Pre-nuptial ping-pong

How many 80-ish-year-olds do you know who play three games of ping-pong daily, own an electric car, and are about to get married?

An Autumn Walk in Ashland’s Lithia Park

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Done right, business IS personal

I have come to loathe the phrase “It’s not personal, it’s business.”

Is this something they teach at those high and lofty business schools? Because if it is, I think the MBA curriculum is in dire need of an overhaul.

How about teaching the phrase “It’s good business to do the right thing”? How about making that the credo of a good business school?

I firmly believe that done right, business IS personal.

ROI, bottom line, profit margins and all that goobledygook doesn’t mean a thing, in my opinion, if all you take from business school is how to make a buck.

Do the right thing for your people. Treat your people as you’d want to be treated. Stand by your word. Be trustworthy. Those are the values that not only make a good citizen and a good friend, they are qualities that I believe make a good business owner and manager. The rest – the profit and the growth – will follow if your first commitment to your business is to doing right by your people – and to doing right by all the people your business impacts.

The best boss I ever had never even got a college degree, yet she has all the qualities that make for a successful business person. Most importantly, she knew that her greatest resource was her people, and she expressed her gratitude to us on a regular basis – not because someone told her to, but because she truly believed that a strong team is the basis of a strong business. She worked her way up from the very bottom rung of the ladder, from cleaning toilets to secretarial work, on up, to eventually becoming the Vice President and Business Development Manager of more than one successful company. She never forgot what it was like to be “the worker,” and I believe that those experiences influenced every decision she made as a boss. She had exceedingly high expectations of the people who worked for her but offered us the support, the resources and the trust every step of the way, so we could perform – and so we WANTED to perform – at the top of our game. Unless she had to keep secrets (and she’d always tell us if this was the case), she was transparent and honest with us, giving us a strong desire to work as a team, supporting each other with the same commitment to each other that she provided to us.

Now THAT is a powerful team. THAT is good business.

Quite simply she just plain did the right thing all day, every day. That philosophy drove all her business decisions and amazingly enough (not!), they almost always positively affected her bottom line as well.

Isn’t this how the Googles and the Costcos of the world got to be so successful? They didn’t begin with the philosophy of ruthless profit and bottom line; they began with the philosophy of creating a great product with a great team and moving both forward together, building upon successes in both areas, knowing that they are interdependent.

There was a time when medical schools taught only the science of medicine. The courses focused on the science of disease and the technicalities of surgery and medicine, ignoring the importance of the heart and the spirit in the healing process. Then, in the past 20 years or so, the faculties of the great medical schools began to infuse their curriculum with classes that focused on the importance of “bedside manner” and relating on a personal level to patients and their families. They suddenly realized that healing sick people is not simply a matter of science, but also of psychology. They realized that being a good doctor also means, to some extent, just simply being a good person.

When will this happen to business schools? When will they begin to teach that good business is also a matter of good personal actions and interactions? That investing in people IS good for profits and that the best way to lead a company really comes down to the same basic philosophies as the best way to lead a life: integrity, compassion, trustworthiness, and honest personal connections?

When will business schools begin to teach that doing the right thing as a person means you’re doing the right thing as a business?

In which I place the blame for my weight issues on everyone but myself

I was doomed to be fat from day one because I was born into a hyper-fanatical German family in which food was tightly controlled and firmly regulated from morning to night. I was only allowed to eat at prescribed times and when it was mealtime I was forced to eat everything on my plate. Way back then I developed a mentality I still have: eat when you can and all you can, and sneak your food if necessary, because the rules are too strict and you’ll never be able to comply successfully anyway.

So my weight issues can’t possibly be my fault. Right?

When I was a teenager I always “felt fat” because I had a pear-shaped, curvy (yet petite) body, unlike anything I saw in fashion magazines. Even as a relatively popular cheerleader and social butterfly, I never felt thin enough or pretty enough because the really popular girls were thinner and prettier. The social mandate demanded a body I simply didn’t have.

