hole? Dent?  Bond-O to the rescue!  It's cheaper than plaster, safe when wet, malleable and easy to sand, and takes paint well.  Only one problem:  it smells like death.  And, thanks to chronic, long-term exposure, I am now so sensitized to it that I can detect one Bond-O molecule in a roomful of smokers. [Mayday! SEND VANILLA-SCENTED CANDLES!]

As we move closer and closer to a completed renovation, I pause here to express thanks again for a husband who can "love, shelter, and comfort" his family in so many more ways that I realized when I said "I do" almost fourteen years ago.

Example #2:  cut to me with wicked "lady problems" curled up on the sofa watching "Starman" (Thanks, Reed & Jo!)  Along comes My Beloved, after donating blood, mind you, with - not one - but TWO bags of peanut M&Ms, which I then proceeded to inhale like a child who's just discovered sugar for the first time.

Maybe it's just the sugar rush or the Bond-O fumes, but something about a Valedictorian, Summa Cum Laude using trigonometry to calculate the lengths of MDF while sporting holey-jeans and a dust mask that makes my motor purr!

CHASE!

Chase! Chase! Chase! Chase! Chase!

We are overjoyed for two of the best parents ever!

I'm Not As Funny As You Think

When I was a child, I loved to grandstand.  To work the crowd and keep everybody laughing and happy.  When we went to Hershey Park (a regular outing), I'd make a big show of crossing myself as I buckled into the loop-dee-loop roller coaster.  This always got a chuckle out of the old fogies in line.  [I realize now, in my 37th year, that those "old fogies" were likely younger than I am now.  I sincerely doubt you'd find me in line for the Sooper Dooper these days.)  Never mind that I wasn't raised religious and probably crossed myself incorrectly.  The point is this:  I was a ham.

Recently, I went to the movies with a friend.  (Yep.  Twilight, again.)  These "kids" came in a quarter of the way into the film and made a big ruckus.  I shushed them.  Later, some other adult shushed them.  And still they persisted.  As I sat listening to them, I realized they were being "hams" too.  (Takes one to know one.)  I left the movie to go to the bathroom (see note re: old fogies above) and when I came back they had scattered.  My friend informed me they spooked, thinking I had gone to get the manager.  Truth be told, I had thought of summoning The Manager on the way to the bathroom.  But then I'd decided The Manager was likely one of their peers and how effective would s/he be?  And, really, shouldn't a shirtless Jacob be enough to keep my attention through WWIII?

My sister wrote recently about how to deal with some foul-mouthed and ill-behaved teens.  I don't know the answer, truly.  After my own experience, I might just tell them "You're not as funny as you think."

10*F and Juicy

Today, we had my folks over for dinner.  I had a lot of work to do so I was rushing around like a chicken with my head cut off.  I decided to make some winter time chili (with pork [b/c that's what I had] minus the beans, out of deference to My Beloved who doesn't like them and to my co-workers out of, um, sympathy).  I dashed to the local grocery (10 mins) and came home with three gorgeous green peppers (among the ingredients).  As I chopped the peppers, enjoing the watery-green aroma, I was struck by this miracle:  fresh, green, juicy produce.  In January.  Ten minutes away.  Is this place amazing or what?

Couvade Syndrome

Scout is getting older.  Slower.  Blind-er.  She tires easily and quickly.  She sleeps a lot.  She gets confused.
Sound like anyone else you know? 


Years and years ago I found a list of Top 100 Thinks to Do in the New Year.  One of them was to write your own love story: document how you met, fell in love, and married the person of your dreams to save it for posterity, your kids and grandkids (or, in our case, my niece and nephews, or the poor sucker who has to purge all our belongings from our home after we move to an old folk's farm).  I haven't done this, although we have quite the story to tell, and I've been meaning to.  Last night I came across a blog, The Pioneer Woman, who chronicles in bright detail the meeting and falling-in-love with her husband.  It was well-told and motivated me to start my own version.  Except.... I can't.  I don't remember it.  I remember the moment that I knew I was a goner and the moment that I knew that he realized he was a goner.  And the first kiss.  And the first time he told me he loved me.  And the solar plexus punch of physical pain when I said good-bye to go back to school.  But, like, our "dates"?  Phone calls?  What we did that summer?  Gone.


This may be normal, it may be my own version of canine-human Couvade Syndrome.  But I encourage you to write your own story now before you forget.  Your kid may one day be interested in the little details.  The first time you laid eyes on him.  Where were you?  What was playing on the radio?  How long did it take before you called him/he called you?  The special jeans you wore That Night because they made your *ss look fine.  The perfume she wore.  The smell of his mom's cooking the first time you met her.  My older sister knew she found home when C made her feel better about running over an old woman with her bike.  Kid Sister knew it back in high school when J touched the small of her back the night they watched the stars.  I knew it when My Beloved made it snow on a bright spring morning.  What was your Moment?


I love telling Our Story, but with each retelling to new acquaintances, I get better and better at editing it for brevity and maximum impact.  There's a lot of film left on the cutting room floor.  Please, for Buttercup's sake, take the opportunity to make the Director's Cut.  Don't edit a moment.  You have an amazing tale of romance and true love to tell.  Your kids will thank you for it.

The Wind Blows Out Candles, and Kindles Fire*

This weekend has been brutally cold.  Temperatures are in the low 20s but for two days straight there has been a howling wind bringing the air down into single and minus digits.  My Beloved and I have been holed up, thanking our lucky stars to have heat and warm cozy mugs of tea.  We take turns braving the elements to bring out the dog who - in an act of perfect timing - has become really slow and finicky about where to drop her business.  When I go out with her, I try to hide from the wind, but there is no safe place.  Even on the leeward side of the house, the wind swirls and gusts and any exposed skin is quickly paled and bitten with frost.

The last time I remember this kind of cold, we lived in a very small town in rural Pennsylvania.  I was in 5th grade (6th?) and wanted to give my "boyfriend" the Christmas present I had so carefully selected for him:  a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure paperback (remember those? *sigh*).  (Writing this I just remembered I had asked one of my teachers what you get a boy for Christmas and she recommended a book.  Why I asked a teacher and not my own mother is a mystery.  Maybe I asked her, too, who knows.  I just remember the suggestion came from a teacher.  Continuing...)  I asked Mom if I could meet Boyfriend at the local park (about a 1/2 mile walk?), but she refused citing the risk of exposure.  Wise woman, my mom.  Me?  Not so much.  Fearless for the sake of love, I left the house anyway.  All told, the walk and exchange took less than an hour.  I got an ice cream headache from the wind and my eyes teared incessantly.  Boyfriend gave me a homemade bracelet with my name (you know those white beads with the letters in black outline?  macrame bracelet; very early 80's) which I thought so precious that I was immediately ashamed of the un-romantic gesture of a book.  One, it turned out, he already had.  And then we went back to our respective homes.  The end.  Of the romantic moment I had built up in my mind and consequently, later, our "going steady."

* quote from François de la Rochefoucauld