Immediate Opening

Immediate Opening: All Grill Meisters invited to apply! Walk-ins welcome.

Applications and interviews being held one day only, this Saturday, beginning at 10 a.m. All applicants must be open to immediate availability. Weekends a must for this pending grill position to family of four; three children, one mother: all hearty eaters.

Cooking entries begin promptly at 10 a.m, and are open to the public, professional or non-professional. Trials will begin with simple basic meat entree preparation and food handling safety. Remaining competition entrants will then progress to side dishes and food safety, with special attention to mayonnaise based sauces. Participants may bring own food or specialty items, but staple items of ground beef and rib eyes will be available for purchase on site.

Further required knowledge to include:
--Full comprehensive understanding of safety information, backyard safety, and grilling techniques is expected.
--Entrants will be tested in written and oral form for working knowledge of how to build a controllable fire, how to choose the safest grill for your loved ones, pros and cons of gas versus charcoal, chimney starter over lighter fluid, taming flames, and prompt handling of flare-ups.
--Practical common sense application of proper placement of grill from low lying tree branches, awareness of location of children and pets from proximity of grilling area at all times, proper clothing attire while grilling, and a respect for exploding sausages is required.
--Grillers may register for up to four categories: marinating, smoking, grilling, and flame extinguishing.

*Entry fee of $5.00.
*Live music, food, refreshments and exposure to potential additional employment by others in neighborhood.

This event is sponsored by the Schmidt Family in hopes of replacing their former grill master whose wife has legally restrained from ever setting his GD charred eyebrows and singed chest hair near their children or their family’s Char-Broil four-burner gas grill for the remaining duration of their marriage.

Proceeds will go to purchase of new Char-Broil with side-burners and welder’s mask and vest for next Schmidt Family Grill Master.

Added sign-on bonus of $50 gift card to Hank's Grillin' for Grillers Depot Supply and a one-year subscription to Kingsford's BBQ Culture Quarterly will go to the successful griller.

Interested parties are asked to not arrive in Wisconsin Badger T-shirts, flip-flops, and backwards facing baseball caps in consideration of the Schmidt children and the potential of charcoal starter fluid triggered PTSD.

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When Do You "Get Over It"

One in seven women will experience postpartum mood disorder. 19 years ago, I was one of those women. It's been almost 20 years, and I still advocate, help raise funds, and share my story. People ask me when I'll get over it.

As long as there are women having babies, I won't be "over" it. That time in my life was one of the most challenging, where I learned the meaning of struggle, support, community, the importance of health care and treatment, and hope.

Hope was as important as my physician's care and my family's support. I needed to believe I would get better. I had a health care nurse at the time who promised me I wouldn't always feel the way I did. It was hard for me to believe her, I felt I would never get back to who I was. In my bones, I feared I would never "get over" whatever it was that had its hold on me.

She told me I would make it through, because she had seen it. I asked her to tell me of every single woman she knew that had survived, and so she did. With a leap of faith, I grabbed those stories of  hope and hung on to them until the belief of survival became my own. I saw those dark days through  and on to a life of triumph.

Women with postpartum mood disorder can get better. For this to happen, we need community, resources, support, awareness, medical care and treatment, and a safe place where we find acceptance and connection. Once the curtain of shame, stigma, fear and isolation are lifted, women can begin their journey back to recovery. And one of the biggest predictors of recovery is SUPPORT.

Besides being a proud PPMD survivor, I also am a contributor and Warrior Mom for the national nonprofit, Postpartum Progress. PPP offers in-depth information, community and hope for pregnant and new moms by raising awareness, fighting stigma and providing peer support to women with maternal mental illness.

Today, June 21, is national "Climb Out of the Darkness" day for the postpartum information website, Postpartum Progress. COTD is an international fund raising and awareness raising event where 120 teams 40 states and 6 countries climb metaphorically to represent the climb out and the climb back to themselves. It is the world's largest event for moms with PPMD.

I am climbing today, along with thousands of other women, because "Together, we are stronger."

To see more about Climbs or to find one near you, please click here.

Most importantly, if you know of a mother struggling, or if you yourself are experiencing or think you are experiencing postpartum symptoms, please check the Postpartum Progress site for information on how you can find help.

Thank you. And to all of my fellow PPMD mamas climbing today, I'm so proud of you.

* * *

We're No Longer Living in Caves

Some will say that what I'm talking about here doesn't exist in their life. They've evolved out of it or never felt it, never thought like this, nor associate with people like this. They may say that anyone who thinks like this or knows people like this, brings it upon themselves for being in such a circle of mentality.

They won't need this post.

 

But I'm going to be honest here, and talk about two things that exist in the world, jealousy and insecurity. We see something, we want it -- it's not a nice feeling. It's close to either anger or depression, depending on how you react to it. It's easy to be happy for someone when good things happen to them if you like them and they're your friend, but if it's someone you don't know or if it's more of someTHING that you wish for yourself or your family, that could make it harder to high five that universe that's smiling on this person right now.

Why is there jealousy? Years ago, during a Sociology 101 class in college, our professor told us there is a biological need filled by every human behavior. When we studied jealousy, envy, coveting, what we learned made sense. Our textbook explained that in cave-dwelling primitive times, physical assessment and determination by others about others, was necessary to weed out any threats to our well-being and survival. We had to guard our offspring, make sure we populated. We had no Whole Foods to run to for our mastodon meat and we needed to fiercely keep our meat provider for ourselves. We had to watch and guard and whatever else we needed to do so that we could stay alive and multiply.

If another person was considered a threat to this, our brain put us on high alert. Guard guard guard! The possibility of losing our life partner was everything. When a woman needed a man to bring down a mammoth to feed her children, she had to watch out for any risk. When a man could lose the caretaker of his children or the source of his offspring, it was a threat to his lineage. All so Paleolithic and club-thumping, I know.

