A Whale of a Christmas... Part 2

As the boat began to fill with people our captain announced that each passenger was required to take a motion sickness tablet in order to proceed. Understandably, the crew didn't care to swab the deck any more than necessary so the mandatory pills were passed and we were on our way.
Heaving stomach contents was my hobby during pregnancy (a memory quite easily regurgitated, pun definately intended) so I knew that only half a pill was required to quell my queasiness. Other voyagers mindlessly swallowed a whole pellet, some even two.
About 20 minutes into the journey the captain excitedly announced that beautiful schools of fish could be viewed from the starboard side of the ship and as if on cue all the passengers lept to their feet and began digitally clicking away at the panaromic wildlife.
Oohs and Ahhs could be heard as we continued to sail onward in search of the fabulous Humpback whales.

A Whale of A Christmas!

I have a long-cultivated love/hate relationship with Christmas. On one hand it's a wonderful time of year with celebrations of love, joy, and an almost-expected consumption of chocolate. On the other hand it is chock full of extra ovarian-specific chores like excessive baking, wrapping paper wrangling and department store parking spot vulturing. I always say the month of December is like camping: regular life made harder.
Due to an obvious strain produced by the impending holidays my loving spouse decided to take me on a business trip with him to Monterey California smack in the middle of December. I was estatic even though the work load increased exponentially on either end of the trip. Who cares I decided, and the sunny coast of Pacific Monterey beckoned.
To fill an empty day I ventured on an exciting boating expedition in search of Humpback whales. The tour took a group of us two hours out into the beautiful ocean spray and what I gleaned during the journey will be the subject of my next four blogs.....keep reading to find out how the meaning of Christmas was so bountifully and hilariously displayed on my seabound journey!!

Herbie doesn't like to make toys...

Today my son came home from school and informed me he was told to bring some Christmas jokes back to school for his show choir performance. In truth, every year they tell horrible campy schtick jokes during the Carnival and Carols performance and I wince, desperately wishing they would come up with something actually funny.
This year the director asked the students to come back with good material, and Camden was all shiny and hopeful that his comedian mother would supply him with some and make him look the star.
"I don't like to tell jokes" I said in a small meek voice. "I want to be a hu-mor-ist and tell funny stories."
"WHAT? You're a comedian?!#% And you don't like to tell jokes?"
Why am I such a misfit......

Gobbling it up...

I remember those days. The days of waking up and wondering how I was going to fill the whole day with three small children. I am not naturally a morning person, but all toddlers are, so I was up and depressed by 6 a.m. most days. Lunch was a peanut butter and jelly by 9 a.m. Such was life. I thought it would never end.
The teen years came upon me, schedules grew, and I woke up wondering how I was going to fit it all in with three active boys. I started housework by 6 a.m. so I could get everything in before collapsing into bed by midnight. Some days I didn't even have lunch until 2 in the afternoon if at all.

I think of this today because my eldest son came home from college last night for the first time in 5 months. I can't believe that much time has passed. All I want to do is spend time with him. He is home for 5 days, and I wish they would stand still. Looking back I'm sorry I ever wasted a single minute.
Happy Thanksgiving... give thanks for every minute with those precious children. I am.

The Gamble of a lifetime...

I just spoke at a huge corporate event. Not necessarily huge in numbers, maybe 85 people or so, small in comparison to most of my audiences these days, but huge in significance.
This audience was comprised of the spouses, mostly women, of the upper tier leadership of Procter and Gamble, one of the largest companies in the world. They are amazing people from around the world, all different nationalities. I was to emcee, humor, teach, and entertain them as their keynote speaker. This is an audience to impress if there ever was one said my brain. My heart said something different.
Instead of trying to impress, I dared to encourage. My middle son Cooper said to me one day while preparing "Mom, these are just people like you, moms and dads, doing their best. Just people." What a genius I thought.. a chip off the old maternal block...
So that's how I approached it. I talked about life, humor, parenting, and sacrifice. I taught them, embraced them, and encouraged them just like I try to do with every audience I have the priviledge of speaking to. And you know what? They left encouraged, and refreshed, in need of both just like you, and just like me. It wasn't a gamble after all.

Humble pie is actually Mighty tasty....

Have you ever found yourself wondering why you do what it is you are doing?
For example, when I had my first son, I used to lay face down on the carpet by his crib while he slept thanking God that He saw fit to make me a mom. An exaggeration? Nope. If you'd known me B.C. (before children) you'd understand. God was taking a chance on me... at least that's how I felt.
I had a similar experience this last weekend at a speaker's seminar I participated in. There I was with a group of ten women, all desiring to be better speakers, and all working in a learning lab to perfect our skills. I was the veteran of the group by far. Some of these newbies had just started to look into the possibility of speaking for the very first time. I thought I would be at the head of the class...
To my amazement, there were women in this group who were clearly born to speak. Articulate, polished, moving...you name it, they had it. I was humbled beyond belief. Here were women without my fourteen years of microphone experience, not to mention the 20+ years of musical theatre time, and they were twice as composed as I have ever been.
My conclusion? Five years ago I would have crawled into a hole and never spoken again. This time, I saw the humor and promise of what God has called me to: not by might, not by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord.

No such thing as a free lunch!

Teenagers! The economy! Who can understand either?
My friend just told me she was missing her entire jumbo roll of aluminum baking foil. That stuff isn't cheap, but that's just a detail to her determined teenage son who used the whole roll to make himself look like a burrito in order to qualify for Chipotle's "free" burrito day.
His "free" $5.00 burrito cost his mother $7.00 in foil....but who's counting? Certainly, not him.