Baseball is a metaphor for life

For the past 46 years, I have been in a "mixed" marriage. 

When I first met my husband, he was wearing a tee shirt that said "Boston Red Sox World Series Champs—1918." I showed him my Mickey Mantle scrapbook and we decided that it was love at first pitch. Right. Then came June, September and October. Baseball was up front and personal.  We had two boys, both of whom played baseball. We tried to teach them that baseball was an "in the moment" game. 1986 brought the Red Sox to the World Series and Bill Buckner went into the record books in the 6th game and the NY Mets won in the 7th game. Pain. I think it was then that my Red Sox rooter finally gave up...until 2004 when his beloved team won the World Series. 

Meanwhile, I began to understand that baseball really is a metaphor for life. It is a game that requires each player to realize that they must be present and in the moment at all times. Each play is unlike the ones before. Each player is at bat only for right then and there. 

Here are some quotes that really resonated with me, from some folks in an online forum discussion several years ago on The Bark Board at Fresno State College, about baseball being a metaphor for life:

It's not always fair, get over it...there's a bit of chance involved. Embrace the idea that not everything is in your control. Dwelling on yesterday's success or failure only distracts you from today’s purpose, so let the past go. Your most important asset is an absolutely unshakable belief in yourself. There’s no pre-determined time limit, the game’s not over until the final out, and until then ANYTHING is possible, so don’t ever give up.   

You can strike out, yet still hustle your way on base and help your team. Very small things can have a very large impact on outcomes, so pay attention to the details. Your teammates celebrate the selflessness of a sacrifice and they lift you up even when you fail. In your darkest moments, when everything seems stacked against you, the most important thing you can do is to reach out and lift up one of your teammates. You can succeed only 30% of the time and still be a hero, so don't ever be discouraged by or fear failure.  Accept failure as a natural part of striving for and succeeding at difficult and worthwhile goals.  

You think the game is all about numbers and results. But then you discover that everyone around you has a deep, unspoken, almost spiritual belief in the mysticism of the game...they all wear their hats inside out in unison to 'will' a timely success by a teammate, or huddle together at one end of the dugout away from a teammate who's having a perfect game.  If someone hits you on purpose, disrespects you or the game, you can rest assured your teammates will soon deliver a 'reminder' to that someone that their actions DO have direct consequences. If you get into a fight with your opponent, you will be instantly surrounded and protected by ALL your teammates and coaches, regardless of whether they like you or not. 

And after you’re gone from the game, the examples you set—how hard work and unwavering commitment can overcome adversity, how to inspire your teammates through enthusiasm, dedication, and humility, and how to be humble in victory—have a far more profound and lasting impact on the life of a child than how many home runs you hit or how many batters you struck out.

Thanks for all the great memories and life lessons, Major League Baseball. Now my husband and I cheer together for our local team, the San Francisco Giants!

Getting organized: 10 tips for keeping the clutter at bay

Reducing clutter in your home is a daily commitment, from being more mindful of what we're bringing into the house to practicing that old adage, "a place for everything and everything in its place."

It's not always easy. Life takes over and we get busy...which is precisely when clutter takes over and we get buried.

But clutter and stress go hand in hand...we need plenty of clean, open space to breathe, to clear our minds, and to feel more motivated and inspired.

According to feng shui expert Karen Kingston... "Clutter is stuck energy. The word 'clutter' derives from the Middle English word 'clotter,' which means to coagulate...and that's about as stuck as you can get."

Here are 10 random tips for preventing some of the more typical clutter from getting too close for comfort:

1.  Place a recycling bin close to your mailbox and immediately toss the daily junk mail and sales ads so they never even make it into the house.

2.  Place decorative trays or baskets in the high-clutter zones as catch-alls...near the house phone, the coffee table, the nightstand, your desk, that table or counter closest to the front and back doors. When they get full, take a few minutes to sort, toss, or put away whatever's inside.

3.  If you have a multi-level home, keep a basket at the top of the stairs and another at the bottom to temporarily hold things that are upstairs but belong downstairs (and vice versa), so you can make fewer trips running up and down to put things away.

4.  Look for interesting recipes for "one-dish" meals to prepare more often to cut down on the dirty dishes.

5.  Save your receipts when you make purchases and don't be afraid of that twinge of buyer's remorse when it happens, even if it's several months later. If you don't need it or you haven't used it, just return it.

