Trainwreck-Celebrating Holidays as a Wiltsey – Part 2

While the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas has always been my favorite time of the year, I’ve always remembered it to be mostly chaos.  Growing up I don’t recall much about this time of the year being particularly relaxing as we were usually trying to balance our everyday lives with buying a Christmas tree, cleaning, baking, shopping, performing in school Christmas plays and wrapping presents. This was also usually the time of year when my parents would decide to put a fresh coat of paint on the walls before company came.

Over the years, I’ve developed a unique skill of being able to wrap presents of just about any size and shape without too much difficulty.  This was usually a result of being the only one who would wrap about 75 or so presents for the entire family into the wee hours of the morning………even my own.  I would as why was I bothering to wrap my own presents when I already knew what I was getting, but that was a fairly irrelevant point.  Now for most families, food is a fairly significant part of celebrating the holidays.  In my family, it probably attributed to at least half of the yuletide festivities.  Where most mothers might bake one, two, maybe three different kinds of cookies; that would never do with my mom.  She is an incredibly talented baker and would make probably three to four dozen different KINDS of cookies!  And she would make them for everyone: teachers, friends, neighbors, the mechanic, the doctor’s office, the dentist’s office (yeah lots of irony there), just about anyone and everyone.  She also loved to make gingerbread houses with elaborate details like stained glass windows, firewood in the backyard and Christmas trees in the front yard. But when my mom was running short on time during this season, she would recruit my Dad and I to decorate cookies into the early morning hours. You see, my parents thoroughly believed sleep deprivation was an essential part of the Christmas season.  I quite often had those vivid images of sugarplums dancing in my head along with other hallucinations.  The only way my Dad and I could finally get off the hook of decorating these cookies is when we started to ice them with little messages like “Help Me”, or making the snowmen with “yellow snow”. 

But I think one of the greatest character building tasks that my dad would give my brother and I to do is to test all the Christmas lights before we hung them outside.  Now this was back in the day when you had the kind where if one bulb was out, they were ALL out. And it was critical to makes sure all 10 of the 200+ light strands were tested and that all of the burnt out lights were replaced.  That is, after we untangled the thirty-pound tangled ball that they had morphed into over the course of the previous year up in the attic.

But all of this is still part of the amazing childhood that I had, and when I feel that longing to experience the Christmases of my youth, I just cover my hands in pine sap so they stick to everything I touch for about a week and a half.

Trainwreck: Celebrating Holidays as a Wiltsey – Part 1

As I sit and think about Thanksgiving tomorrow, the food, family, and all the many ways God has blessed me and my family in ways that are far beyond what we deserve; I am always brought back to memories from long ago of Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings spent with my family.  I’ve been thinking about writing about this for a while, years in fact, because these are such amazing and happy memories that I recollect every year that define my family and how special they are to me.

Now let me start off by saying that if you don’t know me or any other members of my family, we can very easily be described as “unique”.  We can amuse ourselves endlessly with silliness and have a sense of humor that would cause many to scratch their heads. Growing up, we always spent Thanksgiving at my Grandmom Wiltsey’s house in Seaford, Delaware.  She lived in a rambler on about an acre and a half that backed up to a small pond.  I remember when we would drive over to Seaford the night before Thanksgiving and the two hour drive seemed to last forever.  But I always knew we were getting close when I would see the RAPA Scrapple sign on the side of the road in Bridgeville and I could hardly contain myself with excitement!  The day of Thanksgiving, my brother Paul and I would always find ways to occupy our time until the evening feast.  This could be shooting soda cans with the pellet gun my Grandmom had, taking the canoe out onto the pond (and then trying to shoot down fresh mistletoe from the trees with the pellet gun), or maybe racing around the fields on my Aunt Peggy’s Honda ATC. 

Finally, after many hours of waiting, it was time to eat.  The table was filled with the usual array of Thanksgiving goodies: turkey (which my parents always made me eat despite me being allergic and they thought I was faking this allergy for many years up until middle school), mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce (from the can, the only way to eat it), rolls, stuffing, and so on.  Now, I get to a part that is both disgusting and hilarious at the exact same time……..the trainwreck.  The goal of the trainwreck is to carefully select as many different colors of food and place them in your mouth all at once.  You then chew very carefully to make sure the “palette” is just the right texture and then look for an opportunity to make eye contact with someone else at the table. This can be anyone: mom, dad, aunt, uncle, brother, grandmom (well, she would fuss at you) or a guest (sorry Lori and Kris, you got no warning about this) Once you made eye contact, then you would open your mouth to display your “trainwreck” to them, but without letting anyone else notice you. This was usually the highlight of the meal, seeing how many times you could do it to as many people as possible.  And like I said, NOONE was spared from this experience.  Then, when everyone was full, and all 10,000 desserts were sampled, it was time to play Trivial Pursuit or Balderdash into the late evening.  

