Still Possible to Make Changes?

It’s the first week of the new year, 2011. Guess what? I didn’t set any resolutions for this year. Did you?

If not, why not?

Are we so content that there is nothing we want to change? Or have some of us decided that we’re too old to change?

I noticed that I had lost the aura of contentment that I felt earlier this year. It seems that I have been spending less time doing some of the things that are really important to me – like writing this blog.

But I felt a spurt of the old juices starting to run again when I was reading my monthly issue of Toastmaster Magazine this afternoon. The January issue, in particular, is full of inspiring articles about setting goals and overcoming obstacles.

Last June, I joined the Toastmasters club at the company where I work as a part-time tech writer three days a week. This is my third time being a member of a Toastmasters club and my goal for the immediate future is to finish the basic Competent Communicator manual before June 2011.

I didn’t manage to complete the basic manual in my two previous clubs, although I think that I must have got pretty close to finishing at least one of those times.

My improvement is tangible. I am now able to give speeches without memorizing every single word beforehand as though it was a script. But I am still not the confident speaker that I would like to be. During our last meeting, I was filling a functionary role that involved introducing other speakers and after the meeting I started feeling bad about some fumbling that I had done.

“Why am I doing this when it is no longer something that must do?” I am not trying to advance my career in high tech, which was the situation when I joined my first Toastmaster club many years ago. I didn’t really need to do this.

But did I really want to quit without reaching my goal of finishing that basic manual?

Today, when I was reading the Toastmaster magazine, I admitted to myself that there is another reason that I returned to Toastmasters beyond my desire to stand up and give toasts at the weddings of my daughters.

I still haven’t come to the end of my “bucket list” of things that I’d like to accomplish before I die. Even though I am approaching what was once considered the standard retirement age, I would actually like to do some sort of work – just not the kind of work that I’m doing now.

There are at least two things that I have always wanted to be able to do. One is to publish a story that people will read and the other—despite my innate shyness—is to be some sort of entertainer.

I read in the Toastmaster magazine about people whose active participation in the club enabled them to change their careers and become professional speakers. Some of these people write inspirational books encouraging other people to overcome their fears of public speaking or other issues. So I’m going to keep attending Toastmasters. When I fumble, I’ll try to do better next time. As long as we keep trying, we still have the ability to change.

Mitzi Woke Me Up

Mitzi’s loud, repeated cries pulled me from a deep sleep. I stumbled out of bed and started to go to her. She was standing at the top of the stairs, looking down to the first floor, and continuing to cry.

“What’s the matter?” I mumbled. No answer. She didn’t even look at me. The crying continued. But I closed our bedroom door and snuggled back under the covers.

“Do you think that she is trying to tell us something?” I asked my still half-asleep husband. “Maybe there is an intruder downstairs.”

With that thought, I felt a pain in the middle of my chest as though my heart was being squeezed like a wet sponge. I was hoping that Micha would get up and go investigate. But he had fallen back to sleep.

I was hesitant to go downstairs myself, both because I was a bit frightened of what I might find and also because I was still very sleepy. Despite the pain in my chest.

The crying had stopped, and soon I was asleep again.

But I didn’t forget what had happened when I woke up two hours later. A residual ache in my chest still remained.

“Why do you think she was crying like that last night?” I asked Micha.

“There was no intruder,” he replied.

Usually, she wakes us up by knocking over the plastic cup that I keep by the bathroom sink. Or she tickles me in the face with her whiskers or kneads at me with her paws. And usually, she doesn’t wake me up until later. She seems to understand somehow what days I need to get up for work. On those days, she wakes me between 7 and 7:30 if I don’t get up first by myself. Other days, she lets me sleep an hour later.

Why was this morning different than all the other mornings? Why on this morning, did she feel compelled to wake me up so roughly at 6 AM?

I heard her scratching at the bedroom door and opened it. “Come, Mitzi, I’ll give you some water.” We follow our usual morning routine as she follows me into the bathroom.

Mitzi only likes to drink water flowing from the faucet.

