Author: the outside lane

Happy. That about covers it.
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Things I Would Tell My 14-Year-Old Self

the outside lane

  1. Don’t get that haircut.
  2. Rebel by asking a friend to hem your skirt, rather than by hiding from Mrs. Potts in the nurse’s office.  The one will make your social life a lot better, the other will just make you have to work that much harder to pass Algebra.
  3. Be nicer to the boys who like you.  Regardless of what you’ve been told, they really are more afraid of you, than you are of them.
  4. You are not fat.  You are not even chubby.  However, you are short, and you will never get much taller.  Ditch the plans to be a supermodel now, and concentrate on something that doesn’t require so much length of leg.
  5. You feel like an outsider because every teenager feels like an outsider.  I don’t know why I would bother telling you this because it is impossible for you to hear me around the tidal waves of hormone washing through your brain, but it is true.
  6. Those girls you think you’d like to be friends with:  Go for it.  When you grow up, you’ll find out they wanted to be friends with you, too.
  7. Those girls your mother keeps telling you aren’t really your friends:  Listen to her.  It will save you a lot of heartache.
  8. Read more Voltaire.
  9. Paint more.
  10. Try to get some sleep, kid.

 

 

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Proud Mary

the outside lane

Here’s what I like about Facebook:  It gives me instant access to the wit and wisdom of people I would otherwise never encounter, and those people frequently make my days.  Right now, I’m thinking specifically about my friend, Mary.  She just made me laugh so hard that it lifted my whole being.  If not for Facebook, Mary and I might never have reconnected, given that she lives in another state and we haven’t laid eyes on each other since my sophomore year in high school.

The other day, I was listening to NPR and caught part of show wherein the guest was talking about how the internet had made it possible for bad ideas to go viral.  I have no idea what else he said because that sent me off on my own rabbit trails of thought, and I started considering how small the world is on the internet.

When we’re online, we aren’t bound to countries or cultures.  We are citizens of the internet.  Citizens of the world.

I have friends in Spain (hi, Isabel!), Australia (hi, Cat!), Canada (hi, Elspeth!), England (hi, Sandy!), South America, India, Germany, Russia…the list goes on.  And when we are interacting online, it is with an ease and comfort that certainly transcends a passport or a postage stamp.  It drives home to me that we are truly the same–just People.  Not Russians, or Germans, or Indians, or Australians, or Americans, or New Yorkers, or Texans–we’re just humans.

Of course, that made me worry about the humans who have no rights, and Third World Nations, and starving babies, and trafficked children, and political systems that treat their populations as currency.  And that made me sad.  For a few seconds I wondered if we could really be one nation, and if we could find a way to overhaul the world so that we were under a single government, taking care of our citizenry and helping one another to achieve success.  Then I remembered what was happening in the EU right now, and had a sad.  Then I remembered that we can’t even agree on Obamacare in this nation.

For the record:  As I have aged and experienced more life, and as I have seen people around me experiencing life at difference levels and for various reasons, I have come to believe that healthcare should be considered a basic human right.

But that’s all so serious, and Mary just made me laugh so hard that I was forced to shed the skin of the week past, and am now shimmying around in a new, sleek, happy set of mental togs.  To sum up: Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg, hello, Friends, and let’s try to help people who need it as we are able.  And also, yay for Mary!

Advice, Career, Style

The Difference 2″ Can Make

the outside lane

I’ve mentioned before that when I entered the workforce, my idea of the difference between professional dress and professional dress was the difference between where you plied your trade.  That is, my skirts were short, my heels were high, and I caused some ruckus for the HR group.  In fact, I was so oblivious about the hazards of my hemline, that when I was offered a little lap covering in church, I just thought it was sweet that they were giving me a blanket.  When I figured out that it wasn’t about my comfort, but the pastor’s line of vision, well, I was horrified, and my skirts haven’t been that short since.

I also learned a great lesson in kindness from the way those church ladies treated me.  No one tried to make me feel bad about my skirt.  No one even mentioned that it was an issue.  They simply offered me a solution that was comfortable to them, and comforting to me. 

You can’t really do that in a business setting–if your employee is flashing your clients, and your clients aren’t paying specifically for that privilege, you have to nip that in the proverbial bud.  But, you can do it in such a way that your employee walks away with his/her dignity*.

