Some days, I have a really hard time being present in my own life.

I work all day long with kids and parents who have a string of worries and feelings. It is my job to listen, to support, to give advice, to brainstorm. But mostly, it is my job to be present. To sit with a person in the moment that they’re in – with them.

This is easier said than done. Have you ever really tried it? Fully focusing on a conversation without thinking about your ever growing to-do list, the fight you had with your spouse, what people are up to on facebook or if you have new e-mail that you need to read?

It’s hard. There are lots of what we therapists call “intrusive thoughts” that steal away our ability to be present, even when we’re really trying.

It’s like a muscle that needs to be exercised, that needs practice on a daily basis. Mindfulness.

Today, I colored a picture of Dino (from The Flinstones) with an 11 year old while we talked about her fears of dying. I read a book with an 8 year old about flexible thinking. I played on the swings with a 6 year old and taught him how to introduce himself to a peer. I introduced a social skills curriculum to a 9 year old and his mother. I had a conversation with someone I supervise. I exercised at the gym. I went to a latin dance class with my husband, and locked eyes with him for a hour.

Today? Today I was present.

And it felt good.

There’s no doubt that I was a lucky child.

Why? Because I never had to eat “fake” maple syrup. In fact, I didn’t even know that there was any other kind of maple syrup in the world until I was a teenager.

My Grandfather and Uncle supplied us with a fresh gallon of maple syrup at Christmas every year that they had made themselves through the hard process of tapping trees, collecting and boiling sap, sugaring off, and sealing the bottle. When I was little, the heavenly stuff came in a tin can with pictures of snow covered trees on it and a log cabin. Quaint Vermont maple syrup at it’s finest.

Every time my Mom made pancakes, we’d pour some of the thick syrup into a measuring cup and heat it in the microwave. It would come out fast onto your pancakes, and before you knew it – you’d be having pancakes with your maple syrup, instead of the other way around.

But maple syrup? Not limited to the breakfast arena in my household. Anything is fair game – pork, ham, even a maple glaze for steak. What can we say? It’s an addiction.

So for my last meal on Earth? I’m not sure, but I know that it would include some maple syrup- the delicious taste wrapped up in the memories of the smell of boiling sap, the sugar shack, cold winter mornings, and my Grandfather.

This post was inspired by the writing prompt for NaBloPoMo, which we are participating in. Click the link to the right for more information! The prompt was “If you knew that whatever you ate next would be your last meal, what would you want it to be?”

It has a walk-in closet in my room. I used to knock on the wall that connected to my brother’s room. Sometimes we used it as code to “talk” to each other. Sometimes we banged when we were mad at each other.

It has blue shag carpeting.

It has a squeaky stair in the middle of the staircase.

It has a window in my bedroom and my parent’s that looks out onto the roof – all the better for climbing out to shovel the roof, and jumping into the pile of snow below.

It has a front stoop perfect for sitting on and watching the neighborhood on summer nights.

It has a patch of lawn that once connected to the neighbor’s lawn. Together they made a perfect kickball field.

It is number 25.

It is down the street from the park where I learned to ride my bike, where I played, where I sat and waxed philosophic among teenage angst with my friends.

It was never locked when we’re out for an evening walk with the dogs.

It has a brook next to the driveway that floods after the snow starts to melt, that I lost many balls to, jumped into to rescue my hula hoops, and walked to the other end of down by Mathewson (when it was dried out in the summer).

It has a rose garden.

It is white, with blue shutters. They used to be black.

It has a spot on the carpet where I stepped on a dead mouse that our cats had brought us as a “present.”

It has a counter that once held the bucket for my lunch money.

It has a living room where I fed my dogs from baby bottles, curled up on bright red bean bags, taught school to my dogs, and set up racing courses for my Barbie cadillac.

It had a tree where we took our “First Day of School” pictures, where I used to sit and read. I cried when it got cut down.

It has a bathroom that I remember taking my first shower in, with a window that you can call down to Mom hanging up clothes on the clothesline if you need her.

It has a bathroom once stocked with bandaids for those accidents that sometimes happen.