Afterwards we go downstairs and I look around as I head to the kitchen. No signs of an intruder. And no “gifts” from Mitzi that I need to clean up. Micha and I need to patrol the rooms every day now to make sure that Mitzi has not pooped outside her litter box. She seems to avoid the rooms that are used the most—the kitchen, the family room, and the bedrooms. She picks the rooms that we use more rarely now—the living room, dining room, and the little den. It doesn’t matter how clean I keep her litter box. But it isn’t something that happens every day. Sometimes, several days will pass with no problems. We are always bound to find something waiting for us if we have spent a whole day or overnight away—even though a neighbor will come to feed and check on her. Seems that she do this on purpose to signal us when we aren’t paying sufficient attention to her.

Annoying as it is, I realize that her “poop problem” is one of the challenges of living with an elderly pet. She is eighteen years old, quite a senior. Still a beautiful, long haired calico cat, even though she is now very skinny. The vet ran a whole series of tests on her and assured me that Mitzi is a very healthy, old cat.

She has always been very sweet, very affectionate, and very patient. But now, she is even more docile. She used to run and hide when we had a lot of guests over the house. Now, she likes to hang around in the midst of the action. And she seems to have lost her sense of self-protection when it comes to little children. We have to be vigilant on her behalf and remind the children to be “very gentle”, because Mitzi will not protect herself.

Remembering a Peaceful Visit to Thailand

Maybe it was all the news about stranded travelers due to the volcanic eruptions in Iceland that got me thinking about our last trip across an ocean—-to visit Thailand. Unfortunately, Thailand has also been in the news recently because of its political eruptions. But when Micha and I were there in November 2009, it seemed very peaceful. True, we were just there for a couple of weeks and we were only tourists. So we couldn’t tell what was going on beneath the surface.

Also, I did notice a couple of small articles in the Thai English language newspaper mentioning problems between the current Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and the former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Nevertheless, I got the impression that the King, who seemed to be revered by everyone that we talked to, would be able to keep the peace. Obviously, I was wrong, but I hope that things will sort themselves out.

For those of you who are considering a trip to Thailand at some point in the future or who are curious about my impressions of the country, read on.

Bangkok
We started off in Bangkok. Our hotel, Navalai River Resort (www.navalai.com), was moderately priced and very comfortable with a pool on the roof, a good restaurant overlooking the river, and a dock where we could catch a water taxi. Water taxis are definitely the most comfortable way to move around in Bangkok, which has notoriously awful traffic.

Micha and I were both struggling with jet lag for the first couple of days of this trip, which made it a bit of a challenge to thoroughly enjoy the sites in Bangkok. My favorite activity was a dinner cruise that we took one evening--it was such a relaxing way to see the city at night. The classical Thai music and dancing added to the ambience. My favorite site in Bangkok was the Reclining Buddha. Of all the Buddhas that we saw in Thailand, the Reclining Buddha was the one that gave me the greatest feeling of peacefulness.

Phuket
After the hustle and bustle of Bangkok, we were happy that the next part of our trip was a leisurely week at the luxurious Marriott resort in Phuket (http://www.phuket.com/marriott/). We exchanged a week of our one-bedroom timeshare in Kauai for a two bedroom at the resort in Phuket and invited a couple of friends to join us. We walked on the beach, spent lots of time in the pools, took yoga classes, got massaged, and watched several of the sunset dance performances at the hotel’s reflecting pool.

One day, we hired a taxi and explored the island, stopping for a short hike to see a waterfall in one of the parks and spending a couple of hours swimming at Kata beach. This beach is particularly popular with families, because of its long shallow, sheltered bay.

Another day, we took a speedboat ride from the city of Phuket for a full afternoon of snorkeling and swimming around the smaller Phi Phi islands.

Knowing that I have a tendency to sea-sickness, I was pleased when the charter hostess handed out sea sickness pills for us to take prior to boarding. The boat accommodated about 20 passengers and crew. I had read that the seats in the back of the boat offered an easier ride. But they were already occupied. So I took a seat across the aisle from the driver and hoped for the best. Another member of the crew distributed bottles of water and soda before we got started and I selected a bottle of cola, because of its purported stomach settling qualities. I managed to take only one sip before realizing that it was impossible to drink anything while the boat was bumping over the waves like a bronco in a rodeo show.