The rest of the weekend was filled with shopping, goofing off, and other halfway dangerous activities that my brother and I could get into, but it was the start to a holiday season that was sure to be filled with many more adventures.  As our family has grown and changed over the years we always have have a great time just being us, and for that I am truly thankful. 

We Have Broken Our Promise From 11 Years Ago

Eleven years ago today, this nation experienced a catastrophe so horrific that most people would never have conceived that it could happen.  We were thrown in to such a state of shock, turmoil, panic and sorrow that there is not a single person that was not impacted by those attacks. But rather than lashing out in anger and hatred, most people responded with such an overwhelming compassion and love for one another that nothing else mattered.  Rich, poor, white, black, Latino, straight, gay, it didn’t matter. We were all more concerned with caring and loving one another as if we were all one family. I think this may have been the closest we’ve ever come to showing the love of God in the history of a nation that was founded on a desire to love God freely and deeply.  And not too long after, the “Never forget 9-11-01” bumper sticker was plastered on just about every surface we could find.  Our hearts were changed forever.

Or so we told ourselves.  Fast forward eleven years later, and if you were to look at the newspaper today, the only thing you would see is “Romney attacks Obama”, “Obama slams Romney”, “Citizens are sick of bailing out the poor, the government, the military, the corporations” And everyone is screaming at one another “YOU MUST ACCEPT EVERY ASPECT OF MY LIFE NO MATTER WHAT!” and “YOU ARE NO GOOD AND IT’S YOUR FAULT THIS COUNTRY IS SO SCREWED UP!” We are all too consumed with who has their hands in our pockets and obsessed with holding onto “our” money as tightly as we can; money that was in someone else’s pocket before it got to ours.  We are filled with more hatred and intolerance now than ever before.  We feel the need to criticize everything we don’t agree with on Facebook, Twitter and on the bumpers of our cars.  In fact, the only things we support together are sports teams that have absolutely no impact on the welfare of our society whatsoever.

But if you really want to remember and honor, what happened eleven years ago, remember those who are in pain, sick, hungry, lost, unloved, hopeless.  Remember that we once needed someone else for help, and that we still do.  Remember that in long run, whoever is sitting in the White House is not going to fix everything.  They can’t, we can’t, but God can with us and through us.  Stop cursing someone’s name, but rather pray for them.  Stop blaming someone for what’s wrong, but instead ask, “How can I help?”  Stop spending so much time showing people that they’re wrong, but instead show them that they are loved.  That is a memory worth keeping.

The journey is part of the destination

How’s the commute?  What do you think of the commute?  How can you make that commute?  I hear these questions often since I started my new job five weeks ago.  Some people stare at me in disbelief when they hear that I’ve chosen to drive 100 miles on the days I have to go into the office.  Why on earth would a sane person choose to do this?

It’s quite simple; this is where I’ve been called to work during this season of my life and my life is not designed to be convenient.  We always want to get from point A to point B as quickly and painlessly as possible, whether it’s in a car or to working to reach certain milestones and goals in our lives.  But did you ever think that it’s what you saw, what you felt, how you reacted, and what you chose to learn during your journey that impacts how you finally experience the destination you’ve reached?  It’s about the attitude you choose to have, the grace you show others, and the thankfulness for what you’ve been blessed with, and the joy you are determined to have that determines whether or not your destination was worth the trip to begin with.

I firmly believe that our lives on this planet are only temporary, and this is far from the end.  I believe in an eternity that can be more wonderful than we can possibly imagine spent in God’s glorious presence; or one that can be more torturous and agonizing than we can ever fathom. I believe that it’s completely our choice whether or not we chose to accept God’s grace or not, but the extent to which we experience His grace and glory is determined on how we approach our “commute” to eternity.  I only pray that I chose to acknowledge the blessing and privilege of walking this journey each and every day, no matter what I encounter along the way.

Very cool little video

Sometimes you jump off the diving board, and sometimes they yank the diving board out from under you.

