Category Archives: For The Greater Good

Five days off and what do you get?

Posted on by
Reply

The title. As I was fin­ish­ing up mak­ing this week’s sched­ule a cou­ple of weeks ago, I handed it to my gen­eral man­ager with the phrase, “very soon I am going to require time off.” As the words crossed my lips I felt a welling of emo­tion and tears. While my boss is 20 years younger than I, her face became con­cerned and instantly asked if I needed to talk.

I surely did.

First let me just say how age is sim­ply a num­ber and that is the pur­pose of me point­ing out the gap between myself and my GM. Most cer­tainly younger, it is best not to assume the younger per­son won’t understand.

With that expla­na­tion out of the way, we set forth to plan a few days off for the lab man­ager who has been run­ning on all cylin­ders and some I didn’t even know I had since mid-January. I was con­sid­er­ing time in May. She thought more imme­di­ate and, with my newly writ­ten sched­ule in hand, began alter­ing it to suit my appar­ent need for respite.

Mirac­u­lously she made it hap­pen. As if a veil of bur­den being removed from my being, the weight came off my shoul­ders. For the first time in months the air felt clear enough to truly breathe. The shift in atti­tude was likely con­fus­ing for any­one who’d wit­nessed my near break downs when one thing or another didn’t go as planned or a piece of equip­ment sud­denly fails to operate.

Let us flash for­ward. Today is Sun­day: Day two in five of free­dom. Per my request, no one has texted or called from work. Gloooooori­ous. Fri­day night I stayed up very late (past mid­night) catch­ing up via Face­book with some­one I knew in high school. Ah, the joys of social net­work­ing at its finest. Seri­ously. You make of it what you choose. After sip­ping a cou­ple low carb mar­gar­i­tas amidst the chat­ting, it hit me like a ton of bricks that I was tired. We bid our good­nights and zzzzzzzzzzzz. And Zzzzzzz some more. I didn’t awaken until after 8AM. Rare for me to sleep in even if I’ve remained awake longer than 10:30PM. I’m weird. Sun­light peeks through the win­dow and tells me to get my bum out of a cozy bed and get on with the day.

And you know, on my days off I do not mind hav­ing extra time to spend relax­ing or what­ever my heart desires.

My first day off was spent goof­ing off and catch­ing up on favorite pro­grams On Demand with Man­cub. Then, the sense of ick began to take hold of me. The weather was quite dis­agree­able. Rain in the morn­ing with­out thun­der or light­ning. A lit­tle sprin­kle never killed any­one. With my new kicks on and lay­ers to ward off the chilly breeze, I set off with a newly down­loaded car­dio tracker and car­dio beats music app. An hour later I killed 400 calo­ries and walked 3.2 miles.

Yeeeeeeeeee! It was amaz­ing and head clear­ing. With each calo­rie burned I expelled neg­a­tiv­ity that had built up over the course of a few months. It’s not com­pletely gone, but it is decreased. Mostly, my exer­cise comes in the form of work­out dvds. Focus is solely on chore­og­ra­phy and form. Walk­ing is sec­ond nature. Aside from speed and force in stride, it gives the brain time to unload.

I want to go back to the music app for a moment. It’s sole pur­pose is pro­vid­ing BPM for walking/running. It allows choices from alter­na­tive rock to pop to open for­mat, which is what I used Sat­ur­day. Fitra­dio for Android must’ve known me. It played crazy mash up mixes with ‘80s tunes as the base with over lays of cur­rent music. There were some kooky blends. The tempo was ideal and inter­est­ing to keep push­ing me along.

One thing became abun­dantly obvi­ous. I need to do it more often. With days get­ting longer and tem­per­a­ture warm­ing, there is no excuse.

Here is a photo taken after the walk was com­plete. Using sepia and blindly shoot­ing from under the dan­de­lion, it gave a cool perspective.

IMAG0460 300x179 Five days off and what do you get?

Another shot, taken in a sim­i­lar fash­ion, was tweaked using another groovy app on my Droid.

PicsArt 13344419597021 300x179 Five days off and what do you get?

