I'm interviewed at Novel Journey

Kelly Klepfer, from the website NovelJourney, recently "interviewed" me. The Q&A is up today at the NovelJourney website.

In the interview, I mention a column I wrote called Mind Reading Mommy, that you might want to check out if you're a mom whose kids are driving you nuts. You are not alone.

The faith of Mother Teresa

Much as been made this week of the publication of letters written by Mother Teresa that expose moments of doubt she had over 60 years of Christian service. Doubt so intense that at time she says she felt like a hypocrite.

Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the advocate for her sainthood, is the one who published her private letters - despite the fact that she requested that they be destroyed upon her death.

Everyone has doubts. Every Christian suffers a crisis of faith. There are times in even the most ardent believer's life when God seems so far way as to be non-existent. Who among us hadn't expressed those deepest doubts to a trusted counselor or friend?

That Mother Teresa had those same thoughts only shows that she was more human than we gave her credit for. Held up as the epitome of Christian service and sacrifice, she set a standard most of us felt was far beyond our own abilities. Do you have faith enough to renounce all worldy material goods to serve the sickest and most despised members of society? Only someone like Mother Teresa could do that. Right?

Wrong.

Turns out Mother Teresa isn't any different than the rest of us. And I'm not the least bit bothered that she expressed doubt throughout her entire ministry.

What does bother me is that her trusted confidant betrayed her trust and made her private thoughts public. While I think her honest expressions serve to encourage those among us who feel inadequate to serve God, they were still her private expressions, never meant for the public eye.

It makes me wonder if the people around me will respect my wishes to keep my journals private. I cringe at the honest -and not always nice - thoughts I've poured onto pages as I grappled with my own doubts and fears.

In the end, seeing that Mother Teresa's faith is much more like mine only makes it clearer to me that her ability to serve isn't any different than mine.

Rather than put her on a pedestal and excuse our own lack of service, now we have no excuses.

Missions for Chickens

Hey, all! Just a quick note to let you know that I've been posting again at www.MissionsForChickens.blogspot.com. The latest post - The Difference Between Give and Do.

Americans reading fewer books

Results of an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday found that one in four Americans haven't read a single book in the past year.

Of those who did read, their top picks were religious works and fiction - which is especially interesting when you consider that the study found that "those who never attend religious services read nearly twice as many books as those who attend frequently."

I've read 25 books so far this year, and I feel like I haven't read nearly as much as I would have liked. I've read only a few books for review; much of the rest were fiction. Non-religious.

Robbie Seay Band free album download

This just in:

"All 12 tracks from Robbie Seay Band’s upcoming Sparrow album, Give Yourself Away, will be available for free download at www.RELEVANTmagazine.com August 22-24, the week before the album’s official release. The band is also currently giving away free downloads of two new songs on www.freeRSB.com and will continue to offer those downloads through the end of August."

This is a GREAT album. If you can snag it for free and legal, I highly recommend you do so!

Blue-eyed smarties

Researchers recently announced that they may have found a link between intelligence and eye color. The study, conducted by Louisville University professor emeritus Joanna Rowe, found that brown-eyed people have better reaction time, making them good at things like hockey and football, while blue-eyed people are better strategic thinkers, and therefore more successful at things like golf or studying for exam.

Which probably explains why, being hazel-eyed, I am neither good at time management or sports. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if researchers someday discovered that women with hazel eyes are disorganized, easily distracted, and uncoordinated.

Cat walk

I thought it would be fun to put a harness on Murphy and take him outside on a leash. Turns out that when he finally got out, all he wanted to do was lay around and eat grass. Which, ironically, is the same thing Scout likes to do when he's not chasing bubbles or glo-balls. (What's with our grass? Maybe I should give it a taste.)

Mischievious Murphy

When I took Murphy to the vet last week for his second leukemia shot, I told Dr. Hawkins I was a little bit worried, because Murphy didn't seem to be eating as much as he normal. (Normal for him is to meow every time anyone goes into the kitchen, and to scarf down his food without chewing.) She thought that he was actually younger than a year when we adopted him, since he'd gained almost a pound and a half since his last visit, but since the worms were cleared up his appetite was probably back to normal for his age.

