I Know A Scintillating Star!

Perfect Moment:

Yesterday, I went to lunch with a friend. As we stood near the checkout, peering into a menu and trying to decide what to order, someone bumped into me from behind.  I’m not talking about the kind of light bump that leads to the usual startled, “Oops, I’m sorry!” but something firmer than that and with a lot more intent. I dropped my menu and snatched my purse from my shoulder, clutching it to my belly.  I didn’t have anything else valuable on me.  No pockets full of bills or even a watch.  “Oh, excuse me,” said my bumper in a haughty and far from apologetic tone.  She didn’t back up.  I turned, fire in my eyes, ready to do battle but instead of facing a mugger, I found myself looking into the laughing eyes of one of my favorite people on the planet!  My Little Sister and I embraced and laughed together and that was a perfect moment.  It was perfect because it was surprising and funny, but also because I cherish having friends who know me so well that they know exactly how to push my buttons and make me laugh at myself.  With friends like that, I know that I am loved all the way through; my quirks, flaws, fears, weaknesses and failings are loved as much as my strengths and talents. 

Factioids:

This month marks the 11-year anniversary of my first meeting with my Little Sister (it’s not her name, but let’s call her Star, since she is STELLAR).  

 

Star and I were matched by the Juneau Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) staff when she was 6 years old. 

 

We went on our first “match activity” the day we were introduced.  We bought sandwiches and snacks for a picnic lunch and Star insisted on carrying all of the groceries out to my car herself.  She wasn’t sure if she liked dogs, but she liked scary movies, so I told her I had a Big Black Monster in my car. She decided right away that she liked my dog Cavall.

 

During our first year as Big and Little, we invented our own clapping game that gets faster & faster until one of us makes a mistake or doubles over in laughter.  She’s an amazing young woman of 17 now, but we still play our clapping game occasionally.

Every BBBS match is different.  Participants are usually expected to make a one-year commitment to the match but many friendships flower and extend long beyond the first year.

From early in our match, it was obvious to friends and family on both sides, that Star and I would be a long match, perhaps a permanent one.  Our personalities always “clicked”.

We enjoy lots of the same activities and share a sense of adventure. 

 

I made certain to expose Star to plenty of folk music.  Each year during the Alaska Folk Festival, we went to a concert or two together.  Many times when we met, our match activity involved playing Peter, Paul & Mary, John Prine, Pete Seeger, Jim Croce, Simon & Garfunkle, or Nancy Griffith at high volume in my car CD player.  We always sang along at the top of our lungs. For two years, Star wanted to listen to “Wake Up Little Susie” over and over again as many times as I would let her!

 

I taught Star to enjoy onion rings.

 

I encouraged her to jump off the high dive and watched with pride when she made the leap the first time.

Star gave me one of the best compliments of my life the day she told me that I was “the funniest grown-up” she knew.

 

Whenever she spent the night at my house, I read aloud to her as she fell asleep.  Later, when she learned to read and became interested in novels, we took turns reading to each other.  I always handed the book back to her and made her read any gooshy romance parts!

 

Sometimes when I’m reading aloud to Star, I like to add details and dialogue that aren’t really in the book.  It’s fun to see how quickly she catches on to my game.

She never falls for my April Fool’s tricks anymore, either.

She can sing a dynamite and super-speedy version of “There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea”.  I taught her to do that.

These and a thousand other facts add up to a friendship that has shaped my life as much as Star’s.

Together, we imagine what our lives will be like years and decades from now.  I expect her to be surprising me and making me laugh well into my dotage.

 

Big Brothers Big Sisters is an international organization that matches and provides support to kids and volunteers who build friendships and have fun together.  These matches have significant and measurable impacts and you should go to one or both of these links to read about the impressive outcome data:

http://www.bbbs.org/site/c.9iILI3NGKhK6F/b.5961429/k.5D70/Big_Brothers_Big_Sisters_Fact_Sheet.htm

http://www.bbbs.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=9iILI3NGKhK6F&b=6550585&ct=11599799

What do you do to ensure your life is filled with perfect moments?

