Month: August 2009

The Porch

The time is 1:22 am.

I should be in bed. Instead I’m reclined on my parents couch listening to this song that fits my mood this evening.

The kids are sleeping on the guest bed; their legs and arms twisted together like a German pretzel. Only my dog is awake to keep me company. And the second I stop rubbing her ears she’ll roll over and begin to snore.

We’ve spent the week with my parents in the home in which i grew up. It looks just the same down to the hole in the bathroom door I kicked in while wearing cowboy boots about 20 years ago.

I left Ogden for Seattle in 1994. I don’t know why I expect the town to remain the same, yet I’m always surprised when one of my old hangouts disappears. I wonder if I’ve changed as much as the town has?

Two people who haven’t changed are my father and mother. My father still wakes and retires early while my mom stays up late reading anything she can get her hands on. They both seem relaxed and content. Their 18 grandchildren keep them busy and entertained. As we sat together in the kitchen thumbing through old yearbooks and news articles my grandfather collected, I thought to myself how lucky I am to have such amazing parents.

I visited my grandmother tonight at the care home. She held my hand as my father wheeled her down the hallway to her room. It took a moment to sink in that she was in a wheelchair. We chatted for a few minutes before saying goodbye. In the back of my mind, I wonder if each visit will be the last.

While everyone but me was running errands this afternoon, I sat on the front porch. The same porch that served as a reprieve when I’d upset a sibling or parent. I spent many hours on that porch chatting with girlfriends knowing my oldest sister could see my every move through the kitchen blinds.

As I sat there on the porch, a warm gust of wind blew petunia petals across my father’s immaculate lawn. My parent’s wind chimes danced in the air creating notes that made the neighbor’s bulldog bark.

As I stood up to go back inside, I swear I caught a glimpse of my sister’s eyes staring back at me.

Studying Ants

I spend a good chunk of time each month writing performance reviews. Last month our company installed a new online review process. But the old system was shut down for nearly four months. I ended up with a backlog of reviews I’d written in Word.

Well, I wasn’t happy when I found out I’d have to transfer the reviews I’d stapleralready written to the new system. This was a tedious process of cut and paste and pray the formatting wasn’t botched. I often ended up writing the entire review over.  

The group I’m responsible for consists of about 20 technicians, but I have another 20 who work part-time during various times of the year. I often feel like an HR manager given the mountains of paperwork I create for each employee. There’s nothing green about my job, that’s for certain.

On my way home from work last week I was thinking about all the time I spend completing paperwork. Every hour I spend pushing papers is one less hour I have to spend with my team. It means less time to train, encourage or just observe how they work together.

And then I flipped on my iPod and began listening to a talk given at the Ted Conference by a women who has spent her career studying ants. Not reading about ants or dissecting them in a lab. She goes to the desert and digs up colonies full of ants. She counts, marks, and teases them in order to learn about their behavior.

I’ll bet the ants gang up and bite her every chance they get. And who can blame them if she’s breaking into their living room each day. It’s only natural they’d be upset and exact revenge.

One fact I learned is half the ants in a colony stand around doing nothing. They are backup ants that seldom get called into service. Kind of like Matt Leinart.  The ants you see carrying leaves and crumbs are foragers. They are hard working colony contributors. But there are just as many lazy ants inside the hill just kicking back with a cold one watching Family Guy.

Suddenly all that paperwork doesn’t seem as tedious. And it’s only a few hours each week. My perspective changed over the course of ten minutes listening to this woman talk about freaking ants.

And so far, not one colleague has bit me.