Hacked Off

To all my friends and MrsSedd@Sixty readers:

I’m going to be taking a little break from Facebook and Twitter as a result of being hacked this week and having a devil of a time getting passwords and such changed.  So for now, I’m afraid, I’ll bid you adieu, at least on these social media channels.

That said, I hope you’ll check out my blog from time to time as you are able at http://jansedd.blogspot.com or on Google+.

I’ll still be writing, although perhaps not Monday thru Friday; you and I were both getting too spoiled, I think.  Remember, it’s about quality, not quantity, eh?

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Meditation on Change

God

Grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change

The courage to change the things I can

And the wisdom to know the difference.

This, of course, is the legendary “Serenity Prayer” of Alcoholics Anonymous – but it’s also a meditation for those of us who may be more secular in our perspective on life, the universe and everything.  The thing I love best about this saying is its acknowledgment of our power and our powerlessness.  At the end of the day, change is not about acceptance…it’s not about courage…and it’s not just about wisdom; it’s how all three, together, create pretext and process for our engagement in this thing we call living.

I’m thinking about change today because individuals with whom I’ve worked through the years are walking down new paths in their lives, and they will be missed.  But they are also doing what is best for them, too – and that takes a courage that I envy.

I’m thinking about change, too, because the world feels like a risky place to me these days and I struggle with having the requisite wisdom to navigate it in a way that protects my family; a hard thing to know, and harder to do.

And, finally, I’m thinking about change because each day I am a little older and more in awe of the blessings that I’ve been surprised by, and fortunate enough to enjoy, in my life.  Blessings that I want to fiercely protect even as they drive me closer to the edge of change every day.

So, on days like today, when the ground beneath me starts to shift ever so slightly and I feel a little bit off balance, I struggle for serenity and try to embrace change even if I don’t fully like it or understand it.  Because change, as I‘ve sometimes learned the hard way, is what makes life interesting.

 

 

 

 

10 Things My Husband Can Do During the Government Shutdown

If you follow Mrs. Sedd’s ramblings, than you may remember that my husband is a government lawyer. Given the possibility that the whacko House Republicans will force our government to close in the next week, I’ve been trying to give some thought to things my husband might want to consider doing to fill his time at home.

Herewith, I offer just a few small suggestions for my better half to fight off boredom; I know he would do the same for me.  Smile.

1.       Powerwash our house.  White houses do get dirty.  Really.

2.       Clear out the gutters.  Just that time of year, I’m afraid.

3.       Clean out the shed.  We pretend it’s a garage but it really is a shed, stuffed with 4 bicycles, an adult motor scooter, a tween’s motor scooter, yard tools, a huge old rug, dog stuff, paint cans…you get the picture. 

4.       Declutter the guest room.  AKA David’s dressing room, enough said. (PS--I’m happy to help with this; the couple that cleans together screams together!  That's what I always say....)

5.       Declutter the other guest room.  AKA David’s study.  (Ditto.)

6.       Paint the guest room.  White walls are so yesterday. (And I'll help!)

7.       Paint the study.  Anything is better than white in that room.

8.       Deforest our backyard.  Actually, I better get a yard service in to do that; the poison ivy is as high as corn!

9.       Expand his kitchen repertoire from jar spaghetti sauce to jar spaghetti sauce with meat in it.

10.   Take a nap. 

Happy Monday. 

Hostages

This is my 101^st post since I began writing to you in April.  It’s been a joy and a privilege to share my thoughts, problems and some of the wonderful and occasionally wacky events of my life.

Because I’m not a big political thinker or strategist, I’ve tried hard to stay clear during this time from adding to the overwhelming torrent of divisive rhetoric that passes as public political discourse today. I loathe it – and I suspect you do too.

But today, I have to note the following:

1.       House Republicans voted to cut food stamp funding by $40 billion.  4 million people would be
affected by this – not just unemployed folks but the working poor, many of whom are parents of school age children.  A quick aside:  The elected representatives who voted for this get gold standard healthcare for free! Shame on these men and women.

2.       Tomorrow, House Republicans will take aim at you – and who needs a gun when you’ve got the full faith and credit of our country to lock and load? The House Republican caucus – led by that gutless wonder of a Speaker of the House, John Boehner, is going to pass a bill to defund Obamacare with their endgame strategy being a shutdown of the U.S. government. Watch what happens to your 401K on October 1 if they succeed.  The Dow fell 700 points last time, in 2011.  This time?  Bigger.