It has a kitchen that cooked cinnamon rolls on Sunday mornings, baked numerous birthday cakes, and where I “cooked” my very first meal – it was for my parents on one of their anniversaries. It was also where I was standing when my Mom came through the door to tell us my Gromp had died.

It has a driveway where we had many lawn sales, where I practiced my bike skills, and where I gave many “dog shows” for the neighbors.

It had a crab apple tree in the backyard. I hated picking up the apples before Mom mowed the lawn.

It had a stereo in the living room where I would record from the radio onto tapes, where I played my Mom’s records and sang, where I danced to “Walk Like an Egyptian” with my Dad.

It has a kitchen table that I used to play underneath with my friends (we were spies), where I had birthday dinners, and where we would talk for hours on weekends.

It has a lilac bush that smells amazing in the spring.

It has a million memories – tears, laughter, love, innocence, childhood.

It’s easy to forget how lucky I was, to live in the same house for my childhood. To be blessed with the stablity and security of a home. It did not understand then how hard my parents worked to make sure that we lived in our house, were safe, and warm. Sometimes, in my work with typically very poor children(financially, and often emotionally), I am overcome with how lucky I truly am – to come where I come from.

I have a house, that even when my parents move out of it, will always be my home.

Because every crack and crevice? I’ve explored them. And that house and the people in it? They built me.

(Disclaimer: “The House that Built Me” is a song, by Miranda Lambert).

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month.

We, unfortunately, joined the millions of women and families affected by breast cancer back in 1997 when my Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.

I still remember the moment that she came through the door. I was on the phone with Stacey. I was 15. The look in her eyes chilled me to the core. I told Stacey I had to go.

I was sitting on the arm of the couch when she told me, and my Dad that she had cancer. It was one of those moments – when the world seems to come to a halt – and you know that life will never be the same.

And it wasn’t.

I remember writing in my journal the day of her surgery. I remember feeling so mad at the universe. I remember my Dad telling me everything was going to be okay, and I remember snapping back at him not to tell me that because he didn’t know that for sure.

I remember after beginning the chemo treatments, I came downstairs one morning and saw my Mom looking in the mirror, pulling the beautiful black hair out of her head with tears streaming down her face. She was so strong, but I believe this was one of the hardest parts for her.

I remember laying on the floor next to the couch holding a bucket for her, if she needed to throw up after treatments.

I remember going with her to pick out a wig, that she rarely wore because it was uncomfortable and itchy.

I remember my “friends” telling me that I was so lucky because I got out of school early a few times to go to chemo sessions with my Mom.

I remember these same “friends” telling Stacey that I was not much fun anymore, since my Mom got sick.

I remember crying on my bed, feeling so overwhelmed, and my Mom coming in to comfort me. We cried together, and the next day I skipped school, she skipped work and we had a “mental health” day together.

I remember the day that we found out the surgery and chemo had worked. She was cancer free.

I remember the first Susan G. Komen “Race for the Cure” we attended in Vermont. We cried so hard crossing that finish line. My Mom? She was a survivor.

10 years later, I was sent to have a mammogram by my doctor after she felt a lump. Thinking it was no big deal I went to the appointment by myself. I watched my doctor’s jaw drop when she showed me the x-ray. It needed to be bioposied, because “it didn’t look good.” The radiologist hugged me. I have no recollection of the drive away from that hospital back to work. I made it through the office door before I started crying. Amy hugged me, listened to me, and Stacey met me back at home. For an entire weekend I cried, ate chicken wings, and watched Gilmore Girls in my bed. I was terrified. My Mom was terrified. And as I cried to her on the phone that I could not do this, I wasn’t as strong as her, she said one thing to me that I will never forget. “Yes you are, you’re the best part of me.”

As it turned out, I did not have cancer at that time. 4 mammograms, 3 ultrasounds, and 2 biopsies later I was given the diagnosis of fibroendenoma. Harmless. I was one of the lucky ones.

