A Cure for Ella

A more newsy blog is overdue and forthcoming, but time is of the essence to post briefly about something far more important than what Steve and I have been up to.

My friend Sarah is participating in the Great Strides walk in Portland on Saturday (the 19th). Great Strides is the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation's largest and most successful national fund-raising event.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a devastating genetic disease that affects tens of thousands of children and young adults in the United States. Research and care supported by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation is making a huge difference in extending the quality of life for those with CF. However, we continue to lose precious lives to CF every day. That's why help is needed now more than ever to ensure that a cure is found sooner - rather than later.

Sarah's daughter Claire has a little friend named Ella. Her story is featured below (be sure to turn your volume up). Sarah and Claire are collecting donations for their walk on Saturday to help find a cure for CF and for little Ella.

You can help them reach their fundraising goals by clicking here:

http://www.cff.org/great_strides/SarahKennedy
http://www.cff.org/great_strides/ClaireKennedy

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

To learn more about CF and the CF Foundation, visit www.cff.org. If you are able to give, thank you!

The Natural Number Following 34 and Preceding 36

Google "35", and you'll find nifty trivia from Wikipedia like:

• In years of marriage, 35 is the coral wedding anniversary (uh, what am I supposed to do with that?!?)

• Interstate 35 is a freeway that runs from Texas to Minnesota (a drive I might punish Steve with if he buys me coral for our 35th wedding anniversary)

• 35 is the minimum age (in years) of candidates for election to the position of President of the United States (a position I can assume in a mere 3 years to enact further and more severe punishment upon Steve if he buys me coral for our 35th wedding anniversary and forces me to drive Interstate 35 from Texas to Minnesota with him)
  

Google "35 years old", and the oddities include:

• A Budweiser commercial showing how a clerk being diligent about checking ID can make a 35-year-old's day (darn, when was the last time my ID was checked?!?)
  

• A list of 35-year-old whiskies from Whisky Magazine, which exists to "celebrate whiskies of the world" (maybe I need to start buying whisky - or is it whiskey? - to test this ID thing)
  

• A Moscow news article reporting a 35-year-old man who underwent surgery to be relieved of what had initially been diagnosed as a tumor, but turned out to be the embryo of his unborn twin brother (gimme a whiskey NOW, or I will never recover from reading this article and seeing the picture attached to it!)
  

Google "Age 35", and this neat stuff appears:

• Lots of links to articles regarding pregnancy after age 35 (oh goodie, there's still time)

• Tips on how to stay young after age 35 (I'm betting the chances are lessened if one also has those previously mentioned children)
  

• More tips, this time on landing Mr. Right at age 35 (ha! same bet as above but this time I'm betting more emphatically)
  

• A website designed to help you meet and make a love match with an inmate who is, you guessed it, age 35 (a good backup plan in case Mr. Right is never quite landed, I suppose)

After I publish this post, I'll have to try all these Googles again to see if my blog appears. Happy 35th birthday, Steve! May this um, tribute of sorts remain in cyberspace for all eternity.

CSI: ND (Episode 1)

Just when you thought CBS had it covered with CSIs in Las Vegas, Miami and New York ... now, they're hitting North Dakota? Rumors are swirling that several cast members from the movie Fargo (including Frances McDormand, William H. Macy and Steve Buscemi) will be reuniting for the new series, their combined star power overshadowing the likes of David Caruso (CSI: Miami) and Gary Sinise (CSI: New York). My not-so-secret hope is that one episode actually guest stars Sinise as a sociopathic hit man who sends his victim, Caruso, through a wood chipper.

Kidding! (Except for that last part.) Besides, North Dakota is a state, not a town, so don't think I didn't know that. "CSI: Fargo" didn't exactly accomplish my purpose here, however, which was to create a nifty little acrostic for a new feature on our blog:

Customer Service Is Not Dead!

It's so easy to complain about poor customer relations, and I am far too often guilty of doing so. To help me achieve strides in my pursuit of greater positivity, I'm going to start reporting episodes of customer service ranking from PRETTY DURN GOOD to FREAKIN' FABULOUS.