3.       Finally, the last bit of extortion on the part of House Republicans – the debt ceiling!  You thought the shutdown was tough on your financial security?  Watch what happens to your 401K and our economy the day we default on our debt!  Down, down, down…Bye, bye.

Not scared yet?  You should be. 

Some of you probably hate Obamacare (or think you do even though you haven't tried it because it hasn't been imlemented.  Ok.).  Many of you probably don’t like the president, either – and more of you are probably Republicans.  And I’m guessing virtually all of you are completely disgusted with what’s happening to the middle class in this country. 

So I have to say this to all of you:  The single most destructive threat to all of us and our democracy  is not the Taliban, not Iran, or Syria or Al Qaeda.  It’s the whackos who have taken the Republican Party, our Congress and the concept of consensus governance hostage.  Which means they’ve made us all their hostages, too.

People who take hostages adore power and love abuse.  You might say they have "power issues."

Call me contrarian, or call me 60, but I don't like the fact that these assholes have my country and my retirement security by the  balls.

I hope one among you…or more… care enough to find a moment to send an email, or make a phone call to your member of Congress about this stuff. If you can, and where you can, speak up against the poisonous politics being practiced today, even if it’s just with friends and family.  

Your country needs you.   Me too.

 

  

 

 

 

3:30 AM

While it doesn’t happen every night, there are several nights each week where I wake up around 3:30am.  Most times, I drift back to sleep within a half hour, but then there are evenings when I stay awake until the bloody alarm goes  off at 6am. 

Last night was one of those.  I woke up, visited the toilet, then settled back into bed, petting my sweet Shasha, who was snuggled up next to me, before stroking my husband’s hand, which rested peacefully on his chest.  Then I…turned over, punched the pillow, coughed, sighed, punched the pillow, grabbed the other pillow and crushed it against my abdomen.  Then I sighed again and counted down from 100, losing track when I reached about 87, at which point I thought about work.

Sleepless.

I rolled over, flipped the pillows so my cheek would feel the cool side, and sank my head into the soft mound of downy comfort.  And I thought about work.

Aggravated by the randomly obsessive thinking going on in my weary brain, I flopped from one side (facing my husband) to the other side (facing the wall and the Bose alarm clock radio set to the wrong time) and softly groaned.  I glanced at the clock and wondered what the real time was.

I got up to check the real time, removing a DVD box which covered the clock face of our cable box in the bedroom so as not to disrupt my sleep from the digital golden glare of numbers.

It was 4:15.

And I thought about work some more…realizing I was really, really sleepless.

Plus, I was hungry. My throat was scratchy, too.  I took a Hall’s lozenge out of the drawer of my bedside table, eager to calm the tickle in my throat because if I started coughing I would definitely wake up.

Around 5:30am I took a break from thinking about work to worry instead about getting my daughter and the other kids in our carpool safely to school that morning because I would be so tired from being….

Sleepless.  Again.

Finally, at 6 am the alarm went off.  My husband glanced at the clock, flicked off the alarm and rolled over, grunting while he patted my hand.

“Can I ask you a question and you can say no?” I asked him, wide awake now.

“Ugh.”

“Will you take the carpool kids to school?”

Another grunt, offered with an alternative suggestion about how best to engage his services vis-à-vis school transportation issues, which sounded whiny to me, but he was still a little bit asleep after all.

Never mind, I thought to myself.  I’m awake now.  And it’s time to get up.

 

Gray Matter Monday

Mondays are always tough days to kick the brain into gear.  Because I don’t have any one thing on my mind today, I’ll share with you a little bits of what's lingering there as weekend “leftovers.”  I suggest that you read this post after a) having too much coffee b) having too much sleep or c) having a glass of wine or a beer so that the post's insignificance is diminished because you are still reading it, after all, therefore conferring some modicum of significance to it.

(See what I mean?  It’s tough getting the gray matter to work on Monday.  Like throwing spaghetti on the refrigerator, eh?)

Assuming you’re still with me:

The Chicago Bulls won this weekend so my husband was in a good mood.

Larry Summers is not destined to be the next Fed Chairman which may or may not be a good thing.  He may be obnoxious but he is smart, and when it comes to money, I’ll take smart anytime.

Hillary Clinton picked up yet another honorary degree last week.  She is very smart, too, only more likeable than Larry Summers, I guess.  Or so I'm told.

It will stop raining in Colorado soon. Thank god.