As far as dressing for the office goes, my personal preference is a 2″ Neck to Knees rule.  Nothing that is more than 2″ below the place where your neck meets your torso, and nothing higher than 2″ above the knee.  Nothing so tight that you can’t easily pull it out at least an inch from either side of your body.  See?  No dresses that are longer than 2″ above the ankles, and no trousers that are shorter than that (but DO NOT take my advice regarding trouser length.  That will just get you in trouble!  Ask Amy.) 

An old friend of mine had a theory about buying dresses.  “If you wear a size 6/8, then Work-Cute is a size 8.  Date-Cute is a size 6.  Always go to the larger for work, and tight-tight-tight for the date!”  She had two, identical polka-dot dresses, one in her Work-Cute size 6, and her Date-Cute size 4.  My then-work-cute-size 10 would just sigh and keep puffing alongside her as we jogged through River Legacy park.

It is fortunate that I don’t have any ego attached to how I look when I am working out because when Carrieanne worked out, she just got prettier.  She had this amazing, thick ponytail that swung like a pendulum, and she was a gorgeous tan that just flushed rosy when she was overheating.  This opposed to how I sweat like a swamp rat with my thin hair matting down to my scalp, and how when I get hot my skin turns red enough that observers frequently find it alarming.

You know, when I was a baby, my skin would turn so red when I cried, my mother actually took me to the pediatrician.  I’m telling you, when I get hot/angry/upset/laugh really hard, my skin is…  If it weren’t my own, I would find it fascinating to watch it turn colors.  As it stands, I just know I can’t play poker and that aggravates me.

 

*Ideally, dress code is something that should be covered during the interview process.  That allows a potential employee insight into the work environment, and gives him/her the opportunity to determine whether or not he/she is going to have to completely overhaul the wardrobe to adjust.

Chef Lane

Ups and Downs

the outside lane

I was in a training class on the 27th floor of our downtown location today.  Close to the end of our session, there was a loud bang, the floor started shaking, and black smoke started billowing past the window.  There was some concern.  I called B to see if he could Google and find out if my building was falling down.  Fortunately, it was not.  It was simply a matter of a food truck having caught fire down below.  That didn’t explain why the floor was shaking, or the loud banging we were hearing, but as long as the building itself wasn’t on fire, or falling down I was happy.

View from the 27th Floor.

 

While we were regrouping, I opened my email to find this:

Greetings ABC Cooking Show Applicant!  Thank you for submitting your pre-registration online for the exciting first season of  the new ABC  Cooking  Show.  We thank you for your interest and are excited to move you forward in the casting process. 

EEEeeeEEEeeeEEE!

Listen, I’m excited to have made it THAT far.  That’s pretty nifty.  Even if it goes no further, I’ll always know that my answers to their questions were intriguing enough that they found me somewhat interesting.  Yay!

So wish me luck and send me your favorite recipes, because if I do land this thing, I’ll need a cache.

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Bedtime

the outside lane

When Thor moved out of his crib and into a twin bed, I took him to Toys R Us and told him he could pick out a bed.  I thought he would be excited at the prospect of getting a race car, or Thomas the Train, or something else equally as huge, plastic, and attractive to children.  I thought that getting his buy-in, and letting him be involved in the selection process would aid in our attempts to get him to spend full nights in his own room.  I walked him down the bed aisle and he oohed and aahed over each, petting them, and considering them.  I asked, “So which bed do you want?”

“I don’t need a bed,” he answered, shaking his head and waving one hand at me, his face serious, but unperturbed.  As he toddled away from the beds, down toward another aisle, he called, “I have yours.”

I ended up buying him a bunkbed, because I had always wanted one, and he was terrified to sleep on the bottom bunk.  So I took the slats out of the upper half of the top, put them in the lower half and built him an observation deck, complete with captain’s wheel.  That way, he had a place to play (and put his animals), and he could see the ceiling.

Toddler Thor, looking down from his Observation Deck.

 

I’d like for you to guess how much good that did me.

We sold the bunkbed a year later.

Thor has asked if I could produce a sibling for him, so that he wouldn’t have to sleep alone in his room.  It made me remember how much I hated sleeping in my room alone, at his age.  It seemed so unfair that my parents got to stay in their room together, but I had to be shut out, alone, left to my own devices.  The life of an Only Child.

Y’all, I still want a bunkbed.