But that was jealousy's purpose: protection. Do we still need jealousy now? We still have it. Jealousy for some is closely tied to insecurity, painfully making them question their abilities. For others, it runs along the same vein as loss of social position, no longer being Top #1 and tumbling down out of  choice offers and status. Then there is the straight out covet. We want it, prizes, awards, looks, money, status, title, accolades, power, IT. Do we still need to feel envy? Because it's there, rearing its head, instinctively.

Is our biological evolution flawed in this area?

 

With awareness, can we change the instincts that fly to our brains faster than our ability to talk it through. Rather than being scared or sinking low because our minds tell us someone is better, we can reprogram that millions-of-years-old behavior and wipe out that message that shouts threat threat threat. 

 

If we all aspire, do the work and put in the time, then we can't help but get better at anything we do. I know that for some, that thought provides little comfort – the fall back is to resist change, because change is work, and look how easy it is to be led by trigger emotions and blame it on circumstance, situation, other people. Unfairness. Even if it is true.

If you've made it this far in this post, let me take the words out of your mouth, What the heck brought this on? I'm writing this for myself as much as I'm writing it for anyone reading it. Right now, I'm battling with the insecurity of seeing parents pulling out all the stops for their kids this summer. Caribbean vacations, thousand dollar camps, backyard parties with catered menus, day adventures that run in the hundreds of dollars. I can't do this. Each of my children have their dreams, and the years go by with time shrinking the chance to ever give them what they hope for. The oldest has talked of Hawaii since he was five. After the middlest saw the shores of Sanibel Island on a PBS kids' show, he'd share the exact types of seashells he'd look for. And my youngest, asking for Disneyland, meanwhile, his height inches closer to my 5 foot 5 inch frame. I feel the visceral sting of not being able to set the stage for memories and a childhood that I imagine other children will have, that when compared to the flat memories my mind tricks me into believing will be my children's -- some days, it does me in. My shoulders droop. A not so nice dialogue runs through my head. 

 

I've made a decision, that this instinctive thread of jealousy and insecurity that live on a specific strand of Neanderthal club-wielding DNA is not going to win. As if I haven't evolved in two million years.

 

I don't have a cave mind and if I need meat, there's a Whole Foods eight minutes away.

 

"A flower does not think of competing to the flower next to it. It just blooms." - Sensei Ogui

 

* * *

About My Father

I remember some things about my father. Each time I write about him, I feel like he becomes eternal.

I have a post up on Huffington Post today, Each Father's Day, I Remember. When I share my memories, it's as if he's back to life.

Thank you, for reading.

Peace to all of you today, wherever you are in how you spend this day. 

xo

* * *

Hot Time, Summer in the Suburbs

It's summer in the suburbs. On every block of our neighborhood, pickup trucks roll up to brick walkways. Trailers hauling mowers, leaf blowers, and full crews. It's the season of landscapers and rivals drive past properties, eyeing each others' handiwork to see if the clipper know-how of Sam on Hwy 60 is equal to the golden pruning skills of Mack from Washington Street.

Take Ed and Kevin, for example. Long time landscaping rivals since their first class together at Landscape Academy fifteen years ago. Ed and Kevin often find themselves working side by side in our neighborhood, separated only by the trimmest of arbor vitae lot divisions.

Their work days start with Ed spotting Kevin's 16-foot M22 Li'l Giant extension ladder and raising him with his Alta Vista 10N 24-foot telescopic.

By 7 a.m., Landscape Wars is playing out live for all early morning walkers to see. Every third house has three to six healthy workers in place, and the ploys involved to acquire business is enough to have Donald Trump send in his film crew. Ed and Kevin bring out their 20-foot-long, hurricane-strength mulch blowers and start to show all the homeowners around who’s master and commander of shredded bark placement.

Covert intelligence gathering operations by the guys who work for them are set into motion -- information is traded from listening in across hedges, taking photos, planting listening devices in the petunias, interviewing neighbors, and secrets whispered across day lilies, Is it true Mrs. McClair needs to double up on her crew needs?

Stakes are high with some of this area's landscaping jobs costing in the tens of thousands of dollars; it's every land architect for himself when it comes to finding clients. I’ve hired Kevin, small jobs only, he came on a recommendation, but I can’t say I don’t enjoy the attention of Ed when he's around doing work for a neighbor. I mean, who wouldn't grow weak-kneed at a man who can talk nitrogen soil ratio and its effect on color range with hydrangea. I was in the middle of spreading my own mulch earlier this week, when the Liam Neeson look-alike Ed suddenly appeared, offering me his company’s card.

I gasped at the boldness, after all, it's no secret that it's Kevin who tends to our wisteria. Still, I never forget my manners, and I thanked Ed and let him know that his competition had my loyalty.

That's when Ed crossed his bronze triceps and leaned against his shovel. With his steely blue gaze searing right into me, he said nothing, only wiped his forearm across his sweaty brow. He licked his sun-parched lips and looking side to side, he said in a low voice, “Yeah... Kevin’s a good guy. He does what he can with his 74a Bobcat. But, lemme show you somethin’… got it backed up right here in the flatbed … ready to go. The RoboLift 3000. Take your bushes to heights you never imagined, just say the word.”

I blinked, feeling suddenly woozy in the morning sun. Falling into Ed, I excused myself, "I must've gotten up too fast."

"No problem, ma'am. Let me get my boys to help you out, just for today. Boys!! Let's load 'er up and deliver what we promise." Ed stands with his back to me now and turning around he zones in on my face, "We can be in and out of here, lay everything that needs to be laid, in an hour and half, two hours tops. Unless you want it longer. How's that sound?"

All I can answer is, "Kevin? Kevin who?"

* * *