Americans love horror stories.  This weekend, Insidious:  Chapter 2, a low budget horror movie, made $41M at the U.S. movie box office, while Stephen King’s sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep, got a very good and creepy review in the New York Times.  I’ll take a pass on the movie (I HATE scary movies and always have), but I will read the book because The Shining so thoroughly creeped me out in one of those I know I’ll have nightmares tonight but I can’t put this book down ways.

My daughter volunteered to do 2 hours of homework on Saturday afternoon.  Really.  Yes, really.

You probably won’t hear from me again until later this week because duty (I mean, working for a living) calls, requiring the bulk of my attention and gray matter activity for the next few days. 

Be careful out there!

 

 

 

Hormonal

It’s the bigtime for hormones in the must read New England Journal of Medicine.

According to a study published Wednesday, it seems that estrogen, the female sex hormone, plays a big role in men’s bodies – much bigger than anyone ever thought – and that our menfolk, too, suffer from expanding waistlines with falling levels of estrogen in middle age.

I am not authorized to speak on my husband’s behalf regarding these findings, so I won’t.  As for me, however, I miss my estrogen for lots of reasons, but mostly because of the whole tire around the middle/low metabolism/libido stuff associated with its decline.

That said, I wouldn’t want to go through menopause again, oh no.  Hot flashes? They’re not the greatest. The whole bipolar wackiness thing I experienced during the, ahem, “transition”? Not ok.

Still, I opted out of estrogen therapy because breast cancer is not on my bucket list. 

Once they've heard this news, watch how quickly men start worrying about menopause and breasts and stuff that they really thought was just our problem.  Now menopause is truly everyone’s problem.

I find some comfort in that, I do. 

In Memoriam

 

Twelve years ago yesterday, as the clock was approaching 9:00, I was wrapping up remarks at a conference of corporate communications professionals in Toronto, Canada.   One of the conference organizers walked up to the podium and whispered in my ear about passenger jets flying into the World Trade Center and suggested that my husband wanted me to call him as soon as I could.

“Should we continue this?” I asked quietly.  She nodded yes, so I took a question from a member of the audience, until my colleague (who was the next scheduled speaker) appeared at the back of the room, breathless from the news coming out of New York and Washington, D.C.  He quickly announced the events that were underway in the U.S. to all in attendance; he had managed the National Transportation and Safety Board during TWA 800, so he briefly commented about the closing of U.S. airspace and the challenges ahead before bringing the conference to a speedy close.

I ran upstairs to my hotel room to call my husband.  I couldn’t reach him on a landline but somehow managed to get through by mobile.  His workplace is an agency of the federal government, and it was being closed for the day because of the uncertainties associated with the Pentagon attack and other possible attacks in D.C.

Only moments later, staring at the television, I watched the towers seemingly melt down to the ground. Closer to home, my husband decided that it was safer to walk the 7 miles to our house because of concerns about car bombs in the city.  As he crossed the Roosevelt Bridge by foot into Northern Virginia, he watched dark plumes of smoke in the sky, coming from the direction of the Pentagon.

Later that night I learned from my dearest friend that a mutual acquaintance was among the dead at the World Trade Center. 

When I got back to the office that week – fortunate to have scored one of the last rental cars in Toronto for a 10-hour drive home -- I learned that a colleague was supposed to be on the flight that rammed into the Pentagon.  In one of those fateful decisions one never knows they are making at the time, my colleague had decided to take a later flight to LA because it was his birthday and he felt like sleeping in.

From time to time, I think back on that day and the days that followed.  I remember vividly where my husband and I were on the day we bombed Afghanistan.  And every year at this time, I think about the boy I knew so long ago when we both were young, whose richly rewarding life would end at the top of the World Trade Center, as well as those who have been lost to us along the way because of that day 12 years ago.

The Carpool: Do's and Don'ts

It’s official.  We’re a carpool family.






 

Do

1.     Know the names and addresses of the children for whom you are responsible on your car pool days.

2.     Try to meet the parents of your charges at least once before assuming the care and keeping of their most precious possession; there could be legal ramifications if you don’t.

3.     Ask your carpool charges if they had a good night sleep; it’s potentially helpful if kids in your care are mostly conscious in the event that you have a heart attack or stroke behind the wheel of the car.

4.     Listen carefully to the conversation among carpool passengers; you can pick up valuable intelligence about the social folkways, fast friends and fierce “frienamies” that need to be monitored as your child makes the passage from tween to teen.