Surprising Dog Facts!

Perfect Moment:

Today’s perfect moment occurred while Jeb and I sat beside each other on the couch.  For a while, he was engrossed in gazing out the window with his back to me. Then, without warning, he stretched his neck and tipped his head so that, like a little black giraffe, he gazed at me upside down.  Then, ever so gracefully, he tipped backwards from a sitting position, landing in my lap and arms.

I’ve never been around another dog who does this but Jeb has since he was a puppy and it always moves me to a state of loving wonder.  It reminds me of some of the team-building trust games humans play where two or more people catch someone who falls backwards into their arms. 

Trust

Submission

Playfulness

Safety

Love

Dog Factoids:

• Contrary to popular opinion, dogs do have sweat glands all over their bodies.  Other than the sweat glands on their noses and footpads, however, most dogs don’t perspire the way humans do and the majority of their sweat glands function to help keep their skin healthy, rather than for thermoregulation.

• At least one breed of dog, the American Hairless Terrier, does sweat all over, and is reported to do so when stressed or overheated.

• Dog’s footpads, just like your own feet, sweat.  Just like your feet, they have a complex mixture of yeast & other bacteria that produce a distinctive foot odor.  Unlike humans, most dogs manage to cultivate a warm yeasty paw odor that folks associate with crackers or chips.  Alas, sweaty human feet don’t tend to smell like snack food!   

• A few years ago, a small study using 30 mixed breed family pets discovered that the direction a dog wags has a strong correlation with the dog's emotional response to current stimuli. Using video tapes and a variety of stimuli, the researchers concluded that when the dogs had a positive response (friendly, happy, eager), their wagging occurred mostly to the right of center (from the dog's perspective or a view from the back).  Conversely, when the dogs had a negative response (i.e. aggressive, fearful, cautious), most of their wagging occurred to the left of center.
• Dogs do not see the world in black & white. They see fewer colors than typical humans perceive, much like a person with red/green color blindness. Additionally, the colors dogs see are more muted than what we see.
• Although dogs are missing out on some of the colors we enjoy, they have far better night vision than humans because they have a mirror-like layer of tissue behind their retinas called a tapetum.  The tapetum is also the cause of "eyeshine", see photo below.

 

Peek-A-Boo!

Some of the easiest colors for dogs to see and differentiate between are yellow and blue.  Maybe some pups will buy my short memoir!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00C5UZ0AI/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/178-3211354-6725835


May you have a day filled with perfect moments!

Hello Spring!

 

 

 

 

Perfect Moments:

• It’s a breezy day in Juneau with temperatures in the mid-30’s.  The combination of the wind, the chill and the beauty left me breathless while I took the above photograph at Lena Beach.  My husband and I admired the view while Jeb danced up and down the beach leaving a half dozen pee-mail messages.  Dale admired the way the light sparkled off the surface of the chop and I contemplated the pattern of variegated blue hues in the waves.

• The skunk cabbage are finally coming up in Juneau which means spring really has arrived! Every year I get skippy and silly when I see the first skunk cabbage and TODAY IT HAPPENED!  My friend Barbara Morgan agreed to let me share her skunk cabbage photograph with you.

 

Factoids:

• While aboriginal peoples used skunk cabbage leaves to line baskets and wrap food for cooking (I’ve heard this makes for succulent baked salmon), you should NOT ingest the plant itself because it contains calcium oxalate crystals (toxic to humans, though apparently not to deer or bears) that damage mucous membranes and can lead to painful mouth sores and, according to some sources, death. 
• Western Skunk Cabbage, Suymplocarpus foetidus (yup, ‘cause it’s fetid) is native to western North America, but even those of you in the U.K. may have seen it because it’s been cultivated as an ornamental lawn plant.   
• Western Skunk Cabbage, also known as Swamp Lantern, has a distinctive musky odor that some folks claim is reminiscent of skunks and others folks of marijuana.  But don’t smoke skunk cabbage, okay?  The pungent scent of skunk cabbage mimics the smell of carrion to attract various flies that serve as the plant’s pollinators.