I gripped the side of the boat and concentrated my gaze at the horizon—another purported technique to avoid seasickness. The water was dark grey and choppy. Would I be able to snorkel in water like this? Was the boat about to get hit by a sudden storm?

The Phi Phi islands are miles away from Phuket harbor and it took us about an hour to reach our first stop. What a relief it was to arrive in a sheltered bay. The sun had broken through the clouds. The water was calm and perfectly turquoise, the surrounding cliffs draped in tropical foliage, the beach an enticing carpet of soft, soft sand. Our guide told us that this spot was featured in the film “The Beach” with Leonardo DiCaprio. I hadn’t seen the film. Seems that the film didn’t get the best reviews. But we added watched it eagerly on Netflix when we returned home—thirsting for another look at that gem of a beach where we had immersed ourselves in the deliciously warm, turquoise water.

We had only a short ride to our next stop, Monkey Island. Our skipper pulled in very close to the island, but we didn’t actually disembark. Instead, we watched as our guide tossed bananas to the monkeys clambering down the cliffs to greet us. It was the first time that I’d ever seen a monkey swim. Apparently, they sometimes jump into the boat. But not during our visit.

Afterwards, the boat took us to a sheltered reef. It wasn’t within a bay, but they managed to select an area where the currents were amazingly gentle. Nevertheless, the guide suggested that we might want to wear life jackets while snorkeling, so that we could feel fully relaxed. I figured that it would also keep my warmer. So I took him up on his suggestion. It didn’t interfere with my moving around at all. And it probably did add to my feeling of relaxation as I watched various kinds of colorful tropical fish swimming around and below me.


ChaingMai
We had hired a guide for several days that we were spending up north. I felt like we could have used more time in this area of the country, and I would have liked to do more hiking than we did.


Maetang Elephant Park
My favorite day up North was the day we visited Maetang Elephant Park (www.elephantchiangmai.com ) north of Chiangmai. I loved the elephant ride, though I hadn’t known what to expect when Micha and I got on board. Don’t worry. They don’t let the tourists ride an elephant all my themselves. Our mahout sat bareback toward the front of the elephant and directed the elephant by moving his legs against the elephant’s ears. I had a feeling that the mahout might have been distracted by talking on his cellphone as Micha and I struggled not to slip completely off of our metal seat while the elephant descended down a surprisingly steep and narrow trail into the river. We didn’t fall off, but I did get a colorful array of bruises on the back of my arm from hanging on to the back of my seat during the bumpy ride. No matter. I would be happy to do it again! It was so much fun bouncing along on top of the elephant as we rode through the river and along the river bank from the Elephant Camp to a nearby tribal village.

Another highlight of the Elephant Park that didn’t involve a bumpy ride was watching Suda, the painting elephant. There were two elephants that painted for us. The older elephant threw a lot of bright colors onto canvas, in a style reminiscent of Jackson Pollock. But Suda is not an abstract artist. She started by drawing a black curvy line, and kept adding more lines to create an elephant body, legs, tail, ear and eye—all in the right places. She even added a flower, putting in the details of a green stem with leaves and a yellow blossom. And finally, she signed her own name in clear block letters at the top of the painting. Very impressive.

Too Late for Conversation with My Mother

It’s too late to have the type of conversation that I would have liked to have with my mother. And who knows if that would have possible anyway.

I have seen photos of my mother as a wistful little girl, as a laughing teenager posing with her girlfriends, and as a young mother overflowing with love for the two small children in her arms.

Maybe I could have used those photos as a basis for talking to her person to person. Or maybe not.

When prompted, Mom would agree to tell me some stories about her childhood. I got the impression that she grew up in a happy family. Not so well off financially. But not living in a tenement like my father’s family. Her parents owned their own house and for a while, before the Depression, owned some additional rental property.

Mom had a lot of respect for her father, whom we all called Papa. Like Tevya, in Fiddler on the Roof, Papa had fled with his family from a Russian shtetl because of the pogroms. His two older children, my Uncle Harry and Aunt Esther, were born in Russia, while Mom and her younger brother Sol were born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For some reason, maybe because of the paranoia of the McCarthy era, no one ever mentioned the fact that two of the children were born prior to the family’s immigration. In any case, I think that Harry and Esther probably arrived in the United States when they were still very small children.