5.     Leave the house at least 5 minutes earlier than you should; it’s less stressful to wait than be late.

6.     Alert your school that you are a participant in a carpool; you don’t want to get arrested for kidnapping. 

Don’t

1.      Do not pick a fight with the mom who is the carpool leader as Leader Moms characteristically have a touch of OCD and abhor last minute changes to the schedule; rest assured you will need the Leader Mom’s cooperation with a last minute change request at some point during the school year.

2.     Don’t forget to check you phone before you go to sleep at night for the text message or email alerting you to a last minute change in the schedule.  Even if it’s midnight.

3.     Don’t pick a fight with the mom who makes the last minute change in your schedule (at midnight) for obvious reasons (see #1) – you need them as much or more than they need you.

4.     Don’t try to engage in conversation with your charges; they’ll completely shut down on you and then you won’t get the valuable intelligence you need about their real life at school.

5.     Don’t forget that you are invisible to the children in your care, until you are not – and there’s power in that.

Happy carpooling!

 

The China Girls

Nearly 11 years ago, my husband and I traveled to China where, along with 8 other families, we began our journey as parents. 

Through the years, change has come to all of our homes.  While  we all lived originally in the Baltimore-Washington-Northern Virginia area, some of us moved away or moved on due to careers or other life circumstances.  Some of our kids faced significant challenges through the years and so have some of the parents. 

When we can, though, we try to bring together those of us who remain nearby so that our children have the opportunity to spend time with friends who were with them from the earliest days of their lives.

This past weekend, most of the families made the trek to Hershey, PA to spend a beautiful late summer Saturday at Hershey Park followed by a group dinner in the evening.  Our kids reconnected in the hotel pool…on the roller-coaster…on the log flume...among other places, happy to be together if only for a short time -- but already asking about when we would next meet again!   We parents enjoyed the opportunity to share our war stories, too -- about the aches and pains of getting older; the wonder and fun and periodic frustration of managing pre-teen expectations; and the mystery of what the future would bring to all of us.

In a conversation over dinner (after a few glasses of wine), one mother asked me if I believed in the afterlife.  I said no, mostly because my too secular brain isn't sure what that means; however, I do believe in our eternal participation in the energy of the universe which, as this fellow Mom said, is “love.”  And I agree.

Getting together with these old friends and their beautiful daughters is truly a religious experience for me.  My name for it?  Heaven.

 

 

 

 

Politics

Ok, I’m in a slightly surly mood today, so fair warning about this post.

I hate politics.

When I was younger, I loved political give and take.   The shifting alliances, issues that gained traction because they mattered, building of coalitions, the importance of consensus and art of governance – this stuff dazzled my imagination.  Access to issues, decision makers, and major media helped me build and focus my career in Washington, D.C. because I actually felt some passion about politics.

I’m not going to go into the toxic stew of party “base-baiting,” big money and bigger egos that seem to move in ways contrary to the mood, will and political intention of the country today – a time when too many people are still out of work and too many wars demand our nation’s attention and participation.

And I’m not going to get into Syria, although I’m deeply troubled by events there. 

I am going to briefly comment, however, on leadership.

The post-World War II era ended on September 11, 2001.  All the old paradigms changed with the slow and steady rise of Jihadists coupled with the great “globalism” that has permanently altered old notions of economic independence.

In this ridiculously small, interdependent world we live in, two wars and a Great Recession later, our country seems politically adrift.   There are many reasons for this – a Congress unwilling to govern because so many of our elected officials don't believe in government; a president who has struggled with a willingness to lead and an inability of late to get things done in the face of virulently negative political opposition at home; a rapidly changing and increasingly diverse population whose interests are ignored by many of our political representatives; and now, indeed, skepticism from longstanding as well as begrudging “friends and allies” abroad.

I happen to think the President did the right thing in going to the Congress for approval of a punitive action against Syria; others disagree, which can do in a democracy as long as we ultimately all agree that something needs to be done and then go about the business of doing it.

In the coming weeks and months -- in addition to a likely intervention against a ruthless despot who is unafraid to use weapons of mass destruction -- we face the strong possibility of a government shut down and yet another equally dangerous debt ceiling showdown that could send my retirement savings off a cliff and, I suspect, yours too. 

What can we do to influence the course of events?  Send John Boehner an email?  Hope Mitch McConnell loses his Senate seat this fall?  Pray that the President rediscovers the fact that he does have a mandate to govern?

When all else fails, “In God We Trust.”  Right?

Let’s hope she’s listening.

 

Rush Hour Roulette

I made it to the office alive this morning.  And the four kids in my car made it to school in one piece, too.  But it took a minor miracle.