It was soon after that scare, that Stacey and I decided we were going to create a day to celebrate my Mom. Her strength. Her will to survive. All that she had been through. We named it SandyB day. We picked October 30th, because October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. We send pink flowers, and pink presents, and take a day to acknowledge how strong she is for what she has survived. She’s even stronger now. She has been cancer free for many years, each of which I’m grateful for. And every July we have participated in the Race for the Cure to give back and show support, to join with a community of strong men and women who walk and run in rememberance and celebration of their loved ones. Survivors are to be celebrated, and there is no one I know that is more of a survivor than my Mom.

She is beautiful, caring, kind, loving, and incredibly strong. She is everything I want to be when I grow up. She is my hero and in truth, she had it wrong because she is the best part of me.

I love you, Mom – Happy SandyB Day!

I’m not gonna lie. The last two weeks have been kinda craptastic. We thought Barney was going to have to be put to sleep, Casey’s “check engine” light came on in his car, our dryer broke, I lost my wallet, and I’m going to have to unexpectedly leave one of my jobs.

And then, (perhaps because everything happens for a reason?) I got an e-mail. An e-mail that reminded me of a season in my life that I hadn’t thought about in a very long time.

I was not a typical teenager. In fact, before I even became a teenager I had already testified at a City Council meeting when they were trying to pass a law to allow police to kick homeless people out of the park in the center of town. I clearly remember telling a city council member that he should try talking to the people in the park who were homeless instead of assuming that he knew everything about them.

When I was 13, my Mom and I became part of the forming of a group called The Teen Action Committee. Then (and now) teenagers have a bad rap. In the town I grew up in, teenagers were not to be seen or heard if the community had their way. They didn’t want to see kids hanging out downtown, skateboarding (gasp!) eating (oh no!) or talking with their friends (run for your lives!)

The Teen Action Committee (TAC) took on the project of forming a teen center in town, that would be staffed by positive adults and have things for kids to do. This was not a simple task- although the community didn’t want to see the teenagers, they also didn’t want to give money, space, or time to them for them to have a safe space to be, either. So the teenagers and adults involved in TAC spent countless hours meeting with city officials, testified at numerous council meetings, wrote grants, and spent hours on the steps at the BOR lobbying people to vote and support teens. Both the mayor and the city manager knew me by name. I didn’t know it then, but I had just begun my life of community organizing. I was also given the gift of doing this all with my Mom, who taught me to care and invest in my community – a virtue I hold dear to me.

Eventually, we were given a space. We had grant money. We had adults to staff it. And we’d brow beaten the city council into allowing the teen center to open its doors.

We cleaned this space from top to bottom. We got donations for a pool table, games, a stereo for music, snacks, and pizza parties.

We opened.

Here I am with Aaron, at the Grand Opening giving an award to the city manager, Mike Welch (a good guy and major help in this quest) as the mayor at the time looks on. I am 16 in this picture.

The Teen Center didn’t stay open long. For a lot of reasons – both internal conflict in TAC, lack of community support, constant funding concerns, and so on – it closed its doors not long after it opened. “New Directions for Barre” was formed from the dissolution of TAC, and it did go on to continue to work on teen issues.

I, unfortunately, have always looked back on the teen center as a failed effort at community organizing. Even though I loved it, and I met some amazing people (both through organizing, and hanging out at the teen center myself) it closed so quickly. After years of trying to make it a reality, it didn’t succeed in the way that we all had hoped.

Until I got this e-mail. From an old high school friend who wanted to say thank you to my Mom.

For what?

For the teen center.

Turns out, the teen center (and the positive adult staff, including my awesome Mom) intervened in her life in a way that made a difference. A big one.

And suddenly, my two rough two weeks? Didn’t matter. And the teen center? It wasn’t a failure at all – it was a huge success. It mattered. It made a difference.

Thanks universe and thank you my friend, for this important reminder.

They say dogs are “man’s best friend”.  In our case, they may be the only children we ever have.  For those of you following either of us on Facebook, you know that last Friday we came very close to losing Barney, or so we thought.

Luckily, Barney was given a very positive prognosis, and the goodbyes we were preparing to say never came to be.  Barney is getting better each day and is slowly becoming a total spaz again.  But this “near-death” experience kind of got me to thinking about my feelings toward dogs in general.