• The central stem or flower stalk of skunk cabbage produces heat (thermogenesis) which explains why you can find these canary-yellow plants springing up through patches of melted snow. During thermogenesis skunk cabbage maintains a steady body temperature, similar to that of a small mammal, at as much as 40F higher than the surrounding environment!  Scientists speculate that thermogenesis helps spread that sweet carrion scent to attract insects.

I hope everyone had a marvelous Friday with many perfect moments!

Neener-Neener: My Inner Child

 

In case you missed it, I published my memoir Head Buckets & Hashtags yesterday!  Whoohooo!  I'm still thrilled!  It's available on Amazon Kindle (readable w/free app on computers, smart phones & tablets) for $.99 through Wednesday, April 10th.  

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00C5UZ0AI/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/178-3211354-6725835

 

 

Perfect Moments:

These past two days have been chock-full of perfect moments!  Tuesday evening, as I worked through my (first of four) upload of Head Buckets & Hashtags to Kindle Direct Publishing, I grinned through a few tears as I chanted “I’m getting published, I’m getting published” to the tune of Neener-Neener.  That was a perfect moment!  What? Doesn’t every author have a scruffy, lifejacket clad inner urchin with badly cut bangs who sings about being published, to the melody of a familiar playground taunt?

When I finished the upload and accidentally hit the publish button before I was ready (I didn’t preview and it turned out I still had formatting problems), I giggled and thought, “It’s so easy to publish on KDP, you might do so by accident!”  Although I couldn’t correct the problem until many hours later (actually, three more downloads and almost a day later), that also was a perfect moment.  It was perfect because it was funny (to me, at least) and because a simple and uneventful upload of my very first published work would have violated my sense of how the world works.  Ya know?  Call me conflict habituated, but I’m at my best when there’s a challenge or barrier to overcome.

Today’s perfect moment came when I realized that with Head Buckets & Hashtags, I have already made an indelible mark on the world.  You may now do a keyword search for “head bucket” on Amazon Kindle and my memoir will show up!  I find that deeply amusing and it feels like I’ve uploaded a portion of my personal paradigm to the collective consciousness! 

Factoids: In which I answer questions that you haven’t asked but probably wanted to!

Q-Why do you have a scruffy, lifejacket clad inner urchin instead of a cute pig-tailed inner child dressed in a corduroy jumper and penny loafers?

A-The best way for me to answer that question is to suggest that you read my memoir! You knew I was going to do that, right?

 

Q-What the heck is a head bucket?

A- The “head” is a ship’s toilet.  When my family moved off our small boat and into the tiny float house that I describe in my memoir, we used what most folks would refer to as a “honey bucket”.  We also had a honey bucket…filled with honey.  We were accustomed to the nautical terminology and it seemed unwise to risk confusion so we called our piss pail a head bucket.

A caution for the faint of heart and those with delicate sensibilities, this next part contains a dose of reality! No, not scary.  Just slightly gross.

Long ago, right here on this planet, nobody had toilets!  At least on land, people had chamber pots, outhouses or the local ditch.  At sea, however, only the very wealthy and pampered used chamber pots.  Folks asked themselves, “What’s a sailor to do?” The answer was simple and remarkably efficient.  At the bow of each ship, near the base of the bow sprit (the funny sticky-out part that sailboats have in the front) was a small grated platform where sailors relieved themselves, and where rain and ocean waves naturally washed away the evidence.  All this occurred at the “head” of the ship; thus, the nautical term for toilet.

I’m sending you a plethora of perfect moments, don’t forget to watch for them!