To get to my daughter’s school in the District of Columbia, we have to take a small bridge – Chain Bridge – over the Potomac from Arlington, Virginia into the District.   On most mornings, there is a backup on the road leading to the bridge, requiring cars to yield to other cars seeking to enter that road.  Many drivers are polite about it, some are not, but most are at least paying attention.

Accident Waiting to Happen #1:  The man reading his newspaper while driving his car.

It was my turn to merge into the line of cars on the road leading to the bridge.   I started to merge in – with plenty of space and as is the norm for this line of traffic over the bridge – and the guy who is supposed to let me in slowly turns the page of his newspaper, which is spread across his dashboard for ease of review.  He is intensely focused on the story in front of him as he starts to accelerate.

Thank god, I’m good with a horn (or at least, Road Rage Jan is) and still have a decent reaction time reflex.   I got his attention and he slowed down, letting us into the line.  (And no, in case my husband is reading this, I didn’t shout obscenities or give him the finger – I had kids in the car!)

As we progressed over the bridge, he moved into the lane next to mine, than up next to me, reading his paper the whole time.  God help us all.

Accident Waiting to Happen #2:  Texting Like Crazy in the Orange FIT

Having dropped my charges safely off at school, I made my way toward Georgetown enroute to L Street, which offers a straight shot downtown. Every time traffic slowed to a crawl, I noticed a little orange Honda FIT car essentially stopped in its tracks -- the driver was busy reading and responding to email on his device of choice.  This happened repeatedly. I honked, others honked, and he texted, indifferent to the vagaries of rush hour and endangering others (not to mention himself).

Accident Waiting to Happen #3:  The cyclist in search of a race.

I managed to travel past Textmaniac in a new direction, arriving at the far end of Georgetown and the entrance to L Street. 

L Street is a pretty busy thoroughfare on the best of rush hour days, but it has become a better street to take now that bike lanes have been created.  Which is all well and good when they are used…which they weren’t today as I essayed the roughly 12 blocks or so in the direction of my office. Three separate cyclists peddled past me as if they were in the Tour de France, weaving crazily between lanes of traffic on either side of me. These guys were seriously whacked.  I managed not to hit one.

 Accident Waiting to Happen #4:  The cyclist, the crosswalk, and 2 seconds left on the clock before the light changes.

You get the picture.

Why should getting to work be so very hard and dangerous, day in and day out?  Why does my city have the most indifferent, reckless, impatient and self-important commuters in the country?

Oh yeah, that’s right.  I work in Washington, D.C., recently cited for having the worst drivers in America.  ‘Nuff said.

 

Back to Reality

As of today, summer is officially over in our little part of Northern Virginia heaven. 
That means everyone is baaaack, school is in session and traffic is horrible.

So the moment our school carpool mom arrived to pick up my daughter, I was out the door, behind the wheel and on my way to work.  8:05am, to be exact.

I managed to get out of our neighborhood in just a few short minutes.  Even the longer drive up to a major parkway leading to several of the bridges into the city wasn’t too bad.  I made my crawl toward the bridge that would carry me into the city in an acceptable amount of time.

And that’s when I remembered: I left the oven on; the bottom oven, to be exact.

I was positive.  Absolutely.  Certain. 

Rather than taking my usual exit onto Roosevelt Bridge and its lovely view of the Kennedy Center and Georgetown on one side and monuments on the other, I veered like a Nascar driver onto an exit back into Virginia. I struggled with my bearings and careened down Route 50 and the disruption of massive roadway construction improvements being paid for no doubt with what little is left of stimulus money. 

Frustrated by the mess, I pulled off route 50 onto a road I knew – without realizing the part of that road I was going to travel was completely foreign to me, even after more than 30 years in the area.

*&$!  Traffic was at a slower than slow crawl.  I was lost.  And it was now 8:45. Time for the Red Cross.

The GPS Lady cooed confidently, “Take the next right, than make an immediate right….”

Ok, lady, I’m with ya….

“In a quarter mile, make a slight left turn,” she coached.  With a heavy sigh of stress relief, I’m feeling a bit deja vue-ish as things start to look more familiar.  “…and in one mile, make a right, then another right....”

Yes!  Home, James -- I mean, Jane….

Confident that my house would not burn down now that my return was imminent, I called my office and explained that I would likely be in around 9:30.  As I walked to the front door of my small castle, Shasha peered at me through the window and happily wagged her tail.  I raced up the stairs and, of course, the oven was…off. 

This blog is called MrsSedd@Sixty for a reason.

Labor Day’s over. Time to get back to work, people!  Until tomorrow….