Tuesday, October 24, 2006

So last night after writing my blog entry, I sat down and fired off another poem for my friend to use as lyrics. The weird thing was, this one almost wrote itself. I feel so good about it I'm going to post it here. For anyone who wonders, the 22 year old, the 35 year old and the 55 year old mentioned below are absolutely real people of my acquaintance. The 47 year old is basically me with a few details changed to make me a little more typical, and the 68 year old is an amalgam of two different people rolled into one.

I hope Debbie is able to set this one to music, because as I said, it practically wrote itself. I hope it will convey to others the message it conveyed to me, that life is beautiful at every stage and that with the right attitude everyone's life can be bliss!

Here it is:

Can’t Wait to See What Else God Has in Store

I know a guy who’s twenty-two
His life is so much fun he doesn’t know what to do.
He’s got a good job and a steady girl
And he’s ready to give this life a whirl.
He’s not rich (though he is good looking)
But he’s always got new ideas cooking.
If you asked him about his life today,
I’m pretty sure that he would say:

It don’t get much better than this.
Got everything I need, yeah, this is bliss.
I got love, I got fun, I got health and brains
I got a place to stay warm and dry when it rains
I don’t know how I could ask for more
Can’t wait to see what else God has in store!

I know a gal who is thirty-five
She’s got two little girls to keep her glad she’s alive.
Got a loving, fun husband there by her side
And a big Italian family whose arms are open wide.
They’re not rich but they have the things they need,
You can see the love she shares in her every deed.
If you asked her about her life today,
I’m pretty sure that she would say:

It don’t get much better than this.
Got everything I need, yeah, this is bliss.
I got love, I got fun, I got health and brains
I got a place to stay warm and dry when it rains
I don’t know how I could ask for more
Can’t wait to see what else God has in store!

I know a woman who is forty-seven
If you ask about her life she’ll tell you it’s like Heaven!
After 20 years of marriage she adores her man
They love in that way that only long-time lovers can.
Her kids are nearly raised and soon they’ll be gone
But through them she knows her story will go on.
If you asked her about her life today,
I’m pretty sure that she would say:

It don’t get much better than this.
Got everything I need, yeah, this is bliss.
I got love, I got fun, I got health and brains
I got a place to stay warm and dry when it rains
I don’t know how I could ask for more
Can’t wait to see what else God has in store!

I know a man of fifty-five
Lives every day knowing he’s just happy he’s alive!
They told him he had cancer and to make his peace
But with prayer he beat the odds and lives a new lease.
He and his bride take every day now as a gift
And when he looks into her smiling eyes he always gets a lift.
If you asked him about his life today,
I’m pretty sure that he would say:

It don’t get much better than this.
Got everything I need, yeah, this is bliss.
I got love, I got fun, I got health and brains
I got a place to stay warm and dry when it rains
I don’t know how I could ask for more
Can’t wait to see what else God has in store!

I know a woman who is sixty-eight
She is loved by so many and her blessings are so great!
Though her husband’s health is failing, she never complains.
She has grown sons and daughters to help ease the strains.
She loves those grandkids with a love that is fierce
And she still has that humor that can joust and pierce.
If you asked her about her life today,
I’m pretty sure that she would say:

It don’t get much better than this.
Got everything I need, yeah, this is bliss.
I got love, I got fun, I got health and brains
I got a place to stay warm and dry when it rains
I don’t know how I could ask for more
Can’t wait to see what else God has in store!

Monday, October 23, 2006

I know that one is supposed to update a blog at LEAST once a week if one is to keep any readers, but sadly, it seems about once every ten days is the best I can do these days. For now, it will just have to do.

I think I mentioned in my last post that a songwriting friend of mine asked me if I could generate some poems she could use as lyrics. I have done so, and whether anything more ever comes from the effort or not, I have found it very rewarding just to sit down and generate the work. I have never considered poetry one of my best forms of writing, but I did find I had at least a few good ones in me. And I still plan to try to write more. It is truly a case where the joy is in the writing, not in what later becomes of it.