Well, the mystery has been solved. When David went into the basement the next day, he found a hole chewed in the 25# bag of Purina One Cat Food, a hole just big enough for a 7 1/2 pound cat to stick his head in and eat whenever he was hungry. Which apparently was often, considering the amount of food that was gone. We know it's not the dog eating the food, because Scout doesn't go in the basement (although he might if he knew there was a free buffet down there).

Anyway, we cut off Murphy's on-demand food source and he's back to his normal self: meowing every time someone goes into the kitchen, and stationing himself next to his food dish in the hopes that someone will feed him.

It's been a long week

It's been a long week here at the Brokaw household. David took this week off so that we could finally redo my office and get me out of the dining room.

It's a project so enormous that I never thought it would get done. I've been "temporarily" in the dining room for about 4 years. The piles of books and CDs and other work materials have been building until you couldn't even get in the room. And since my desk is typically quite messy, the dining room has been a disaster.

But no more! We emptied the office, bought new shelves, threw out a ton of stuff, and moved me back in there. It's beautiful. I'm still going through files and junk but I'm probably 75% done. We can eat at the table again, I have a place to put my files, I have all 500+ CDs alphabetized. It's great.

Of course, when you clean one room it makes the rest of the house look like a wreck, but one step at a time.

Power of an apology

So I had to go to the grocery store today (what else is new?) and the cashier I had snapped at on Wednesday was working. I waited in her line and when it was my turn I apologized for venting my frustrations on her.

I asked already God to forgive me but I knew I had to ask her to forgive me as well. I totally had a right to be frustrated, but not to take it out on her. In hindsight she did her job the best she could with the delays involved in the transactions. (That I had to listen to the employee chatter going on around her? Yeah, still not so thrilled with that. But that wasn't her fault.)

I purposely didn't complain that day because I knew that part of my problem Wednesday was an already frustrating day made worse by a long wait. Beside, unless the service is criminal, I don't like to waste the energy complaining. (Unless it makes a really good column. Bad customer service on my deadline day is a gold mine. Case in point? Mystery shopping police. Oh, and I did fill out several complaint cards when Wegmans got those stupid new carts, but I wasn't the only one who complained about that.)

No matter what store I'm in I try and take time to compliment someone who is doing a really good job. I've stopped managers to tell them a cashier is doing a great job. I've written comment cards about good customer service. I wrote a column about one of the cashiers who makes his customers feel great (proving that good customer service on deadline day is just as valuable). I even wrote a thank you comment card when Wegmans brought back the mid-sized carts. (Let me thank you again.)

The irony is that while I didn't complain Wednesday, someone at the grocery store read my blog post about my experience and told the cashier. Who would have thought? I had no idea anyone read this blog.

And so I want to publicly say that while my experience the other day was completely frustrating, the cashier handled both the delays and my complaint with grace. And she accepted my apology with forgiveness.

A bit of advice for the cashiers at the grocery store: it's never a good idea to complain about your jobs or other employees, especially when you have customers in line.

I spent five minutes in line listening to the customer ahead of me (an off duty cashier) talk about how few hours she getting (10 or 13) while the cashier checking her out told her about another employee who got 39 hours, and oh, how unfair, blabbing and blabbing and blabbing. Then I had to wait while a front end manager came to ring out the customer/cashier's WIC order and relay an anecdote about how the last time she did that she messed up and had to go and have one of the runners get all of the times from her order and re-ring it, ha ha, wasn't that funny?

I picked that line because the cashier is normally pretty quick, and the girl in line only had a few things. I like the cashier in the next line, too, but his customer had three times the groceries. In the end, I spent five minutes listening to banter while he checked out two customers with more groceries.

When it was finally my turn, the cashier said I looked tired and asked me if I was OK. "Yeah, tired of waiting," I said. "I've been waiting for five minutes while the two of you talked. Can we just snap it up so I can get out of here?"

"Ma'am," she said, "we were not talking. I was scanning and we were talking. We were not wasting time. And we had to wait for the manager to finish the order."

"Sounds like two people complaining about their jobs to me."

She finished my order - putting the bags in to the cart with a little more force than necessary - and handed me my receipt in silence. I got the heck out of there.

There's a fine line between being friendly with a customer and slowing the process down. And even if you're moving at the speed you normally would, the perception you give while commiserating about your job is that you're wasting time.

So scan on my time, bi*ch about your jobs on your own.