Guest star: The Plant Lady from Home Depot

Action: I am carrying two ceramic pots that I picked up from the indoor selection of, you guessed it, pots. I wander out into the gardening area to peruse that selection, passing The Plant Lady who greets me warmly.

I find nothing of interest there, and wander back inside to look at potting soil. The Plant Lady has just hoisted a giant plant into a shopping cart. She sees me and asks if I'm finding everything okay. I have barely begun my search, but decide to let her point me in the right direction, which she does. I thank her and say something about just going to get a cart (since I'm about to wander off in the opposite direction of where she just pointed me). The Plant Lady immediately and cheerfully says, "Take mine!" She heaves the big plant out of the shopping cart before I can protest, smiles and waddles back out to the gardening area.

Rating: PERFECTION - What I wouldn't have asked for as a customer but most likely would have done as an employee. Lots of gold stars for you, Plant Lady!

A Crown for a Drama Queen

I hate going to the dentist. Hate, as in, it practically makes me go into seizures. As in, I hate it more than you ever could even though you also think you hate going to the dentist.

Going to the dentist finally became more palatable, however, when we moved last fall and I got a new one. Dr. Smith. Or as I like to call him, Dr. Fabulous.

"You've had braces," Dr. Smith said to me, rather matter-of-factly, the first time I met him. It wasn't a question, but rather an assumption.

"Nope," I replied, smiling broadly.

I've had this exchange with dentists before. I have tons of fillings from my childhood, which have turned into two (so far) root canals in my adulthood .. but by golly, my teeth are nice and straight and fool 'em every time.

"And they're so white and bright," he went on to say. (Were I a single woman with a vivid imagination, I might have let myself read a little "I wonder how they'd look in candlelight, say, at dinner tonight?" in that. Have a mentioned that I really like this dentist?)

I smiled more broadly.

"Do you bleach?"

I scowled. So much for impressing Dr. Delicious.

Thus, because I have, indeed, bleached my teeth in the past, and because my last root canal wasn't properly completed, I was sent to the dental lab for a "shade match" for my new crown. Today was that day.

I arrive at the lab and peek in the windows. People are bent over their work stations, busily working on, I don't know, teeth? It all appears very "employee only" and not where I should be checking in. So I walk back to the reception area and wait to be helped. The reception desk is quite tall, and I am quite short .. I can barely see the receptionist through her computer monitors and plant collection. She is finishing up a phone call.

"Can I help you?", she barks at me. At least, I think it's at me. I try to position myself where we might actually be able to see each other.

"Yes, I'm not sure if this is where I should be. I have a 2 pm appointment ..."

"Mary?", she interrupts, "I don't have a Mary on the schedule."

I look at her blankly. Is she talking to me? Or is she still on the phone? She's wearing a hands-free headset and I can't be sure ....

She stares at me. "Did you say your name was Mary?"

She must be talking to me, I decide. My mind is scrambling to figure out why she thought I said my name was Mary. "No", I finally manage to blurt out, "My name is Ronda. I was saying that I'm here for a shade match and I don't know where to check in."

"I thought you said your name Mary," she says flatly.

"I didn't say what my name was!", I exclaim, not so flatly.

She's no Dr. Smith, I grumble to myself. That man can understand every word I gurgle and gargle at him when he's working on my mouth. "Gllecchhh aaahhlggrrr", I'll tell him. "Isn't that fascinating," he'll murmur in return.

Ms. Charming instructs me to return to the lab. I do so, and am promptly escorted back to the reception area (as one apparently needs protective eye wear in the lab, and my $8 sunglasses perched on top of my head just wouldn't do. No working on teeth for me!). Thankfully, I am brought directly into a room and seated. "Oh, you have Or-ellll," my escort tells me, drawing out the second syllable of his name in such a way that I can't tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing. She scampers out of the room before I can clarify or protest.

Orell, as it turns out, is a portly, middle-aged foreign man who is balding on top but sports a nifty comb-over. He eyes me and immediately tells me I look familiar. I eye him and immediately decide he looks like a serial killer.

"Do you work for Kaiser?", he asks me. 'Do you kill people?', I want to ask him.