My work situation is so much better than it was a year ago that I can hardly fathom that I work for the same place. There's a new air of hope and enthusiasm in the place that can't all be inside my head. Closer to my heart, I'm still in love with my little staff of marketers and feel so blessed that not only are they really effective employees, but I actually enjoy their company. Similarly, my two close peers, the other executive managers who report to the president, are gifted and lovable people too. I believe this job is exactly where God wants me to be at this moment.

All the other parts of life are hitting on all cylinders, too. After 19 years of marriage and well over 20 years in love with the guy, Bob still lights up my life. There is nobody I'd rather hang with or come home to at the end of the day. He is so thoughtful and considerate and he shows me that he cares in a hundred tiny ways each day. Sam is the healthiest and the most enjoyable he has ever been. We are part of supporting communities through his school, through our church and through his Scout troop. What a lot of great people that is in our lives!!

I'm currently psyched about the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. (Yeah, I know it's a little ways ahead, but I've always valued anticipation!) Bob's brother Bill lives in Michigan and for -- I don't know, maybe 7 or 8 years now? -- he has hosted as many of the extended family as can make it at his place for Thanksgiving. Except last year we had to change it, because their dad was in the nursing home, and by celebrating Thanksgiving there in their home town, we were able to spring him and have him enjoy the day with the family. It wasn't the same, plus there was a pall over the gathering as we all knew Dad was in bad shape. We lost Dad Beasley back in February, so this will be a return to the previous tradition. Bill and his wife, Teri, are amazingly good hosts. Bill insists on doing all the cooking for the holiday feast, but we all pitch in on munchies and a meal for Friday. (This bash starts either late Wednesday or midday Thursday and runs through Saturday morning.) Their house, though really just outside of town, feels like you're isolated in the country. And for the rest of us it really is isolated far from our homes and busy lives. So it's a really nice little oasis of relaxed family time. We watch football, some people read, some play cards, somewhere over the course of it we usually drink. And we visit. We REALLY visit. It is relaxing and healing and we reconnect with each other and I am totally looking forward to it!!!!

One last image I include because it struck me as quintessentially Susan. On Saturday night Bob was out working at a fundraiser for a church group. I took Sam to a Halloween party and had a couple hours to myself before it would be time to pick him up again. I came home and turned on the World Series game, opened my laptop and Bible, and spent my time watching baseball and writing a scripture-based poem that might become a song lyric. At some point I looked at myself and realized I was probably the only person in America doing exactly what I was doing! And what was more, I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing!

Friday, October 13, 2006

Life has been too busy to blog much lately, but it’s all good stuff! And I really do want to keep this blog alive, so I’m making time to blather on tonight.

First of all at work, now that I have a full staff, they are absolutely hitting on all cylinders. Angie, my marketing person, just churns out work like you wouldn’t believe. I can’t believe how many balls she successfully keeps in the air! And the more we work together the more we find that we have similar taste and views in marketing, so we run into those moments where one of us starts outlining an idea and the other one interrupts, wide eyed, to say “I was just thinking that!!!” It is very cool! And she has a wonderful, can-do, upbeat attitude that is just a joy!

The new business development guy, Matt, is still wowing me. I cut him loose on the telephones a few days ago and he had at least one appointment every day for the next two weeks already! And he and Angie seem to be settling into a fun working relationship, which can only be a positive.

Then today, my dear friend and colleague Tara, who has been positively DROWNING in work and frustrated beyond tears by our boss’s refusal to allow her to hire help, finally got permission to promote her best person and hire a new one from outside to backfill. So she is in the best mood I’ve seen in months. She had not only suffered from needing help, but had felt discounted and disrespected by his previous reluctance to act on her request. Her suffering had really torn at my heart and I am about as happy today as I was the day I got to hire Matt!!

Away from work, a friend of mine who is an awesome pianist and singer and composer contacted me a couple of days and said a nationally known singer/composer of our mutual acquaintance has encouraged her to put together a portfolio of original compositions to shop around. She started working on it and found that lyrics are stumping her, so she asked ME if I might be able to provide her with some poems to use as lyrics. I am so honored and thrilled! By rights I should be writing poetry right now for that project instead of blogging, I suppose.