And a lit­tle more tweak­ing gives it a haunt­ing appear­ance.tmp 1334441267410 40 2012 04 14 17 08 45 328 300x179 Five days off and what do you get?

    When Do You Know and Other Meandering Thoughts

    Posted on by
    2

    For­give me read­ers for I have been slacker. It’s been God only knows how long ago since my last blog post. What started out in 2007 as ther­apy became more of a plat­form for me to make money, but that wasn’t really what Maris­sol­ogy aka Wild­hair aka Men­tal Origami was cre­ated for, you see. Just so you know, I did NOT make money and become the newest Jenn­syl­va­nia — Jen Lan­caster. Again, most likely to be blamed on the fact that every-freakin-body has a blog and, undoubt­edly, because I am a slacker. Exhausted help­ing the world see one hour at a time. There are days that I feel quite accom­plished. Then, a machine breaks down and sense of defeat creeps in. I’m not a flip­pin’ idiot, but if it involves wires and elec­tric­ity I am NOT in my wheel house of comfort.

    Any­who, I did roman­ti­cize that my life of trial and error in rais­ing a teenage son with­out sup­port from his jack­ass dad would some how have broad appeal and mag­i­cally I’d be rewarded with prizes and mon­e­tary ado­ra­tion. Hey, I even toss in the freak show known as my dat­ing life and search for a bra that will prop­erly lift and sup­port the gazon­gas. Yeah yeah, it goes back to being lost in a sea of blogs and lack of exper­tise (lazi­ness) in mak­ing this blog pop out on search engines.

    ::insert laugh track::

    The sole intent of this post is to vent and whine. The rules of this blog remain the same: My blog; my rules.

    While I can­not declare that I hate every aspect of my job, after six­teen years, it feels as if the shelf life has expired. But what should come next? I’m 46 years old. Oh, of course every job has ups and downs. Some­times it feels more downs than ups. It’s called work instead of fun for a rea­son. Then again, all over the web peo­ple are shout­ing out how they love what they do and blah blah ‘secret’ yada yada. I’ve been try­ing to pre­tend I loooooooove my job and know where I am is where I belong. Pop­py­cock! When instinct tells you to walk in and just flip off the place as a whole whilst declar­ing a big f*ck you! one might want to reassess the def­i­n­i­tion of hap­pi­ness.
    That is not to sug­gest I dis­like every one who works with me nor does it say that busi­ness is a giant vor­tex of suck. It isn’t. This is NOT about the cor­po­ra­tion or peo­ple. It’s about me MEMEMEMEMEMEME!

    Maybe all I need is a period of respite. You know, that lit­tle doo hicky some peo­ple take for a week or two. Uh, what’s the word? The Brits call it hol­i­day. We ‘Mer­i­cans call it a V A C A T I O N! The prob­lem is that in spite of my efforts to pull a team together that can man­age with­out me for a week, it seems futile. Do I just go and let them fend for them­selves? Force them to step up and han­dle what­ever comes their way? That’s how I learned, after all. Damn the tor­pe­does? If they can’t pull their shit together then it’s tough nuggets? The down­side to that the­ory is that if they fail, it will be my fail­ure. I’ll get the “how could you take time off and not have suit­able cov­er­age?” Right? Blah. Rock and hard place, meet Marissa.

    Now, on to the next vent of the morn­ing. I pride myself on being some­what emo­tion­ally sta­ble in my world of sin­gle­dom. How­e­vah! I miss com­pan­ion­ship. I for­get what it’s like to have some­one look at me as if I’d hung the moon and vice versa. Sure, that dreamy crap may fade, but how ter­rific is it while it lasts? That’s a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion. I need to have my moment of lala­land romance. Peo­ple on Face­book are con­stantly bitch­ing about their sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers who don’t live up to their promises etc… Not every­one expresses such dis­en­chant­ment, mind you. Some peo­ple actu­ally LIKE the per­son they mar­ried or date. It’s pos­si­ble that one day I could be one of those peo­ple. Oh, and while I’m on this sub­ject, please don’t patron­ize me with the “when it is meant to be, it will be” m’kay? There are times when that advice is appro­pri­ate, but not when I’m on a rant-a-roni. With my cur­rent state of mind I may threaten to punch you in the face. Hey, it isn’t personal.