He doesn't say much else, except to grunt instructions at me in his thick accent: "Turn your head .. more .. open your mouth .. more .." I desperately miss Dr. Smith's velvet voice and his polite requests: "Can you please .. that's just perfect .. thank you so much .."

As Orell pokes at my lips and gums, I sit there imagining his co-workers being interviewed on the evening news, utterly shocked to find that he has killed multiple patients. "I just can't believe it. Orell? He's a little quiet, but he's so nice. He would never do anything like this!"

I finally complete my shade match, and then am forced to fill out a survey. Blessedly, it is short. I don't have anything nice to say. On the plus side, I now had something to blog about. And hey: completing it brings me one step closer to another dental office date with Dr. Dreamy, when he'll give me my new crown.

Now who else would treat a girl so good?

If You've Ever Eaten a Finger Sandwich ..

I'm not a big fan of either rap or alcohol (I know: how very square of me), but this commercial for Smirnoff Raw Tea is one of the tastiest bits I've ever seen! You'd be laughing too if you heard "Martha's Vineyard" and "hollaback" used in the same sentence. A few more lines to wet your whistle:

"No one's hotter than a New England gangsta"

"Fine tea in the parlor makes the ladies holler"

"Haters like to clown our Ivy League educations, but they're just jealous 'cuz our families run the nation."

Click here for your exclusive access to the Tea Partay, yo!

Christmas Cards and Sadness

"The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one."
The late Anatole Broyard, literary critic for the New York Times

This being my first blog in almost two months, I realize it should be light-hearted, and I intended it to be. But I experienced something tonight that I feel compelled to write about, and the other thoughts - of belated holiday cheer, a recounting of our recent bed & breakfast stay, renewed energy for 2007 - will have to wait.

Tonight I've been tying up the loose ends of our Christmas correspondence. One thing led to another, as it often does when I'm working on a "simple" project, and I came upon a box full of cards, letters and photos we received in 2004 and 2005. I decided, before simply tossing them, to indulge my rarely-emerged nostalgic side and read them all one more time.

I came across one from a woman who attended the youth group that Steve and I ran when we were in New York. A quirky, funny girl who, admittedly, was one of our pets. How things change! She has since married and had two children, and we kept abreast of her new life only through our annual Christmas card exchange.

I recalled as I reread their 2004 letter my feelings of shock to hear about her health scare that summer, a lingering sickness that they feared was leukemia but miraculously cleared. I then caught sight of what was to be their family website, realizing I had never checked it out.

Tonight I finally did. Written by her husband, it is a poetic and mysterious site which darkly hinted that she was no longer a part of their lives. "A new life", it said. "Soon, just me and the boys." My first thought was that she had, in fact, been truly ill and died. Or had been sick for all this time and was finally losing her battle with life, a fact he was coming to terms with for the sake of their children. How could we have not heard? Nausea crept over me.

Probing further, desperate for answers, I found an angry piece written about Christmas cards; how she hated sending them, how she ridiculed his desire to do so. The piece sputtered on about how she made taking pictures for these cards a miserable experience, and vacation a miserable experience, and most things a miserable experience. He spoke of vowing to never do these things with her again. His rant trailed off at the mention of vows ...

Divorce, not death. Though never said outright, it must be. She remains unnamed throughout his site, not much is said of her at all (certainly nothing pleasant), and she is conspicuously missing from all pictures.

It seems a logical conclusion when I summarize it, but the tone of the site is sad, almost devasted, and it reminds me more of mourning than anything.

And yet, that's how it must be. Divorce. A death of something. A period of mourning. Broken vows. Broken hearts. Lost dreams. Lost ways.

In retrospect, I knew this was coming. Not the end of their marriage, in particular. But the end for someone. I have thought often, inexplicably, over the last couple of weeks about the possibility of someone we know - friends, family - divorcing. I expected it to be someone we're closer to. I wondered how it would go - where they would each live, who would keep in touch with us.

There is a part of me - the same part that had this "premonition", of sorts - that wants to find her. To make contact with her. To let her know that she doesn't need to look at us as her former youth leaders who might judge her or condemn her for the "sin" of divorce. To assure her that we're so much more than that. That she's so much more to us than a divorcee.