 

Maiden Voyage: An Author's First Publication

Someone asked me a few days ago about what I've been writing for the last three decades.  They'd read my Twitter memoir and the story of how I decided to become a writer when I was a child.  This person figured that even an unpublished author should have written a dozen manuscripts by now.
It's a reasonable enough assumption except that life is so rarely linear.

I have, indeed, written several thousand pages, but you will never get to see those “early manuscripts”. 

                                                                
During my school years I wrote a moderate amount, mostly poetry and stories about wolves.
I majored in liberal arts and creative writing in college which, naturally, kept me writing.
Then, after college, I caught a major case of life.
I got side tracked and within a few years found a new passion; working in human services.  I worked in mental health, developmental disabilities, substance recovery and with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Alaska. I was head over heels in love with these jobs and the work was deeply rewarding; my enthusiasm for human services work easily rivaled my love of writing. Every single day, I knew that I was doing something that made life a little bit happier or better for the folks I served. And what amazing folks they were! People outside the field sometimes think I'm being disingenuous when I tell them that it was an honor to work with folks experiencing disabilities. Nope. Not a drop. I'm entirely sincere. If you want to meet people who have led interesting lives, are deeply courageous and reject superficiality, spend time with the chronically ill and disenfranchised.
Day after day, year after year, I was given teachers, some of them in the form of superb supervisors and colleagues, most in the form of my clients.
Why is it so difficult for writer's to gauge the quality of our own work? Maybe some find it easier than I do. I know I'm a good writer but I can never decide if I'm a good enough writer and this unanswered question has sent me into a tail spin more times than I care to think about. Not so with the work I did in human services. I'm by no means a miracle worker, I don't even have the education of a social worker, but I always felt a deep certainty, like a ship with good ballast, that I was more than good enough at helping people.  On the days that I made mistakes or errors in judgment, I always fell asleep knowing that in spite of my human flaws, I was making a palpable difference in the world.
Meanwhile, I was writing.  I wrote thousands of pages. I wrote treatment documents and progress notes and I did a dang fine job of it, too. Auditors and Medicaid employees praised my writing.  Reviewers at Yale praised my writing.  Supervisors praised my writing, though sometimes in exasperation because they would have gladly traded some of my writing talent for better time management skills.  Nonetheless, if you were looking for someone to interview a client, review assessments and develop a cohesive, person-centered plan of action that included achievable and measurable goals, objectives and interventions, I was your girl!  I am not the fastest writer and I'm nowhere near the most prolific but, by golly, I wrote dazzlingly beautiful treatment plans!

Now, though, I am finally writing for you.  Will the skills that I’ve honed over years of service provision and healthcare documentation add depth to my creative writing? Will I have what it takes to earn a paycheck as a self-published author? We have yet to see, you and I.  Now, you are my client, my supervisor, my reviewer and my auditor.  I can only do my best; offer to you what is in my soul and await your response.

Last night I uploaded my short Twitter memoir Head Buckets & Hashtags: An Alaskan Childhood In Tweets to Amazon Kindle.  I am giddy and thrilled and scared spitless.  You and I are shipmates and this is the maiden voyage of a newly built vessel.  Let’s see if we’re seaworthy, shall we?

If you would like to download my memoir, here's a link:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00C5UZ0AI/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/178-3211354-6725835

If you don’t have a Kindle and want to read Head Buckets & Hashtags on your computer, smart phone or tablet, here’s a link to a free application that you can download to make that happen:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771

I hope that you will give me feedback in the form of Amazon reviews, comments here and even tweets or email. If you appreciate what I’ve written, please recommend it to others.

By the way, my memoir is only $.99 now through next Wednesday, April 10th but the price will go up on April 11th!