    Did I men­tion that I am 46 and all that you have just read will later be blamed on jacked up hor­monal bal­ance? I won’t be able to deny it as once it is on the inter­net it NEVER leaves. This has all been quite ther­a­peu­tic for me. Get­ting it all out helps. Admit­ting that I am merely human is quite cathar­tic. The abil­ity to always rise above does not come eas­ily every time.

    The life I lead may look sim­ple and easy for those of you on the out­side. It ain’t easy to be me, but there’s no other way I know to be.

    553451 10150706189749508 788529507 8921899 1091639458 n 226x300 When Do You Know and Other Meandering Thoughts How I look

     

    Photo on 2012 01 25 at 19.43 300x225 When Do You Know and Other Meandering Thoughts The way I feel

      It’s all Greek to me

      Posted on by
      5

      All Greek yogurts are cre­ated equal. Well, that’s basi­cally what I was think­ing when I set out on my own taste test. How this came about was my favorite yogurt, Fage, was sold out. I pur­chased two quart con­tain­ers and decided I’d do a taste and con­sis­tency test. See­ing is believ­ing. Big ad cam­paigns, I found out, are just smoke and mirrors.

      The top three con­tenders are:

      Fage 0%

      0 main tab 922 300x174 Its all Greek to me

      Oikos 0%

      oikos 16oz plain 300x263 Its all Greek to me

      Chobani

      0089470001013 A Its all Greek to me

      As I said, I love FAGE plain, fat-free Greek yogurt. The con­sis­tency is thick and rich. It also tastes great. Yes, I eat it plain with noth­ing more than some fruit. No added sweet­en­ers. In fact, stay away from those pre-fruited vari­eties. Most of them use sugar or arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers. Bleah! I have found that Fage has the best price for the qual­ity. That’s what prompted me to buy it the first time. Plus, now my dis­count gro­cer is car­ry­ing it. So, it is even cheaper!

      CHOBANI sur­prised me with its super creamy con­sis­tency. The taste and con­sis­tency was sim­i­lar to FAGE but slightly more creamy. It’s ideal for a sour cream replace­ment. Both brands are, by the way.  Because of those fac­tors, it is ideal for eat­ing on its own. It’s a lit­tle higher priced than Fage, but if you find it on sale and in the quart, it is cost friends, naturally.

      Bring in the OIKOS. That’s the brand cur­rently using ‘80s heart throb John Sta­mos flir­ta­tiously intro­duc­ing women to the yogurt. Now, maybe I just picked up a lame quart, but the con­sis­tency wasn’t nearly as thick as Fage and Chobani and it wasn’t smooth. The fla­vor was good, but there’s a tex­ture thing work­ing against it. I wouldn’t eat it alone or as a sour cream replace­ment. Per­haps using it for a smoothie would be perfect.

      Absolutely noth­ing sci­en­tific about my taste/consistency test. Just my pref­er­ences and taste buds.

        Speaking Words of Wisdom

        Posted on by
        Reply

        Here I am again attempt­ing to take a stab at a weekly fea­ture on this blog. This inspi­ra­tion stems from an online photo album I started on Face­book that is enti­tled “Hell to the Yeah!” Some of the quotes will be heart felt. Oth­ers will be cheeky and snarky in their deliv­ery. Here and there (a lot, really) are empow­er­ing to women. Men will still be able to appre­ci­ate the sen­ti­ment, though. I mean, it’s not like I am forc­ing you to watch a chick flick or read my chick lit. If you have daugh­ters, guys, you’re surely wish­ing for them to embody inde­pen­dent spir­its, right?
         

        Oop­sies! I went off on a tan­gent. Here is week one of

        Speak­ing Words of Wis­dom

        408312 10150526705324508 788529507 8376559 1581006116 n Speaking Words of Wisdom

        Javier Bar­dem played the char­ac­ter Felipe. Yeah, it makes it all much more sexy now, doesn’t it?