6.  Fold and/or hang your clothes right as you pull them out of the dryer. Not only will you have fewer wrinkles, the clothes are more likely to go directly to the bureau or closet instead of the sofa or bed.

7.  Assign one and only one credit card to use for any online, mail order or TV shopping you might do. Seeing all your transactions in one place makes it easier to spot when you're making too many impulse buys (either that or your credit limit will hit faster and shut you off, lol)

8.  Consider paying more bills online to reduce your snail mail and paper filing.

9.  Consider switching to online subscriptions for your favorite newspapers and magazines and save a few trees in the process.

10.  Give yourself just one "free space" in your house or garage to allow clutter to accumulate...the corner of a bedroom, one shelf unit, a drawer, a hall closet. When it gets full, then it's time to sort, toss, put away.

Polst and Molst: Is it a new beer?

A few days ago I asked the following on our Facebook page: "Do you know what a Polst or Molst is?" One of the responses I received was "Is it a new beer?" Nice try, Doug...but no, it is not a new beer.
T summarizes the patients’ wishes in the form of physician orders for end-of-life care. The POLST document is a standardized, portable, brightly-colored single page form which documents a conversation between a doctor and a seriously ill patient or their surrogate decision-maker. As a medical order, the POLST form is always signed by a doctor and, depending upon their state, the patient.
After the apparently newsworthy event in Southern California about the 87 year-old woman who was specifically not given CPR following her collapse, I decided it might be a good time to educate as many people as possible about the POLST and/or MOLST documents.

POLST stands for Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment and MOLST stands for Medical Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment. 

Let's take a look at them...they are essentially the same thing.

From Wikipedia:  

Unlike advance directives, a POLS

One benefit of a POLST form over a standard Advance Directive is that the POLST form is designed to be actionable throughout an entire community. It is immediately recognizable and can be used by doctors and first responders (including paramedics, fire departments, police, emergency rooms, hospitals and nursing homes). POLST forms should be filled out for all patients with life-limiting illnesses or progressive frailty. A pragmatic rule for initiating a POLST can be if the clinician would not be surprised if the patient were to die within one year. 

POLST provides explicit guidance to health professionals under predictable future circumstances. POLST can build on an advance directive but can also function in the absence of an advance directive. If the individual lacks decisional capacity, a surrogate can engage in the conversation and the consent process that forms the basis of the POLST process. It is currently promoted in over 26 states through national and statewide initiatives.

So Dougie and all you other beer drinkers, it is time to get your POLST/MOLST buzz on!  ;-) 

Click here to see if your state is participating in the POLST program and download a form.

Preparing for loss...facing the future

In last week's Desert Sun News, there was an article from Maryeleanor, who recently lost her husband of 49 years, that really hit home. She described all the things they had done together as a couple to prepare for the inevitable, such as writing their wills and planning what kind of church service they'd want. 

Then she goes on to say that in the first three months after his death, she had 87 major issues to take care of without him, over 60 of which involved multiple complications. All the extra stress of these issues compounded her grief and completely overwhelmed her.

The number 87 seems like a lot, right? Nearly every single day of those first three months, she had to deal with something really important, that not only might her husband normally have handled, but the resources and information required to handle it were not at her disposal. Maybe it was a password that was only in his head, or bills that were in his name alone, or discovering there were no instructions anywhere for how to set the automatic lawn sprinklers. Surviving loss is hard enough emotionally without a logistical nightmare on top of it...when was Maryeleanor allowed the down-time she needed to adjust and grieve?

The article really expressed what is so valuable about Terry's workbook, Caring is Not Enough. There is just SO much more to think about then just funeral arrangements when someone you love is nearing the end of their life. Even if you're all young and healthy, you still have to be realistic about planning for a possible emergency too. Just caring about each other during a health crisis is not enough.

You all need to spend some time reviewing lots of details and thinking about all the "what if 's" and writing it all down somewhere. But once you can get past the discomfort of having such a conversation, then how in the world do you come up with possibly 87 different "what if 's?"

Terry's workbook has over 150 questions for families to consider and discuss during "the conversation." That's 150+ possible "what if 's" from legal to financial to household issues and more.