So my weight issues can’t possibly be my fault. Right?

When I was a healthy, young woman at a healthy, normal weight (though all the voices I cared about -- media, friends, even my own mother -- told me otherwise), engaged to a wonderful young man, I was ashamed to be looking at size 10 wedding dresses. Size 10 means fat, I told myself. And I knew that even my fiancé would have preferred I wore a smaller size. All those voices, all speaking so loudly at me, all telling me that I should be a smaller size.

So my weight issues can’t possibly be my fault. Right?

Then came pregnancies and babies. Healthy pregnancies and very, very healthy babies. Even the twins were full-term, beautifully baked babies. But oh, the havoc they wreaked on my body! I gained 40 pounds with each singleton and upwards of 60 pounds with the twins. As perfect as my babies were, they ravaged my body and stole my “youthful figure” from me and I never got it back. How dare they?

Before I knew it, menopause was upon me and the fat cells celebrated by gathering around a whole new venue -- my waist. They’d become more stubborn, too, refusing to disappear no matter how I starved them. Where I’d always been able to drop 10 pounds easily (though keeping it off was another story), I now couldn’t even lost the weight without three times the effort it’d taken in my youth. The discouragement was just too much to bear.

So my weight issues can’t possibly be my fault. Right?

Then, in January of this year, I fell and broke every bone in my ankle, leaving me sedentary, overworked, depressed, old, and literally falling apart. As a result, my weight sky-rocketed and I gained 15 pounds over just eight months --a good chunk of it after this photo was taken.

So my weight issues can’t possibly be my fault. Right?

Right?

Wait.

Wrong.

Even if my weight gain over the years wasn’t entirely my fault (and of course it’s entirely my fault!), I’m still the one who has to live with it and it’s still my responsibility to do something about it.

So it’s time to stop the excuses and actually do something about it. Or at least take the very first step in that direction – which I did today. I finally joined Weight Watchers.

(Again.)

I finally took step one: taking full responsibility for both the problem and the solution. The goal seems huge and unattainable and I make no promises… except to go to bed tonight not feeling like a victim.

Big Boy Toy Wishes

My dad has an old-fashioned postcard from the 1930’s with a picture of two white-haired old men in full 3-piece suits on their bellies on the floor, playing with a model railroad. Given the boyish grins on their faces and their complete physical immersion in their experience, they might as well have been 4-year-old boys!

Watching Tom and a complete stranger admiring the K-Nex display at Costco this evening reminded me of my dad’s postcard. “I want one…” they both said, almost in unison. And then they just stood there together for a few moments, admiring the toy.

That’s when I captured this photo.

A few seconds later, with just a nod, they both walked off in opposite directions, back to their grown-up lives with their grown-up wives, off to find kitty litter.

Autumn splendor

It’s beautiful and blustery outside these days and everything is basked in an orange autumn glow.  My mundane drive to and from work was anything but gray and colorless today, in spite of the rain. 

Just look at this!

     

There was plenty of rain and wind today, interspersed with brief batches of sunshine – or should I say lightshine?  It was the sort of day that makes me want to light a fire, get in cozy jammies, make some hot cocoa, and read a good book.

Speaking of which – know any?

They’re gettin’ hitched!!

Talk about casual.  Dad sent an e-mail to my three brothers and me this morning saying, “ We just felt that now, after over 3 years, we know each other well enough, and the questions of people ("How long have you two been married?") were getting a bit awkward.  Besides, it feels so right.  How about that?”

How about THAT!?

Night bandits

These are just two of the band of six (or more?!)raccoons that invaded our recycle bins on our deck tonight.  And the others were quite a bit bigger than these little guys!  Shasta was barking ferociously and I tried to shoo them by yelling at them and throwing a tennis ball at them, and they weren’t the least bit fazed!

Had the cats – or even Shasta --been out there, these guys could have shredded them for sure.  I think it’s time to find another place for our recyclables!