Wow, just wow.  I am three days into my new job and it is exciting, scary and humbling all at the same time.  I now realize that my new boss was really paying attention to what I was saying during the interview process.  Describing yourself as a self-starter and able to create and design processes is most likely to result in a response of "When you show up for work the first day, we won't bother to unlock the front door for you because we know you will figure out how to get inside."

Don't get me wrong, I am loving my job so far and I am definitely not bored, but much of my orientation has involved sitting with a handful of people and getting a very brief view of systems with the hopes that my eyes can follow the lightning-fast cursor on the monitor and assuming I know what things people are clicking on.  And when I want to know where to find a certain document, spreadsheet or other piece of information, it is usually followed by pointing to the computer and saying "It's on the shared drive" or "It's on the website or intranet."  At least it was narrowed down to the intranet and computers on our company network and not the entire interwebs, that is helpful.

But this is all good stuff because I am becoming the office cubicle version of Bear Grylls.  In an office where most people don't drink coffee, I can make a cup out of used Xerox toner cartridges and use a bottle of circa 1987 White-Out as half and half.  Then while looking for those all-elusive policy documents on the shared drive, I will do my best not to delete years worth of financial spreadsheets and data and I may just make myself a privacy curtain for my cubicle doorway out of paper clip chains. I've noticed my new co-workers kind of look at me with curiosity as if I were just pictured on the 10 o'clock news and described as "the quiet neighbor that kept mostly to himself" and then was discovered with ten human skulls in my freezer.  They haven't really seen my true personality yet and when that happens, I foresee some type of crisis counselor spending a week in the office trying to calm people down.

This is going to be quite and adventure, well, as much of an adventure as a career in insurance is possible.  I will crawl out from under the sink in the bathroom, take baby steps back to my desk and re-do the TPS reports while I wait longingly for all that quality time I will have to myself on the drive home in the afternoon.

And now for something completely different........

You know you've had those days, weeks or even months at work when you've thought how you would stand up in front of your co-workers and boss and announce you were quitting, then you walk out the door then and there.  You have the perfect song playing on the CD player in the background, and you envision how moving your speech is, bringing some to tears, and then everyone gives you a standing ovation! You know you've thought about it.  Come on, yes you have, admit it!

I have always had the perfect scenario playing out in my mind and believe me, I'm going to win an Oscar for this performance!  But reality is something quite different. Two days ago, I submitted my resignation after seven years with my company.  With a week and a half still to go, this isn't turning out like I thought it would.  As I've talked to people and shared with them why I resigned, I've been realizing how important so many of them have been to me and what a positive impact they've had on my life.  I've had the privilege of working with many talented and special people from all over the country that have influenced me professionally and personally.  They've taught me about leadership, modeled integrity, and walked with me through personal loss in their lives and mine. And truthfully, I can't think of another group of people with whom I would have wanted to have in my life at those times.  So to all of my co-workers and colleagues who might be reading this, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Whether you realize it or not, God has blessed me richly for having known you.

The one thing that has brought me to this point, and typing this note tonight, has been realizing that God has been calling me out of my comfort zone. God has been urging me to take some major steps of faith and be obedient to His plan for my life; and I now see this more than anything else.  I realize that God placed me in the company where I've worked all these years so He could allow all of these people impact my life so richly.

And this is why the theme from "Rocky" will not play behind me as I pictured in my head and I will not stand on my desk and wield the Stapler of Justice for the last time. Instead, I will sit quietly and reflect on this tremendous gift I have been given, and be thankful for it. I will savor these last moments with these wonderful people and be comforted that I know God will bless this next chapter.

Will you quit poking me, already!

What is social media? While it sounds like something that happens when all of your Encyclopedia Britannica volumes start to chat with one another after you drop them off at the donation room at the Salvation Army at night, there is another definition. I have been able to consult with one of the world’s most renowned and recognized sources of expertise to answer this question: Wikipedia.

Social media includes web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into interactive dialogue between organizations, communities,and individuals.


That sounds all well and good, but it’s the whole “interactive” aspect that needs to be emphasized. Most people use Facebook, the leading social media website, as a means to interact as passively as possible with hundreds of "friends" so they don’t have to be inconvenienced by having to leave the house and talk to somebody face to face. For some people, the interaction needs to be ramped up a bit instead of just looking at other people’s posts on Facebook and then bring a post topic up randomly in a live conversation and you are trying to figure out how this person knew about the bacon-scented shower gel you bought at Bath and Bodyworks and wound up drinking half the bottle on the drive home from the store.