I thought my mother was lucky to have not one but two brothers AND a sister. I had only my brother Paul. He would play with me sometimes. But not when his buddies were around. I had the impression that more siblings would have meant that I would always have playmates available.

Papa had also brought over his own father, who lived with the family and looked a lot like Count Tolstoy. Papa’s brothers came, too. One brother settled down in the nearby town of Roxbury. Another moved to New Hampshire. My mother grew up surrounded by lots of family.

Mom told me that she would have liked to teach kindergarten, but Papa didn’t believe that girls should study beyond high school. “You don’t need to be a nanny for someone else’s children,” he said. “You’ll have your own.”

Mom and her sister acquiesced to his decision, although both their brothers managed to work their way through Harvard and Harvard Law School. “We weren’t as smart as Sol and Harry,” Mom told me.

In later years, Mom did manage to get a job teaching Sunday School and worked as a teaching assistant in a Jewish Day School and seemed to enjoy the work a lot. Mostly, she was a housewife, although she didn’t particularly like to cook, bake, or clean.

It was nice to have her home waiting for me and my brother with glasses of milk and cookies when we came home from school. I’m sure she liked the fact that she could be there and listen to the news of our day. But I think she might have been happier if she had been able to combine motherhood with a part-time job.

When I was in high school, Mom did take a clerical job to help with the additional expenses of my brother’s college tuition. She exchanged her frumpy looking house-dresses for business clothes and started getting her hair done more often. She became friends with her co-workers and would tell me funny stories about her day at work. It seemed to broaden her horizons, made her more interested in what was going on in the world around her, and gave her a sense of pride that she could earn money, too.

It’s almost 8 years since Mom passed away. I miss talking to her. Sometimes, I feel an urge to pick up the phone and call her. It was mostly on the phone that we talked, after all, since she lived in Florida and I live in California.


I think of Mom especially on Friday nights when I light the candles, remembering all the Friday nights when we lit candles together while I was growing up.

I thought of Mom when my daughter Orli got married and when my grandson was born. She’d be pleased to see what a wonderful mother Orli is.

I’m glad that Mom did get the nachus, the pleasure and satisfaction, of seeing her children grow up to get married and become parents, themselves.

Who knows, maybe she can still see what is going on in our lives today. If so, I think she must be pleased to see that all five of her grandchildren (my three daughters, and my brother's son and daughter) have grown up to become independent and productive—traits that Mom valued highly.

Day Trip to Monterey and Carmel

Some of the nicest trips are close to home – particularly when you live someplace as beautiful as northern California. Last weekend, we drove down to Monterey and Carmel with Uzi and Hava.

The morning started out sunny in Palo Alto, but we knew there was no guarantee that it would be sunny along the coast. So we felt lucky that the sun remained with us all day.

Rather than visiting Cannery Row or the Aquarium in Monterey, we chose to spend our time in the less crowded area around Lover’s Point. We explored the tide pools, walked along the shoreline trail strewn with wildflowers, and ate lunch on patio of Latitudes. The best thing about the restaurant is the location, which is directly across from Lover’s Point and offers a spectacular view of Monterey Bay. Unfortunately, the view seems to be the only thing that this restaurant has in its favor. The service was incredibly slow despite the fact that the restaurant was not full at all and the waitress was not even apologetic. And the food wasn’t worth waiting for.

But it was a beautiful day and I enjoyed sitting around talking with our friends.

Still, we were relieved when we could finally pay the bill and continue on our way to Carmel via the 17 Mile Drive. I was looking forward to seeing the harbor seals on the beach at Cypress Point. So I was disappointed to find fences up blocking entry to that area. Turns out that the harbor seals need privacy during pupping season. Guess I’ll have to come back again in early June.

We stopped for another highlight along 17 Mile Drive at the Lodge at Pebble Beach. We visited the posh lobby and meandered out to the balcony overlooking the tantalizing—especially for my husband—golf green. As we were admiring the view and drinking in the classiness of the place, we could see them setting up for an outdoor wedding. Some of the female guests began to arrive. They were so well coifed, so elegantly dressed, and so stunning that they could have been starlets walking down the red carpet to the Oscar Award ceremony.