But one of the reasons I’m blogging right now is that as I write, I am watching Game 3 of the American League Championship Series on TV. Which is another thing I consider the good stuff going on in my life. When Bob and I were first dating and in our early married years, we used to watch baseball together a lot, and we especially always watched the playoffs and World Series. Bob has never lost his interest in baseball, but in recent years I’ve been busy with other things and sort of lost track of that interest. But with Matt joining my staff fresh out of playing college baseball, I dropped back into a game or two early on in the playoffs just to sort of refresh my memory and enable myself to make intelligent conversation. Darn if I didn’t get to see the Tigers upset the hated Yankees, then celebrate with their Detroit fans in a heartwarming demonstration worthy of a Disney movie. I was hooked, and I’ve been following Detroit ever since. They appear to be on course to sweep the Oakland Athletics, and if they do, I’ll be glued to the World Series games as a temporary Tigers fan. It’s really been fun to pick up that old interest and immerse myself in the postseason like this!

Let’s see, what’s some of the other good stuff going on? My son has been working on his adjustment to 7th grade and, like about half of his class, was behind on work. (I know it was like half his class because the teachers had a list of “opportunity seekers” posted, which meant people who were behind on work.) Today, Sam’s name was erased from the opportunity seekers list! He is caught up on everything and assured me he feels it will be much easier to keep up now that he has gotten caught up. And I believe him, because I have seen that he is working really hard.

Apart from his academic performance, though, I’m just so pleased with how things are going with him emotionally. He was diagnosed with clinical depression near the end of third grade and we have struggled these last three plus years with getting things stabilized and keeping them there. But lately, I feel like his personality is back to the one I knew when he was a little boy of 5 and 6 and 7, before the depression started. He has a great sense of humor and wants to do the right thing and is really a lot of fun to be around!

He is off to a Boy Scout campout this weekend, so Bob and I get a little quality time together. Ooh la la! And tomorrow we’re going to what was scheduled to be our semi-monthly euchre club, but this time has morphed into a Buckeye football party that will end with the euchre game after the football game. I think that is going to be a lot of fun, and kind of a rare day of grown-up fun for us without having to be parental. The only downside is that it will challenge my weight-loss efforts, which have been clipping along successfully. As of Monday I was down four pounds in three weeks, which for me is a phenomenal success. (I mean, a phenomenally successful rate of loss. There are still another ten or so pounds that need to come off along with that first four.)

Well, this is a lot of potentially boring “what’s new in my world” blogging, but I’m going to leave it here. If you want to read a great humorous blog that is a lot funnier and more entertaining than mine will ever be, I urge you to check out Stephanie Lessing’s blog at http://stephanielessing.typepad.com/ . She is the author of She’s Got Issues and Miss Understanding, two wildly funny chick lit books. (I don’t normally read chick lit – but I actually started reading her blog first and figured if it made me laugh out loud most days, then her books had to be good. I was right!)

OK, I’m about to bring up my song-lyric efforts and see if it is possible to write poetry while watching a baseball game. I’ll keep you posted!

Thursday, October 05, 2006

I’ve been gratified to get some feedback on my blog lately. Keep those comments coming – I love the strokes. Though Shannon, I’m really pretty sure I never used the word “Hot” about my employee. It would be unseemly!

A co-worker of my husband’s committed suicide last week. It was hard on all who knew her, of course. Bob was pretty shook up. She left five children, aged 6 through 13. It’s hard to imagine the level of despair that makes a mother lose her judgment that badly. But I guess I’m glad I can’t imagine it. I don’t suppose it would be a good sign if I could.

On a brighter note, I had dinner with one of my oldest and dearest friends Monday night. We have this funny ritual we have established where we get together for a night out once every six months, usually around April and October. (Give or take a month.) We meet at a nice restaurant and have a long, leisurely dinner and visit. We alternate picking up the tab, so we’re each on the hook for one dinner a year. You can feel pretty comfortable with a more extravagant night out knowing it is only one time a year!

It’s fun to observe each other’s lives from that perspective. When you talk every six months, you edit out the minutia and talk about what’s big in your life. Isn’t a shame we can’t bring that same perspective to our own life while we’re living it? I’d love to know as I’m making my little minute by minute decisions which things aren’t going to matter at all and which ones would be worth re-telling in six months! But I don’t think it is at all obvious as I wander through life. Often the activities seem very important – but in retrospect, it is more often the relationships that do.

And on that note, I’m off to important moments in sawing logs!