I was just out visiting some friend’s blogs and felt compelled to share a message of how sometimes less is more. It’s a standard truth that can be applied to many things. I wanted to leave a comment on one of my friend’s blogs about some technical woes she’s having but the page wouldn’t load the required anti-spam word for me to type. So I figured I’d touch on what I wanted to say this way in hopes it would help her and maybe some others.

Often we begin doing things simply because they are available. As more becomes available we find ourselves delving into more of those things. In the long run we may be clogging some vital things without knowing it. The fact remains that just because you CAN do something, doesn’t necessarily mean you SHOULD. Let me share an example of something super simple but that illustrates the point well.

When I began e-mailing I delighted in the ability to so easily correspond with others. As it caught on, a new wave of customizing e-mails surfaced and I thought it was pretty cool. I could add stationery backgrounds, images, etc. After a while it became a little cumbersome so I backed it down to just adding a cute picture in my signature line. I was happy with it and although I hate to admit it, it was one thing that had some impact on my decision to use a different e-mail service/program that didn’t support images. Up to that point I had been using Microsoft Outlook, now my husband was encouraging me to try Gmail. Now the major difference is Gmail was developed by an Internet search engine company, namely Google who specializes in the area of Internet services. They understand how plain text versus html message formats work. The bottom line is that as cute as all my images and things were they were sent with every message as an attachment. Spam filters know that virus e-mails contain attachments and are set up accordingly. As soon as I made the switch I found more reliability with my e-mails reaching their destinations unfettered, and I began to really appreciate the way Gmail filtered my incoming mail. I’d unknowingly sacrificed functionality for frills before.

Blogging is a classic example of more becoming more. Plug-ins, gadgets, widgets….all these things are enticing and offer enhancements to the basic web page, to say nothing about ads. But they can also really slow things down. When I redesigned my blog a few years ago I moved all the “blog stuff” onto it’s own page so every page view wouldn’t be trying to download every unrelated but “cool” thing on my side bars. I can’t tell you the difference it made. I took control over my blog navigation and cut out all unnecessary elements. It was a good lesson.

I can’t remember if I shared it here before or if I just talked about it with someone else, but in the recent Indiana Jones movie there was an early scene that stretched believability to a breaking point. Sadly, it wasn’t necessary to the story line and it has now coined the phrase “Don’t nuke the fridge.” In other words, less is more. In my experience 99% of blogs nuke the fridge.

No matter the realm or situation, the truth that often less is more resounds with truth and clarity. If there is clutter in your life or surroundings, you’ll feel cluttered and messy. Sometimes we don’t recognize building clutter in our lives and projects but if it builds you can rest assured that eventually it will catch up to you. So my advice when you’re having problems is to step back and see if you’re nuking the fridge. It’s likely that if you work on simplifying you’ll regain much of what you desire, control being at the top of the list. *smile*

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Sharing Organizing Perspectives Balance

In a word it’s simple; you do what you know and know what you do. Yet there’s something magical that happens when we see someone doing what they know and you just sense how right it is and how good they are at it. This is what I feel every time I spend a moment with my Uncle Bill.
Last week he went out of his way to hitch up his team and take us all on a wagon ride:

To him, this is just every day life. He loves working with his horses on his ranch, he loves widdling away his hours in his basement/studio making new creative works from wood, canvas and wax. But to me, this is magic.

I managed to capture a small glimpse of it when I did his website for him several years ago. The man is just amazing to me.

And then there’s the fact that he takes my daughter under his wing and teaches her in the most simple moments this way of life. Like how the horses know their names and they respond with verbal command and sound not slapping of the reigns to get them to start. She loved learning how to steer them. I felt a knot of emotion as I watched him coaching her doing something for her that I can’t. Because while I grew up around it, I didn’t live it like he has every day of his life. To him, this stuff is like breathing air and these horses are part of him.

In fact, the one on the left, Babe is not only 16 years old but she’s the mother to Bally (sp?) on the right.
Now you can say you’ve had a view from the top…er make that back? *giggle, giggle, snort*

I hope I’m tapping into the things in my life that I’m good at and that I know. I hope I’m sharing those things and making the world a better place for my having lived in it. There’s more to doing what you love and loving what you do and I think the key to that is somewhere in this piece of knowing it.