          The morning after

          Posted on by
          Reply

          It is Decem­ber 26. For most of you, you’re prob­a­bly lament­ing it being the end of your four day week­end. After all, the day after Christ­mas is an unof­fi­cial hol­i­day that many employ­ers rec­og­nize. Lucky you if you’re one of those asso­ciates who gets to hang at home with the load of gifts you received on Christ­mas. As for me, I’m headed back to work as if a hol­i­day hadn’t even occurred. One day off and back at it! How­ever, I do have friends who didn’t even have Christ­mas day off. For some it hap­pens because of their career of choice, or for oth­ers they took what­ever job could get the bills paid and it just so hap­pens that work­place never closes.

          Ahh­hhh what the hell is the point of this blog post? I have no freakin’ idea. It seemed nec­es­sary for words to occupy the web page. GoDaddy keeps send­ing noti­fi­ca­tions that I need to pay up to keep my domain and web host­ing. Seri­ously, do I care any­more? I mean, when I wasn’t pay­ing jack sh*t on Blog­ger this blog saw a lot more action. Since I’m not mak­ing a dime off my blath­er­ing, isn’t it a waste of my hard earned cash to keep it up? Yeah, I think so. With the econ­omy beat­ing me up a lit­tle more each day, it has been nec­es­sary to eval­u­ate smart expen­di­tures over fool­ish ones. When $14.95 can be bet­ter spent on say, putting a cou­ple of gal­lons in the car to trans­port me to work or buy 3.5 gal­lons of milk for my teen age son, it would be wise not to spend it on a mem­ber­ship for some­thing that serves no pur­pose to my life.

          I need to vent, obvi­ously. There it is. The purpose

          .waste of money The morning after

          2011 wasn’t what I had hyped it up to be in my mind. Sure, it’s my own men­tal­ity that made it what it was, for sure. A lot of us are in the same boat. It’s been 365 days of ebbs and flows. Oh, wait. That’s just how life is? You mean I can’t always be some cheer­leader ‘my life is bet­ter than your life and your life can be like my life if you just sip on this Kool-aid?’ Sure, if that’s your bag, feel free to carry it. I, on the other hand, have to sip on my own cup of brew and be who I is! Again, some rev­e­la­tion that should’ve always been my phi­los­o­phy. Hey, I’m a late bloomer haha. In hind­sight, which is always 20/20, it has dawned on me that I did too much lis­ten­ing to oth­ers and not enough hear­ing my own voice. Tons of do this not that from well inten­tioned people.

          2012 is already set to start out with me suck­ing it up and mov­ing for­ward. Oh! Yet another bril­liant epiphany. With all the self-help ‘be a bet­ter you’ advice books out there, I think one of the things peo­ple for­get (me any­way) is to thine own self be true.

          What can you expect from me in the com­ing weeks? Well, I’ll let you know when it happens.

            Pass the Kleenex

            Posted on by
            10

            Man­cub and I have trav­eled to Spring­field for a wed­ding. The bride is my niece; one of my broth­ers daugh­ters. This excur­sion marks the third wed­ding we’ve attended in 2011. Third, but not last. The fourth will be in Octo­ber when a friend weds. Truly the year of commitment.

            Here’s a lit­tle known fact to peo­ple out­side of my fam­ily cir­cle: I have been the offi­cial wed­ding crier since my first flower girl expe­ri­ence in my sis­ter Karen’s wed­ding a bil­lion years ago. All of 6 years old, I sobbed uncon­trol­lably at the altar. Talk about a pathetic sight. To fully grasp what it is about wed­dings that makes me cry so much is fod­der for the psy­chi­a­trists couch. At that age my esti­ma­tion is fear that my sis­ter was being taken away from me for­ever! Of course, that the­ory doesn’t make sense when you con­sider the fact that I can cry at the nup­tials of some­one who is a rel­a­tive stranger. 