But I am sure that I was much more comfortable in my jeans, t-shirt, and flats than they were in their dazzling, skin-tight dresses and stiletto heels.

Waiting for Rumpestilskin

This morning, I was sitting in my windowless cubicle, surrounded by fluorescent lights and feeling a bit like the princess that was locked in a tower room with bales of straw, trying to figure out some way to turn the straw into gold within three days. My network connection had gone down and I was unable to connect to any of the tools that I needed to do my job. I had called the Help Desk and done everything that asked me to try to no avail.

My case was supposedly marked as “high priority” and I was expecting a local IT person to show up at any moment and resolve the problem. But no one came.

True, I was not locked in a tower. I could have walked out of the building into the fresh air and sunlight without risk of life or limb. But I was being paid to produce technical documentation and I wanted to produce it.

Frustrated by the slow response from IT, I kept thinking about other analogies. I felt like someone who was asked to dig a ditch without being given a shovel or someone asked to cook a meal without being given any ingredients. The refrigerator and all the cabinets were locked shut and the guests were expected in a few hours.

Finally, it occurred to me to try something that the Help Desk had not suggested. I unplugged the coral-colored Ethernet cable from the coral-colored outlet that it had been plugged into and tried plugging it into an unused outlet that was colored green. Lo and behold, my connection worked.

Apparently, the color was insignificant. So I told the Help Desk that I no longer needed them and got back to work, feeling a bit abashed that I had not thought earlier of trying the other option. Another example of the need for thinking outside the box.

What about you? Have you found yourself stuck waiting for someone to help and then realized you could resolve the problem yourself by dealing with it another way?

Happy Thoughts

As I was steeping in my lavender bubble bath tonight and reflecting on my weekend, I recalled the words of Robert Lewis Stevenson from one of my favorite childhood books, A Child's Garden of Verses:


The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

That’s precisely how I feel right now as I try to decide which particular happy thing to focus on in my blog.

Owl’s Clover and Yona’s Birthday Hike and Picnic in Foothill Park
Should I talk about today’s hike and picnic with friends in Foothill Park? It was in honor of Yona’s birthday – the second time that we had a get together like this for her birthday. And I hope that we continue to do in for many years to come. Most of the participants are mutual friends, but were a few people that I didn’t know. A young couple that I hadn’t met before was walking along the trail with us and the woman, Rachel, seemed to know the names of all the flowers. She pointed out a flower that I hadn’t paid close attention to before, Owl’s Clover. Bending down for a closer look, I noticed for the first time that interspersed among the purple spikes were small white blossoms with tiny black markings that looked like the faces of miniature white owls.

After the hike we sat at a table in the shade for a potluck picnic lunch with lots of yummy salads, wine, cake, and easy-going conversation. We even got a perk of some free massage from a friend of Yona’s who specializes in acupressure.

Saturday with Torah Study and Babysitting for Gali
Yesterday was another good day. In the morning, we attended Torah study at Beth Am and discussed the biblical theme of the "barren woman", the repeated story about a woman who has difficulty conceiving a child and then gives birth to a son with special abilities. The rabbi referred to a book, The Art of Biblical Narrative, by Robert Alter, who says that it is intentional rather than a case of poor editing when certain stories are repeated in the bible with slight variations.

Later in the afternoon, I drove up to Oakland. I had agreed to babysit for Gali on Saturday night. This was a solo assignment, because Micha had heard about a concert of classical music at Stanford that night and didn’t want to miss it. I still prefer folk music over classical, so it was no sacrifice on my part to miss the concert and babysit for Gali instead. In fact, seeing Gali fills me up with so many happy thoughts that I find myself overflowing with them for hours and days after I see him. My 1 ½ year old grandson is a ball of energy and powerhouse of affection. He loves to run around and around—in the playground, in the yard, and in the house. Round and round he goes, pushing trucks, opening and closing doors, laughing at his own antics and hugging me and his mommy, his daddy, and his stuffed animals. If a campaigning politician could manage to say “hi” with as much enthusiasm and sincere warmth as Gali does, I bet he would win the election in a landslide.