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Tuesday is one day I set aside to catch my kids being good. My friend, Kelly put the seed in my head with her weekly blogging series and even though I may miss writing something I find that every Tuesday I reflect on positive things my kids are doing. Today I have to share about my Cid. While far too often I get this type of sibling jabbing:

On this most recent trip to visit family I witnessed a whole new side to my daughter. She was so loving and caring with all of her cousins. She reveled being big enough to be a babysitter and it’s something she did really well!

So this Pass The Torch Tuesday goes out to her for being such a wonderful and responsible helper last week. I know I’m not the only one who noticed and appreciated her efforts. She truly is growing into a young lady right before my eyes.

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Can you say tired of sitting? We just returned from our trip home to visit family in Idaho and let me tell you 16 hours in the car for a bonsai driving trip is a long time to be in the car. And you know you’ve driven that stretch too many times when you recognize tiny changes in the many one car towns you drive through. It was all worth it, especially for the kids who had an absolute blast with all their cousins. My daughter cried the night we had to leave and she’d been there for two weeks! Clearly there was no burnout for her.

The week was packed with fun and entertainment. We started with my husband’s 20 year class reunion, a jam packed memory event. We snuck in a night at the cabin in Island Park, took in a parade, played water games and even got to be there for the new arrival of my sister’s baby. The rest of the week was showered with trips to the movies, eating out and staying up way too late visiting. It makes me so very grateful for the wonderful families both my husband and I have. Family is truly where it’s at.

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It never ceases to amaze me how we’ll push simple cleaning projects back on our lists over and over. It’s not that they’re big, just that they’re undesirable.

Today’s tip: Just Do It

This morning I spent about 10 minutes cleaning my microwave. It wasn’t hard and it looks so much better! Two cleaning tools that I’d die without in my kitchen are my scratch free-scouring scrub brush with soap filled handle and disposable disinfectant wipes. The brush makes short work of scrubbing on all my kitchen surfaces with the aid of just the right amount of dish soap and the wipes are the perfect finisher. Both are great in the kitchen because both cut grease and we all know how fun grease is to clean up. *frown*

I’ve put off cleaning the microwave for several weeks and every time I’d open it I’d groan. I’ve probably cleaned the darn thing 100 times in my head! It only took once and it took less than 10 minutes but man it sure feels good. The payback of satisfaction and motivation far outweigh my procrastination reasons. There’s power in just doing things that need done.

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I’ve been blessed in my life with sisters. One older, two younger and one sister in law. This picture was taken last summer when we all got together for a weekend.

Sisters fill a need in a girl’s life. If you didn’t have one you likely adopted a close friend or associate in place of one. If you were lucky enough to have one, you had a need filled long before you knew the need existed. Women need women and the meaningful relationships that result in their lives. It’s why the bonds of mother/daughter and sisters are so powerful. These relationships aren’t just handy, they’re down right convenient because no matter how mad you make your sister, how terribly you fight they are still your family and there’s that unwritten rule that family has to love and accept you no matter what.

We’re all totally different, yet so much the same. I cherish every relationship for what it is and can’t imagine losing it. My older sister was my comrade as a little girl. We played together, laughed together, cried together. I was so sad when she got married before I’d hit the dating stage as I’d always dreamed of doubling together sometime. I got to make up for that years later on a double date with our spouses. *big grin* My younger sister and I got off to a rocky start. She was just enough younger that we didn’t have the comrade bond as youngsters but she looked up to me and tried so hard to do and be all the things she saw her teenage sister doing. Only now that I have my own daughter wanting/trying to be a teen do I fully comprehend this great pull. Now that we’re both moms we seem to have the most in common and what our relationship lacked as kids it has found ten fold as adults. My youngest sister shared a special bond with me because I was old enough to be more of primary care giver to her and I adored babies. Her baby is due during the same time we will be visiting next week and while we can’t put a finger on exactly what it is, there is just something really comforting to both of us that I’ll be there for it. Then there’s the sister in law that plays a solo role because we only have one brother. She’s like the back scratcher that reaches that itch you just can’t quite touch on your own. I love talking with her, sharing stories, views, opinions and experiences. Her wit and warmth radiate from her. And I have to include my mom in the sisterhood circle because she’s always been one of the closet to me. It sounds corny and cliche to call her my best friend but in so many ways she’s always been just that - always there for me when I needed her then and now.

The unfortunate element of the family bond is that because we tend to believe there’s a no matter what clause we often treat our family members the worst. I look back on my relationships with my sisters and I can see where I was better to my friends most of the time or even complete strangers than to my own siblings. That makes me sad now. The upside is that time is a great healer and the relationships I share with my sisters now is so sweet and so wonderful.