When I was born, my parents already had a dog, a black fuzzball named Mandy.  When I was two, they got a german shepard named Coke, so I pretty much spent my early childhood with dogs around.  I loved Coke, Coke loved me, and wasn’t afraid to maul girl scouts or tear a woodchuck in half with his jaws if he felt they might get in between us.  Still, his natural protective instincts aside, he was a very good dog, as was Mandy.

Mandy was older and died when I was almost eight (I think she was about 27 at the time).  Coke got bad arthritis and was put to sleep when I was ten.

After that, we never had another dog.  We did rescue a stray cat and kept one of its kittens when I was a teenager.  Both had their lives cut short by feline leukemia.

As time passed, having a dog almost seemed foolish to me.  I looked strictly at the logic of it.  Why would anyone want to buy this animal to live in their house, possibly get into things they shouldn’t, just so they can walk it and feed it?  Jerry Seinfeld had a routine on one of the “Seinfeld” episodes saying that if aliens ever came to our planet, they’d think the dogs were the ruling class, since the humans were doing their bidding.  I had developed the same way of thinking.

Then I met Jenn, and then Skeeter, and I really warmed up to Skeeter pretty quickly without even having to try.  He may not love me like he loves his Mom, but we do get along and I love having him around, except for maybe when he’s being an asshat.  When we were engaged we decided to rescue a dog, and right after we got married we adopted Barney.  It didn’t take long to love him, either, despite his early escape attempts. And then of course, there’s my “boyfriend” Chandler who allows Stacey to take care of him for as long as she has my sacred blessing (ok, kidding…well, sort of).

And now I can’t imagine life without Skeeter or Barney.

I think what it boils down to for me, is that no matter what the logic is, it’s natural to love dogs as pets.  They may be work sometimes, and they may act up, but they need us to live, or at least to live healthy and happily, and they always love us back.  They keep us company, try to cheer us up when we need it, and do their best to protect us (well, maybe not Skeeter, but a lot of them do).  And it’s always sad when they die, so Skeeter, Barney, and Chandler (and Spock and Gryffindor, my mother-in-law’s dogs) are required to live forever.  End of story.

Since entering the field of social work, I’ve worked with a lot of different groups of people. Homeless. Poor. Community organizers. Mentally ill. Children.

I have learned an incredible amount from all of these groups. About myself, about life, about how to be a good social worker. How to be a better person. But the one I’ve probably learned the most from? It’s the children, of course.

The ones who know more about the adult world than they should. Whose eyes tell stories of abuse, neglect, stolen innocence and insecurity. The children who have hidden under my desk because they feel so unsafe in their world, have cried long withheld tears in my presence, have shared secrets that they trusted no one else to respond safely to.

The children who surprise me at every turn with their strength, their capacity to endure, their ability to learn how to trust the world again.

The children who forgive the unforgivable, who love purely and unconditionally.

The children who make me laugh with their questions, their blunt replies, their honesty, their willingness to share what’s on their mind.

I feel honored most days to be doing the work I do. To be witness to the stories that children have to tell. To be able to offer some relief, some ways to manage and cope with what they have seen, heard, felt, and experienced.

I never intended to be working with children when I entered the social work field, but I do truly believe that I was meant to be doing this at this time in my life. I had lessons to learn from the 100+ children I’ve met in the last three years, and I’m doing my best to listen, and to learn… even when it’s hard, even when I leave my office crying at night, even when I don’t want to listen or feel anymore. Because I’ve learned, from these amazing children, that when it’s the most hard? That’s the time to keep trying, to keep going, to keep believing, to not give up. Children have many lessons to teach us, we just need to listen.

He was a libra.

He read me the horoscopes every morning – I’m a libra too.

He had the biggest smile, and a full belly laugh.

He wore suspenders.

He did algebra every night at the kitchen table.

He called his loved ones twice a week, without fail.

He sent cards at every occasion.

He cried at his cousin’s funeral that I brought him to.

He cooked scrambled eggs at 10 o’clock at night.