Facebook is also a great way to allow people to bond around common interests like "The Society For The Awareness To Promote The Proper Milking Of Northern Amazonian Tree Slugs" because it gives people a microphone to the world and they can talk and share about whatever they want whenever they want. But I have an idea to help restore a shred of dignity to Facebook. If anyone abuses their liberties to share freely by loading up your news feed with non-stop pictures of cats dressed as clowns or Farmville requests for help obtaining pig butter, you should be able to demote them to Twitter, where they only have 140 characters and then limit them to only post once a week. Otherwise, these people may hear a knock at the door and it's Mark Zuckerberg who walks into their house and smashes their keyboard on the table.

But in the end, I don’t know that most people feel that much more connected with one another or organizations on these websites. Because nothing beats that wonderful face-to-face interaction you have with the kid selling magazine subscriptions at your front door so he can go to Harvard in the fall. And no one wants to lose out on the ingenious advertising campaign of the mattress store that has a guy stand outside on the corner in an Elmo costume in 110-degree weather, because that is the commercial marketing that I want to see in person. 

My tombstone will read "I died from eating a balanced diet"

It has been an interesting week so far to say the least.  After meeting with the nutritionist for the first time, there were a number of areas identified that could be improved upon, one of them being the daily amounts of fruits and vegetables to be consumed.  Essentially, I needed to increase it from 0 cups a day to 2 cups of fruit and 2 and a half cups of vegetables because apparently cherry Pop-Tarts aren't considered fruit. 

Now I am a medical oddity, but not in the obvious sense regarding my brain function. I have discovered after about 4 years that include numerous trips to the hospital, several diagnostic scans and even exploratory surgery, my system does not digest roughage very well.  This includes eating large dinner salads, carrot sticks, celery, apples and I would imagine most species of trees.  I have tested negative for all of the obvious disorders and internists, gastroenterologists and a colon-rectal surgeon have no explanation for why this continues to be a problem.  I have had success in the past with small amounts of these foods, so I thought I would take a chance on Sunday and eat 6 baby carrots with some bread as a buffer.  Well, that did me in. 

I drove myself to the ER (I'm used to the ordeal by now and I can maneuver a car while in the fetal position) and they sent me home because I wasn't screaming loudly enough in pain at the time because apparently I need to be more liberal with my use of the pain scale.  So, I drive myself back home, get through the night and spend most of Monday in pain until I finally talk to my gastro doc and he tells me to go back to hospital and have the ER doc call him on his cell phone. Long story short, I am admitted to  for observation after a CT scan reveals a partial bowel obstruction.  One of the fun experiences I had this hospital visit was the privilege of having a nasogastric tube inserted which is the equivalent of having your transmission fluid drained through your nose. I got a shot of morphine before this was administered, but 2 minutes isn't quite long enough for it to kick in sufficiently.  After about 19 hours I get to go home and I am right back to where I started. 

So, the new eating plan isn't going as smoothly as I had envisioned and I'm not sure my life insurance will cover me for incidents involving a healthy lifestyle. Nonetheless, I am determined not to be defeated by the carrot stick and I will push onward and upward.  But first, I think I'm going to go drown my sorrow in a can of Redi-Whip.

I eat, therefore I am.

Food, I likes me some food.  I have never been particularly disciplined when it comes to my eating habits so usually if I saw something that I would like, I would eat it.  This means that I am a big guy.  I make wide right turns, I always calculate in my head the total weight of people in an elevator and look at the sign on the wall to see if I am endangering these folks.  And if you saw me in your rear-view mirror I would most definitely be larger than I appeared.

I've also noticed that as the years behind me are greater than the years before me and my body does not respond as well to trauma and shock that it once did.  I can walk down the street and oops, my leg falls off.  Or, I wake up with a stiff neck.  And most recently, I woke up one day and I noticed my left knee and hip were really bothering me.  What brought this pain on?  Sleep, yes sleep is now against me because I really don't remember being attacked by a team of ninjas and fighting them off at 2 am.

You take these two things together, and that means you have to start doing something differently. So, my wife and I are going to go see a nutritionist.  Part of this entails documenting for 4 days everything I eat to show the nutritionist. I know that the purpose of this is to determine what parts of my diet that I need to change, but part of me wants to have a little bit of fun with this.

Day 1

7 am: One peeled orange, where I ate the peel and threw the rest away.