I’m sure I wasn’t always the best sister. In fact, I’m sure the same could be said even today, but I am truly grateful for the chance to have sisters and for all they’ve given me. So to the comrade, admirer, baby doll, back scratcher and confidant I send my heartfelt thanks for helping me learn how to be a sister and how to appreciate having one.

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I was browsing the $5 value DVDs yesterday with my daughter and came across a copy of Footloose. Just seeing the cover made me giggle. If I’m not mistaken, the soundtrack to this movie was the first tape of “our” music at my home growing up. It wasn’t mine, it was my older sisters but it was like a rite of passage which is probably why I remember it. My daughter saw my distraction and asked what was up so I told her this movie just brought back a lot of memories for me. She asked what it was about and I told her basically it was about a boy who finds himself in a tiny town kicking back against the rules. The message that stands out the most in my mind from the show is the argument he uses against the preacher that there is a time and a season for everything, even dancing.

This is a message I’d like to get across to my children and the teens I work with. I’d like to really get them to see that there is a time for everything. It’s part of why I’m so passionate about charm school which focuses on this through decorum. To really understand this concept is to master self control and self-discipline. This is so important in a world that is screaming instant gratification all the time.

When I was recently asked to start teaching some charm school classes again, I began to form my own outline of the materials and knowledge I’ve acquired over the years. I broke it down into three basic keys that will unlock potential and open doors to really acquiring and mastering the art of charm. My three include:

1) Self Concept: Know Thyself
2) Appearance: The Power of Image
3) Social Interaction: Conquer or Crumble

As I compiled the list and organized some of my materials I realized again how critical the truth of everything having a time and season is. Now that I’ve had some personal experience in life I’m better able to compile these courses and their materials, things that I wouldn’t have been able to do as well a couple of decades ago. And so the story goes with so many things in my life, there is indeed a right time and season to many of life’s experiences. Figuring out what those are for you and not messing up the time line will result in greater happiness.

A good exercise for me was taking these three keys and applying the principle of times and seasons. For example, my level of self confidence is a direct reflection of my life’s experiences to date. Learning how to put them into perspective really helps me get a handle on who I am, how I feel about myself and what I want to become. And take appearance lessons: When I was a teenybopper it was in style to wear lots of layers, pushed up collars, leg warmers and big airings. It was the right time to wear such styles because that was the current trend, but if I tried to resurrect that appearance today it would be quite catastrophic. Equally valuable is the lesson that some clothing simply looks better on the young bodies it was designed for. And finally, there’s the social interaction piece where all these things come together. Think of all those movies or times when the awkwardness between an adult and teen were palpable because the parent or teacher was trying to be hip using current teen jargon.

There’s simply a time and season for everything. Instead of wishing for the good things from yesteryear, we should be embracing our current time and season growing and developing those appropriate traits and skills for where we are now. I guarantee you that down the road we’ll be looking back on where we are now the same way we do on our teen years. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to be able to look back and smile.

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Just seeing this picture brings back a flood of memories from the furniture to the carpet to the costumes. These are happy years for me, years from my childhood.

Part of this little girl is still inside me, she represents the dancer in me. I remember the thrill of getting ready for a recital, of dancing in front of an audience. I took lessons in tap, ballet, jazz and eventually ballet on pointe from the time I was about 5 or 6 until I was in high school. I miss it.

When my daughter was four I enrolled her in a summer ballet class. I sat in on one of the lessons and realized that I was more qualified in most ways than the teacher instructing them. I entertained the idea for a short while of doing it from my home as many other mothers I knew were interested. But something held me back, the same something that kept me from teaching the way my mother suggested when I was in high school. I guess the reality is that sometimes we’re far more critical of ourselves and our abilities than we recognize and so we limit ourselves.

I still pull several dance steps out of the closet and dust them off from time to time. I repeat instructions in my head for timeless classics like the time step - shuffle, hop, step. flap step….and the feet follow along obediently even in the quiet seclusion of my computer chair. I remember watching Flashdance as a youth and being utterly inspired. White Nights was another dancing movie I remember well - Baryshnikov is amazing. Dancing is like a secret love affair for me, only now I watch it from a distance and smile.

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My summer time continues to be somewhat erratic and so today I’m just going to share a simple post with some recent photos of what’s been going on.