POSTSCRIPT: After thinking about this, I have to admit that while I had a legitimate right to be frustrated with my experience I didn't have a right to take it out on the cashier. Rats. Now I have to go apologize. Sigh. I hate when God convicts me of my stupidity.

Alien Cloggers

Our bathtub had a clog yesterday that didn't respond to either liquid drain cleaners or this lovely metal snake that you jam down the drain to try and dislodge the blockage. Being the quick thinker that he is, David got out the Shop Vac, shoved the hose down the drain, and sucked the clog out.

I was in the kitchen while he was doing this, making dinner and trying to ignore the clanging and banging and whirring coming from overhead. I only know he got the clog out because he brought it down to show me.

Our drain had been blocked with a wad of hair about the size of a fist, hair the color of which is not found in the natural world. I don't have hair that color. David doesn't have hair that color. Cassie doesn't have hair that color. Not even the dog has hair that color. And if any of us shed that much hair in the shower we'd be completely bald. Which can only mean one thing: when we're not looking, aliens are sneaking into the house to shower.

I would say that they came while we aren't home but since I almost never leave the house they have to be sneaking in wearing a cloaking device. (I know they don't come disguised as bats, because we haven't seen any bats this summer.) Those noises that I’ve attributed to the cat rummaging through my closet? Probably aliens looking for something to wear. The scratching I hear coming from inside the walls? Must be them sneaking out after their spa treatment. The dog's penchant for barking at nothing? Aliens must be visible to dogs.

Their presence actually explains a lot. While they're here, they obviously take the clean clothes out of the dryer and throw them on the floor. They use our daughter’s cell phone to call all over the U.S. during peak hours. They drink all the milk and put the empty jug back into the fridge.

And clearly, they don’t clean their hair out of the drain.

Where is Kelsey wearing?

Following up on my post yesterday about where my food comes from, I want to recommend that you stop over to Where Am I Wearing?, a site hosted by my friend Kelsey Timmerman.

I met Kelsey at the '06 Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop and was immediately intrigued by his writing. He's a traveler, which makes me jealous. But mostly, it was the story he told about traveling to (I think) Honduras to track down the person who made his t-shirt and actually meeting the worker who sewed the shirt. Since then, he's been all over the world visiting factories and actually talking to the workers who make the clothes we import. He's also a window into global culture. He's funny, and his work has a point.

I wonder if he travels to China if can find out who cans my mandarin oranges.

Love A Farmer: Buy Local

Mattel today announced a recall on toys made in China because the levels of lead in the paint used on some toys could exceed permissible levels. In the past year we've had recalls on toothpaste, pet food, juice, costume jewelry and more.

As the list of tainted products from China grew I decided that, along with my personal ban on artificial colors, artificial flavors and sodium benzoate, I would stop buying any product made in China.

Once again, I'm amazed to learn that we're importing products from China that we're producing right here in our own country.

Case in point? Mandarin oranges.

You know, those little orange sections that come in a can with syrup. I use them on salads and when I make chicken. Imagine my surprise to find that they're a product of China.

Uh, just in case anyone at any of the companies that can those sweet little oranges hasn't noticed, we have oranges right here in America.

According to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, last year American farmers produced 11.6 million tons of citrus fruits, so why in God's name are we importing oranges from China?

Is the problem that 11.6 million tons isn't enough for our own use? Do we need to supplement our own citrus consumption with fruit from China?

Hardly. According to the Florida Department of Citrus, in May of 2007 alone we exported to other countries 62.56 million pounds of oranges (and that includes mandarins) and almost 18 million gallons of citrus juice.

I'm not a farmer and I'm not an expert on international business, but does it seem a little odd to anyone else that we'd grow our own food, sell it to other countries, and then import it back from a country with quality control standards as low a China's?

Rather than spending so much time and money trying to get China to increase their quality control standards, why don't Americans simply stop buying those products? We import them because Americans buy them. I've heard the argument that China can produce the products more cheaply, but in the end, how much less expensive is it to import tainted products and then have a recall? I'd rather pay a little more for a Florida orange than worry about where the fruit came from and what harm it could do.

Anyway, I don't suppose that it's even possible to completely avoid tainted products. As my sister-in-law reminded me, look at the e-coli problem with spinach grown right in California.

Oh well, I'm off to make myself a sandwich with some lovely tomatoes purchased at my local grocery store and grown by a local farmer. It's a start, right?