Sit down together and write as many answers as you can in the workbook. For questions you can't answer, you now have a handy list of issues to look into further. Tell the person who you want to take charge of things in your absence where the workbook is stored.

With this workbook, all the resources and information someone needs to get through those first few months are in one simple place. I know it's easy to keep thinking "oh there's time, I'll deal with all that later." But later might be too late. I don't want to make anyone in my family go through what Maryeleanor went through...do you?

Art journaling to quiet the monkey mind

Buddha described the human mind as being filled with drunken monkeys clamoring about. He said that our brains jump from thought to thought like monkeys jump from tree to tree. 

My monkey mind really kicks in at night, when I really should be getting to bed. But I start thinking about things I want to do, things I'm stressed about, things I'm excited about. 

Meditation is key...I learned how to practice zazen meditation and it takes a lot of practice to get the hang of it, but I like trying. The sleep experts say to avoid staring at the light of the TV or computer before bed, but my monkeys don't seem to care much about that. 

What I've found to work well for me right before lights-out is art journaling. Sometimes it's just doodling and jotting down words in non-sequitur fashion, sometimes it's more earnest or heartfelt drawing and writing. 

I don't necessarily try to be creative or artistic. I just try to empty my mind by extracting one or two thoughts from the jumble and thinking about how these thoughts makes me feel, how important are they? What words are forming these thoughts? What imagery comes to mind? 

The process of getting some of those monkeys out of the trees and down on to the paper feels good. The rest of my thoughts subside and my mind really quiets down. All I'm focused on for a nice, long stretch is just the letters, lines and colors coming from my pen, pencil or paintbrush. Then my mind is clear, I am relaxed, and I fall asleep quickly.

The steadfastness of orchids

Every year about this time, we see the emergence of flower stalks on our cymbidium orchids. How I love to sit in the living room and gaze out at the delicate flowers with their myriad of colors. They look so perfect as they rise up the stem. They last quite a long time, perhaps 2-3 months. Sometimes I will cut a stem, bring it inside and place it in a long slender vase. Perfect.

Flowering orchids remind me of me. Although these plants are tough...they seem to enjoy companionship. They like to be held tight in their pots with new shoots coming up around the older bulbs. They like to bloom on cue and offer spectacular displays. I try to bloom on cue and though the display may not be so spectacular, at least you know I am always there! Steady and earth mother. I love being around our children and their young families...all shoots coming from my husband and me. Tight within the nuclear family...everyone blooming in their different ways and showing the world their beauty.

What are your favorite flowers and how do you relate to them?

Getting organized: Listmaker, listmaker, make me a list!

Nothing beats a good old-fashioned checklist for getting everything you need to do corralled into one place so you feel a little less overwhelmed.

For household issues, I like to use a yellow legal pad. Every time I come across something that needs to be cleaned, fixed, filed, replaced, removed, redecorated, de-cluttered, reorganized... I write it on the list. It may not get done right away, but I don't have to fret about it because I know it won't be forgotten. It's on the list.

But what never ceases to amaze me is how one item on the list can actually become several tasks. For example, I need to replace the drapery rod bracket that fell out over my sliding glass door. Should be an easy thing to do, right? Well...maybe not.

To do:  Replace drapery rod bracket

• Find the screw that fell out and rolled under the sofa
• Buy a safer, taller stepladder - the one I have is too short and wobbly
• Charge the electric drill and look for the phillips screwdriver drill bit
• Discover that my jar of spackle is hard as a rock. Buy new spackle to fill the hole and cover the bright blue drywall anchor forever lodged inside the wall
• Since the curtains are down, may as well wash and press them
• Realize that one reason it all fell down was because the curtains are too heavy for the light-duty rod
• Wait for coupon to come in mail for favorite home decor store, then go buy new rod system
• Two weeks have passed...need to charge the drill again and re-press the curtains that got creased while draped over the chair all this time
• The "knocking" technique is not turning up the location of a couple studs to ensure the new rod brackets never fall out...need to borrow somebody's stud finder
• Give up and add it to a different list of things I need to hire a handyman to do for me

Oh well, so my family room gets a little more light, lol. 

I still feel better knowing everything I need to do is on a list. If one task gets frustrating, I'll just move on down to another task that I can actually complete and feel good about it!

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."  

—William Morris