My sister in law sent me this picture this morning of my brother’s arm. He’s the one that lost the recent tumbling match with a boulder. This makes me glad of who I’m not.

Tay and mom conversing in his typical fashion of late.

Rescuing a baby bird - another Tay find.

Keeping cool at the pool and with water balloons.

Enjoying Arizona nights.

Cid coloring her T-Shirt. (Never too busy to strike a pose.)

Tay coloring his.

And last but not least more pool side fun with the bubble blower and new sun glasses.

It’s a goal. Not just a wish or a hope, an actual goal. I don’t need to own one, just have ownership in one.

Air travel continues to go downhill. It increases my desire (and hubby’s) to avoid it if possible. You could probably trace the origins of our desire back to the days when Blake took his first contract job in 1999. It made you sick to your stomach to know that even though the flight time was short, the total travel time to get from our home in Southeastern Idaho to Fort Collins, Colorado took almost the exact same 9 hours as it did to drive it. If the same travel could have been done by private jet you would have cut that time down to under two hours easy. Because we value our time, it was always on the brain.

Add to this the airline tragedy and aftermath of 9/11 and you have a melting pot for unpleasant air travel. Things weren’t fantastic before, but there was at least a focus on doing something - anything - to make the experience less painful for the traveler. Maybe even a little healthy competition for it and the revenue stream that followed. The added (and necessary) security measures put into place after that fateful day seem to have become a springboard for airline excuses for unpleasant traveling. Apparently, the vast majority involved haven’t yet figured out that what you do isn’t near as important as how you do it. You ask anyone who flies public transportation these days and you’ll find the vast majority only do it for lack of options. That’s a great premise for any business relationship. *eye roll*

So things are in a pickle. Naturally we add more to make it worse. Now we add economic strain, high gas prices and struggle for financial survival. Corners are cut which often result in more damage than salvaging. One of the biggest being outsourcing customer service calls. If you’ve seen the photo e-mails in circulation about the phone lines in India you can appreciate the irony of this. It’s the one where the telephone pole looks like Clark Griswald’s Christmas light plug nightmare of 100 plugs and cords sharing one outlet with a caption that reads “And this is where our calls for technical support go.”

Recently my husband had another experience that put the private jet ownership back on the forefront of our discussions. As it’s blog worthy and he’s not currently blogging I’ll be telling the story.

We decided earlier this year to let our daughter go to Idaho five days early to spend some one on one time with her grandma and family there. This meant buying her an airplane ticket to fly solo from Phoenix to Salt Lake City. Blake bought the ticket in April with US Airways. It was explained there was a $50 unaccompanied minor fee which was also printed on the ticket information. The only inconvenience he had with this policy was that they wouldn’t let him pay for the service with the ticket, he was told it had to be paid when he arrived at the airport.

As this is our first time doing this, he called last week to make sure we knew everything we could in preparation. He listened to the foreign accent on the other end of the line rattle off the guidelines and perked up when he heard him say something about paying the $100 unaccompanied minor fee. He corrected the man, reading from his printed ticket information the fee was $50. The man replied that the fee went up the first of May. The remainder of the call was spent trying to learn why this information wasn’t shared with the customer and why that is a problem.

I won’t bore you with the details of language barrier and lack of customer service. Suffice it to say it went the way most customer service calls go these days with an employee who can barely speak English, doesn’t like their job and doesn’t care about it or the customer they’re servicing. But the end of the conversation is worth sharing, I’m told it went something like this:

“Sorry sir, you simply don’t have any other option.” (Add in a great deal of foreign accent for the right affect.)

“Actually I do. I have the option to cancel my ticket and never fly with your airlines again.”

Now what’s really crazy about all this is that in this strained time for airlines you’d think they’d being doing all they can to keep customers not push them out the door. US Airways lost more than $50 extra dollars for a service, they lost the entire refundable ticket price as well as all our future business. It wasn’t about $50 more, it was a simple customer service principle that was violated - making changes in a contract without informing and gaining consent with the other party.

The crappy customer service continued through the process of cancellation and refunding as well. Another phone service employee with language barrier problems had to be taught how to do her job by my husband because she wasn’t sure if she was just canceling or canceling and refunding. A classic end to the experience.

The good news is that we got a better ticket rate, no additional fees and two bubbly English speaking employees at Southwest airlines to help us. There’s a lot to be said for the attitude, speaking skills and positive personality when it comes to customer service interfacing. Today Southwest wins, but I’m still looking to the best solution which is ownership in a private jet.

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