8 am: 1 cup of coffee, with a half a teaspoon of cream and 14 teaspoons of sugar.

12pm: Lunch consisted two slices of wheat bread with 1 oz of White-Out spread on and something I found in a Tupperware container in the back of refrigerator, origins unknown.

3pm: snack - I intended to eat an apple, but just then I walked by a little girl selling girl scout cookies so I ate two boxes of thin mints.

6pm: Dinner consisted of 6 oz of grilled salmon with a light dressing of one can of cheez-whiz topped with crushed Oreos.

This probably isn't the best course of action to take.  One of my concerns is I will hear "Well for lunch, you can have 2 rice cakes and pretend your spreading something delicious on them and then make sure to drink 18 oz of diet caffeine-free room temperature tap water.  Make sure you don't put ice in it, those are just empty calories. Everything changes, and this includes my diet. But at night, I can still dream of the deep-fried Twinkies and Oreos I ate that one time, and then wake-up with a mouthful of pillow feathers.

This thing tastes funny!

So, I bet right now you're thinking to yourself, "Will this guy ever shut up?" Yep, I'm pretty much just blurting out what's on my mind.  Also, this blog doesn't yet look the way I want it to, and that's partly because I don't like to read directions.  I don't.  I will buy a DVD player, pull it out of the box, hook up a bunch of wires to the plugs on the back of the devices with all those nondescript acronyms, and then if it doesn't work after I sit there pushing buttons for 10 minutes, I will then open up the directions.  I will buy a car, start driving it down the road and will wait at traffic lights and quickly read the owners manual to try and figure out how to set the clock or turn off the windshield wipers.  That's just how I am.

So, I haven't figure out yet how to add all the little buttons, and doohickeys to the sides of this thing and I don't yet know how to make the background all sparkly and filled with puppies and rainbows.  And just maybe, someday I might set-up an e-store where you can buy drink coasters with my face on them.  But, this blob will change and evolve and probably look a little better over time.  Now, does anyone have any puppies I can superglue to this page?

I love music and unique artistry, this guy is very cool!

Shopping Malls: The next Weapons of Mass Destruction

As life the U.S. becomes more regulated and restricted everyday, I've noticed there is one common location where there seems to be absolutely no oversight or concern for the well-being of the average American consumer. The shopping mall. I was in the mall this evening and it amazed me that everywhere I looked, there were things going on that would normally cause 50 agents from the Department of Homeland Security to swarm the joint in 10 seconds if it was anywhere else. If this sounds crazy, consider the following:

- In any department store, there are cosmeticians wearing white lab coats.  Why? Are they putting eyeliner on one customer then the next minute they're testing the white powder in the envelope for anthrax?

-There are 3 dental chairs right next to Auntie Anne's Pretzels where at any given time, a dental hygienist is performing teeth whitening procedures.  RIGHT NEXT TO THE PRETZEL SHOP! People should not have any type of dental or cosmetic work performed 10 feet away from a food kiosk in a mall!

- You will always find a common area or children's play area that weary parents let their children loose in for about 25 minutes that turns into an unsupervised UFC steel-cage match.  This is known as a "character-building" opportunity for these kids.

- You will be assaulted by no less than 17 kiosk employees trying to smear age-defying cream on you, strap a fake pony-tail to your head, make you wear sheep-skin boots that are hideous, or stab you in the head with a "massaging rake." Many of these encounters could be the subject of some sort of Law & Order" episode.

I am afraid for our future and the future of the children of this country.  But the next time I do need to go to the mall, I'm going to make sure the Revlon lady at Macy's tests my Cinnabon for Avian Flu.

What did I just step in?

Okay, first things first.  This isn't a blog.  Most blogs have a particular theme, or an underlying goal that is trying to be accomplished.  They are clear, structured, and usually consistent.  This definitely ain't that! This is a blob.  No clear form or structure, at times unrecognizable, and just a big pile of "What the heck is that?" This is a blob.

Secondly,  I really don't know what I'm doing here. Not at all. This is going to be a bit of a creative outlet for me.  Well, it will at least me an outlet.  It will be away that I share some of the things that I find amusing or something that just popped into my mind like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. And I may be the only one amused by it, I don't know.  I may write something, post a funny video, picture, or whatever happens to catch my interest or imagination. And occasionally, you may see something more serious blobbed.  But mostly, it's about the weirdness that is me.  So there you have it, see I told you this wouldn't make a whole lot of sense!