A Change Of Pace 4/2/13

Today we will have a change of pace!  In other words, I'm bizzybizzybizzy like a bee.
On the agenda:
Spend time with a grieving friend who needs a few hugs and laughs
Supervise a doggy play date
Have dinner with husband and Mom
UPLOAD MEMOIR TO AMAZON KINDLE

It will be a fabulous day for me, filled with people, dogs and activities I love! I'm not, however, going to post Perfect Moments or Amazing Factoids today. Not to worry, I'll return to our little routine tomorrow.

In the meantime, collect those perfect moments, folks! And if you'd care to share them in the comments, I'd be over the moon!  Yes, that would be me, leaping about the solar system with joy!  ;-)

Happy New Year...In April!

Perfect Moments:

Instead of giving you a detailed description of a perfect moment today, I’m going to demonstrate an abbreviated version of my nighttime listing ritual for you…written instead of conducted only in my head!  If you’d like to refer back to the post where I described this ritual and why I started it, here’s a link!  http://mpeska.blogspot.com/2013/03/collecting-perfect-moments.html?m=1

Perfect Moments Past:

1-Fingers of mist entwined in tree branches in back yard two nights ago
2- Discovery that butt ends of sliced white onion that I planted in my indoor scrap garden are sending up green tendrils 
3-Sucker hole opened up and sent rays of sunshine through the window and the seven prisms hanging there which filled the living and dining rooms with dancing rainbows
4-Waking in bed to listen to the rain drum rhythmically on the roof
5- Placed several drops of cottonwood essential oil in a pot of water on the stove and filled the house with marvelous smell of spring

Looking Forward to:

1-Dinner and visiting with husband and mom tomorrow

2-Eating those homegrown green onions
3-Seeing recently planted thyme, basil & cilantro seeds germinate and grow
4- Uploading Head Buckets & Hashtags to Amazon
5-Smelling the cottonwood outside

Perfect Right Now:

1-After several days of knee pain, today am entirely without pain or discomfort anywhere in my body
2-Sipping and sniffing warm mug of spicy ginger “tea” made from fresh ginger root
3-Gazing out the window at bunches of small birds hopping around the yard
4-Listening to cell phone softly playing Louis Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World
5-Warm snuggly feeling of wearing my favorite red sweater that used to belong to my husband

Funny Factiods:

·         In 1962 Tanganyika (now Tanzania) had a laughter "epidemic" which began among a small group of boarding school children. Laughter is contagious, but this laughter was far more contagious than your typical case of the giggles.  Roughly 3/5 of the students at the school caught the hilarity!  The ongoing laughter was so disruptive that the school had to, temporarily, close down and send students home...where their contagious chortles infected even more people.
Some people laughed for days. Some people laughed for weeks.  Those affected complained of all the side effects you would imagine and one you wouldn't; abdominal pain, respiratory problems, fainting, weeping and rash.
Ultimately, more than 1000 people were "infected" and 14 schools were shut down (the original school re-opened & had to shut down a 2nd time!). Then, somewhere between 6 months and 2 1/2 years later (apparently, nobody can agree on exactly when) the epidemic evaporated.
 Scientists and experts don't know what caused this outbreak of mirth but many hypothesize it was mass psychogenesis. Psychogenesis is a collection of physical symptoms brought about by mental or emotional stress.
Laughter reduces stress hormones (cortisol, epinephrine & dopac) in the body so it seems to me like a particularly effective response to stress.

·         Many cultures around the world have celebrated the vernal equinox (spring) as the new year.  In fact, the Roman calendar observed New Year’s Day in March until 153 BC when Julius Caesar reformed the Roman calendar, forming the Julian calendar.  When the Roman Empire fell, many folks returned to celebrating the turning of the year during the spring equinox and continued to do so until the Gregorian calendar was adopted.  Some historians suggest that people in rural areas were slow to get news of, and implement, the Gregorian calendar and were referred to as April Fool’s and that this may have been the origin of the modern April Fool’s Day. On the other hand, a variety of cultures and traditions have celebrated prank festivals for millennia, some of which coincide with the vernal equinox.  

 

Anyway, HAPPY NEW YEAR!