He danced with his sweetheart every opportunity he got.

He talked politics with me every chance we got.

There were a lot of “mental health reasons” that he lived where I used to once work – but those are not the things that I remember about him.

I remember his laughter, his kindness, his intelligence and his unique way of looking at the world.

You never know where life will bring you, and who you will encounter along the way.

As I frame the last piece of algebra he gave me last Christmas, I take time to reflect, remember and be grateful for this man I once knew.

As part of the happiness project, the author (Gretchen Rubin) explores finding time to do things that make her happy. Like reading a book, writing, and exercising. Since I’ve ventured on the journey of becoming a happier, healthier version of myself – I took time to consider what makes me happy. And conversely what doesn’t make me happy.

Enter running.

When I started losing weight, I entered into this high school-esque relationship with running.

Please like me. Why won’t you be nice to me? I think you’re SO COOL. I mean, everyone is doing it, I wanna do it tooooooo!

I stuck with it. I persisted.

Really, I like hanging out with you (NOT).

I successfully ran 45 minutes in a row.

Wow, that was so much fun! Wasn’t that fun? (NO).

I waited and waited for that “runner’s high” that everyone rattles on about.

Oh em gee! Running, you are SO awesome! (PSYCH!)

For me, it never came. But I continued with my goal of being a “runner.” Because it seemed like all the fit people I knew, ran. It was like this super, special club that I really wanted to be a part of.

But when I started my happiness project – guess what I gave up?

Yup, you’re right. RUNNING!

And I am approximately 33% happier for doing it. Because now, when I go to the gym? I get to spend time doing the work outs I like – the elliptical, walking, the gazelle, weights… things that don’t make me curse and hate working out. Things I don’t dread like the plague. Working out is once again something that I enjoy because I am not putting myself under the pressure of becoming an elusive runner. So my “Couch to 5k” app? GONE. My goal of running a half marathon? GONE. Replaced with simply a goal of staying healthy and working out 6 times a week (cardio is cardio, man).

And oh my, it feels so good.

So running? I’m sorry, it’s me – not you. I’m sure you’ll find someone else. We just don’t click, and that’s ok. Goodbye!

Hello, blog-readers!  Jenn posted last month about her Happiness Project.  Well, I’m working on one, too!  It’s kind of a rough draft, scribbled onto the back of a strip of paper I took off the fridge, but it’s coming along.  There will be more on my Happiness Project later as I flesh it out, but one of my goals is to post on the blog more often, for as you can see it’s been awhile since I’ve been active!

Last spring we announced our big plan to sell our house and move to North Carolina, but I’ve come up with another big change, for me at least: a career change.

This has been a long time coming.  It’s not that I hate my job, it’s really a pretty good one overall, but I’m in a career that I don’t love, or even really like, outside of getting paid.

How did I wind up here?  My path to where I am right now as a plumbing/fire protection designer at Harriman is kind of a bumpy, windy road.  Back in the early 90’s when I was in my early teens, I really wanted to be a computer programmer.  What I really wanted to do was program video games.  I graduated high school in ’96 and started the Computer Science course at USM the following fall.  My first freshman year at USM taught me that I really didn’t want a career messing with computers.

The first problem I had was with computers in general.  At that time, Windows 95 Home PCs were hitting there full stride invading American middle-class households, and the home internet revolution was still pretty young.  In other words, computers at the time were kind of a pain in the ass (much more so than now), and I found myself having to mess around with autoexec.bat’s and config.sys’s and the like on a regular basis just during my personal home use.

The second problem was that I didn’t really want to sit at a computer figuring out code all day.  I’m pretty detail-oriented, and I could do it fairly well, but it’s tedious and mind-numbing.

The third problem was a combination of USM computer professors and the ever-changing landscape of technology.  You see, 1996 was a big year for the computing curriculum at USM.  This was the year that the courses would shift focus from one programming language to another (from PASCAL to C++).  I had taken an AP course in PASCAL during my senior year of high school in preparation for college, and I had loved it.  As it turns out, I don’t love C++.  Really, I didn’t love having to start from scratch with something new.  This also seemed to throw off the professors who only appeared to know just enough to teach the day’s class, and weren’t very knowledgable when asked questions they weren’t expecting.