            After sev­eral years of see­ing myself in wed­ding pho­tos with smudged eye make up, shin­ing bright red nose and gen­er­ally look­ing as if some­one beat me up, I had to do some­thing. c31fc4f9c3ab40fa4cc2b21fefd652fc 700x550 Pass the KleenexWith FOUR wed­dings to attend in a year, I didn’t want ugly mem­o­ries of myself for the lov­ing couples.

            It is bizarre.

            As I have matured, it has become a smidgen eas­ier to stop the tsunami of tears. That is not to say I do not cry at all. Even though I got teary eyed at my own wed­ding in 1990, I didn’t sob. I should have RUN, but that’s for another day. So many things went wrong on my wed­ding day and the days lead­ing up to it I think I was just relieved it was finally com­menc­ing. Another instance where I didn’t lose con­trol was recently at my sister’s civil union. Tak­ing delib­er­ate steps to main­tain con­trol dur­ing the cer­e­mony was exe­cuted. I fol­lowed these three sim­ple steps:

            1. When music plays or some­one sings (before or dur­ing the wed­ding), start run­ning through a men­tal to-do list for work. A gro­cery shop­ping list or a tally sheet of all the peo­ple you believe to be morons are options, too. Just keep your mind preoccupied.
            2. Scan the other guests and find some­one who is cry­ing and laugh at them (men­tally) for being an ugly crier. If no one else is cry­ing, seek out the worst dressed woman and pick apart her ensem­ble as if you’re Stacy and Clin­ton from What Not To Wear. Yes, it seems cruel but you’re try­ing to save your­self from hideous wed­ding photo ops.
            3. Hum the theme song from The Fam­ily Guy any­time you feel the burn­ing sen­sa­tion in your eyes, nose or throat indi­cat­ing you are about to lose it.

             

            The last one is the hum-dinger of no-fail tech­niques for me. Shar­ing this infor­ma­tion may make me appear to be a lunatic or I’ll be given high praise. Oh, this is just for the cer­e­mony. Ask me to make a toast and all bets are off. Have you ever tried to men­tally sing some­thing while read­ing a heart­felt ded­i­ca­tion to the happy cou­ple? Nia­gra Falls, baby.

              Gratitude: My Saturday List

              Posted on by
              1

              As I sit here eat­ing my break­fast it came to me that I should share some things I am grate­ful for hav­ing in my life. All too often in my quest to be funny I lean towards the sar­cas­tic and cyn­i­cal. In an attempt to show you that I can be a smidge deeper than a pud­dle in the desert, here are 10 items that popped into my head in no par­tic­u­lar order of importance.

              1. Fage Greek Yogurt. It’s what’s for break­fast this morn­ing along with straw­ber­ries and flax seed gra­nola. Packed with pro­tein and low fat, my friends. It made for a pretty par­fait, too. See photo below.
              2. My job. Yeah, it’s kind of a stan­dard mode to com­plain about bosses and work con­di­tions, but thanks to employ­ment I’m able to exist in comfort.
              3. Smart­phones. Sure, they have their issues with apps that per­mit hack­ers etc, but hav­ing a Droid makes me won­der how I func­tioned before such possession.
              4. Cof­fee. All things in mod­er­a­tion. Cof­fee black; hot from brew­ing; sting to my upper lip as I take the first sip. That is when my day can truly begin.
              5. Funny co-workers. Yes, I work with some peo­ple who make me laugh until my belly hurts. I’ll focus on that facet of the job rather than the goof­balls who can’t seem to retain information.
              6. Sharpies. I love them! Even my high­lighters are made my Sharpie. I avoid office sup­ply stores due to the fact that I can­not resist pur­chas­ing the multi-color packs or new fan­gled vari­ety of Sharpie click pens.
              7. Face­book. Some peo­ple say it is the work of the devil. I, how­ever, have found a lot of sup­port and hilar­ity. It’s also been the venue of reunions both famil­ial and school related.
              8. My Land­lady.  She’s old school kind and thought­ful. They look out for me and Man­cub. Our home is very old and lived in, but I wouldn’t trade it for mod­ern and con­ve­nient if it meant deal­ing with a heart­less land man­ager. Yes, I’d love to own (with the bank) a home that is mine in name, but that day may not come for quite awhile.
              9. Witty and quirky sit-coms. If you haven’t seen RAISING HOPE or COMMUNITY, then you are miss­ing out. My son and I watch those shows and laugh so hard!
              10. John Hays. Yep, a real per­son with a name. He’s my Beach­body Coach, but beyond that he’s a true friend who, in spite of me being down­right bitchy at times, has proven that he’s not giv­ing up on help­ing me see Marissa as oth­ers do.