Unfortunately, I only have her former address, where it appears she no longer lives. Even more unfortunately, I sent her and her family a Christmas card on Friday. If her husband has not received it yet, addressed to the two of them, he will soon.

We don't really know him. We met him once, shortly after they started dating. They met online, and we were dubious. (Yet who were we to judge; we who got engaged three weeks after our first date?) But now I felt compelled to make contact with him, as well, as he was about to get bombarded with our ignorant, cheerful Christmas greetings. So I sent him an email. Perhaps mostly because I couldn't find her. A brief one, extending our apologies for not knowing about the change in family dynamic, and for the inadvertent pain or hurt our card may cause.

Did I go too far? No farther than sending the card, I suppose. I don't expect to hear from him. I don't expect him to forward our card to her. I don't expect anything but to be sad about this for some time.

I have never before associated Christmas cards with sadness. But for our friend and her husband, their chasmic approach to Christmas cards became the parallel for all the ways their marriage was miserable, and all the ways she kept him from joy. Their 2004 card that I read with happy expectations tonight led me to a well of sadness. And the card I innocently sent the other day will inevitably bring him to the same place.

Having taken Anatole Broyard's quote out of context, he may well be saying that the effects of divorce on humankind overall, in this day and age, is no longer a tragedy. But in our own personal life dramas, I'm quite certain it still is.

#64: Pet Beeker & Crawford

For years, when I have felt overwhelmed, I have turned to the coping mechanism of sleep. When I worked at 911/Police Dispatch, I learned a vital new skill for being overwhelmed: pick the most important task, complete it, move on to the next. Repeat until the chaos dies down .. because eventually it will.

I often try to employ this new, more productive coping skill in my home life. Right now, I have a list a mile long of things to accomplish before November 18th (the date that I'm hosting an event at our home). About an hour ago, I found myself sitting on my couch, frozen with indecision and an utter lack of motivation.

I tried to put myself in "dispatch" mode .. to no avail. I didn't want to paint. I didn't want to shop. I absolutely did not want to do one more load of laundry. Unlike dispatching - where inaction can have disastrous results - all of those things could wait. Still, they niggled at my conscience, my to-do list calling to me from the kitchen - making my brain beg me for sleep, even though I wasn't tired.

I finally opted for neither work nor sleep; instead, I decided it was time to take the focus off of Ronda for a while. Truly, nothing brings me greater joy than making a difference in someone's life (or even their day) .. and luckily I know an incredibly easy way to do that each day. I simply clicked on the following websites and in less than 5 minutes, helped to accomplish some pretty amazing things.

The Hunger Site ... where, after clicking today, I was told: "Your click helps feed the hungry with the value of 1.1 cups of staple food. Today, you and others have generated the value of 90,810 cups of food."

The Rainforest Site ... where, after clicking today, I was told: "Your click has funded the preservation of 11.4 square feet of endangered rainforest. Today, you and others have protected the value of 579,883 square feet of land."

The Animal Rescue Site ... where, after clicking today, I was told: "Your click provided the value of .6 bowls of food and care to a rescued animal in a shelter or sanctuary. Today, you and others have generated the value of 50,550 bowls of food."

The Literacy Site ... where, after clicking today, I was told: "Your click, along with others' today, helps children in need discover the joy of books. Today, you and others have generated the value of 468 books for children in need."

The Breast Cancer Site ... where, after clicking today, I was told: "Your click, along with others today, will fund free mammograms for women in need! On Nov.03, you and others who clicked on the "Fund Free Mammograms" button funded 12.7 mammograms for underprivileged women."

The Child Health Site ... where, after clicking today, I was told: "Your click, along with others' today, provides basic but critical health services to more than 1,000 children. Each click helps prevent life-threatening diseases, restore vision to blind children, and enable child amputees to walk. Today, you and others have helped 867 children with your daily click."

Ultimately, not one thing on my to-do list will take only five minutes to accomplish. But in that amount of time, incredible things - all infinitely more important than uncut coupons - were! And all without being the least bit overwhelming.

Ahhh. I really do feel much better. Maybe, since I'm spreading the love, I'll go pet the cats for a while. That's gotta be somewhere on that long list ...