My Dad suggested that I try Electrical Engineering.  I didn’t know much about it, but I felt like I needed to do something to avoid having minimum wage jobs all my life.  To further help inspire me, I spent that summer working at Wal-Mart, which I hated.  In retrospect, I think 33-year-old me could have handled the job a lot better than 19-year-old, fat, lazy me, but it still wasn’t my calling.  So come September 1997, I excitedly started the Electrical Engineering program at USM.  I liked it, more at first than when I graduated.  By the end of it, I was really burnt out.  It also turns out that all of the things I liked best and had the greatest aptitude for (digital logic and robotics) weren’t too useful in the real world, especially in Maine.  It turns out that there weren’t all that many jobs available for the stuff I didn’t like as well.

The year 2000 had seen a boom in local electrical engineering jobs.  In 2001, the year I graduated with my BS, it dropped sharply.  I tried getting hired at a few places, and then decided to take the summer off and see if things would be better in the fall ( because I was good at being lazy).  Of course, September brought 9/11 and knocked our economy into a slump and it was even harder to find a job.

Finally, in Septemeber 2002 after tons of interviews, and resume mass mailings, I had a bite from a random resume mailing.  It was a two-year-old 4-person Electrical Engineering/Electrician company called Martens & Abbott, and they hired me (and a bunch of others, bringing it to 10 people).  The type of work they did was electrical, but unlike what I had studied, it was all construction-related.  While I was job hunting I had taken a 3-day AutoCAD course, and it paid off, as I did a lot of blueprint drawing.

In 2003, the work dried up and I got put on part-time.  By spring of 2004, I was barely working a couple hours a week.  I was told that there was more work coming (but I’d still be part time) so I managed to find another part-time job doing almost the same thing, so I could have two part-timers.  Well the work never came from Martens & Abbott, and a couple years later they closed their doors.

Work did boom for awhile at the new company, A2Z CADD drafting, which was a 2-person company (including me).  My boss and only coworker had a BS and experience in Mechanical Engineering (still construction related) and was going to be getting a bunch of electrical work, which is where I would come in.   We ended up getting much less electrical work than anticipated, so he trained me to do mechanical drafting.

In October of 2005, my Dad (who is in construction) was working on a school with a firm called Harriman which does architecture and every form of engineering.  I’d applied there for an electrical job twice and never even got to the interview stage.  They told him they needed someone to do mechanical drafting full-time, and I didn’t want to live with my parents into my 30’s, so I took my newfound mechanical drafting experience and decided to apply.  They hired me pretty quickly and trained me to do plumbing and fire protection drafting and design. At the six-month mark (to the day) I was given my first of many of my own projects, almost all of them supermarkets.

So now it’s 6 years later, October 2011.  I gave that long-winded backstory of my employment history to illustrate one thing: I’m not really doing what I want to do.  I’ve gotten pretty good at it, but I have NO desire to continue.  14 years ago, I decided to try something my father suggested, which mutated into like 3 others things based on what was available at any given time and what would make me the most money.  In other words, fate has pretty much guided me, and not the other way around.

But what do I want to do?  I’d really been thinking about going into business doing something that coincided with my interests.  I did some serious consideration regarding a bed & breakfast, and opening my own personal training/weight coaching business.  Then Jenn suggested that I open a toy store in Wilmington, and everything just sort of clicked.

I’m going to own my own toy store, or at the very least something in the kids/nerds catering genre.  It’ll be small, it’ll be a lot of work, and alot of business training/education will be needed, but I have set my sights on 2014 as the year my toy store will open.  I sent in my form to file my PE exam application as in active yesterday, and I take my first business seminar in about 3 weeks!  There are TONS of free resources available in Wilmington, both on their city website and at their local community college, so I’ve got plenty of opportunity!

I’ll be working on this tirelessly as I perform some other job in Wilmington, and then when 2014 comes around, I’ll be going into business for myself!  Hope that anyone reading this will come by!