              parfait Gratitude: My Saturday List

                You ARE what you eat

                Posted on by
                Reply

                You Are What You Eat has been long used as a method to get peo­ple to eat bet­ter. I was a wee girl the first time I heard it. It clearly had lit­tle effect as our coun­try faces alarm­ing rates of OBESITY not only in adults but children.

                There are many causes — seden­tary lifestyles and ‘gotta get it now’ means of feed­ing our­selves are two obvi­ous ones.

                For many of us we try to cut back on the junk food, por­tion sizes, exer­cise reg­u­larly with lit­tle results. Well, take a look at not only how much you’re eat­ing but the kinds of foods you’re con­sum­ing. Yes, this requires a lit­tle fore­thought and planning.

                Look at it this way: Do you take care of your car, yard or pets bet­ter than you do yourself?

                After view­ing that video, I invite you to check out Darin Olien’s blog (co-creator of Shake­ol­ogy). He gives more insights and lists of foods rang­ing from alka­line to extremely acidic.

                My per­sonal take on the Amer­i­can diet is that what we con­sumed once in a while or ‘in mod­er­a­tion’ is now typ­i­cal, daily, with regularity.

                  “I want to be alone…”

                  Posted on by
                  Reply

                  In her husky accent Greta Garbo declared, “I want to be alone.” After exten­sive (Wikipedia) research because I had always heard she was mis­quoted, I found this quote which best sums up how I feel when it comes to my time away from work.

                  “I never said, ‘I want to be alone.’ I only said, ‘I want to be let alone.’ There is all the dif­fer­ence.

                  “You can­not have a vaca­tion with­out peace and you can­not have peace unless left alone.“

                  I put in my time 100% at ye olde grind. My pay comes hourly and not salary. Even if I was paid salary that doesn’t take away from the fact that time at home with my son or whomever else I choose to dally is my own. It’s not as if my role is so vital that my deci­sions will make or break a multi-billion dol­lar deal. I don’t need to be needed 24/7 to be assured that I’m appre­ci­ated in the work place. I trust that those who are on the clock will make deci­sions in the moment to get through the day. In the moment choices have to be made whether or not they are what I would have done in the same cir­cum­stance. Hun­dreds of skilled peo­ple are just a phone call away.  Peo­ple who are, at that point in time, being paid for their consult.

                  I’m vent­ing. Yes, that is what it is and now I can move on with my day off. What peo­ple don’t under­stand about me is that it takes tremen­dous effort for me to relax. Emp­ty­ing my mind requires just as much effort men­tally as rock climb­ing requires physically.

                  When I awaken in the mid­dle of the night because I had 24 ounces of water forty five min­utes before bed­time, going back to sleep is ardu­ous. My mind clicks on to what I need to accom­plish in the day; what con­ver­sa­tions need to be had.

                  It is irri­tat­ing to an infi­nite degree.

                  With that in mind, yesterday’s glo­ri­ous sun­shine and silly girl lit­er­a­ture helped take me away like the Cal­gon bath of the ‘70s.

                  After a spell out­doors, I came back in to get my ear buds so I could fur­ther tune out the world. My son, who appar­ently knows me and my sit­u­a­tion very well, asked, “are you able to relax? Is work leav­ing you alone now?” He’d heard me on the phone ear­lier. He knew by my expres­sion that I had not escaped duty. It wasn’t any­thing imper­a­tive. Surely with a lit­tle patience the ques­tion would have answered itself.

                  sunface4 30 180x300 I want to be alone...

                  I enjoy com­pany. On my terms. Do I want to be alone?

                  No, just leave me alone … unless you’re bring­ing a cheeky movie and margaritas.