Over the Top Award for Me, Me, Me (and some of you)

/ wvfurandroot / 4 Comments

over_the_top_awardHot damn and cold succotash! For the price of answering a few questions in one word or less (more if I cheat like Buzzard Billy), I can have the Over the Top Award. I love awards – they make my Warm Fuzzies sweat.

Buzzard Billy, whom I’m determined to meet (we’re soulmates even if she doesn’t think so), received the award and tantalized me with the possibility of getting it. Woo Hoo! I can only get it by contributing to the meme with one-word answers to 35 questions. (That sucker is mine. Mine, mine, mine.) The complete rules are as follows:

Copy and change the answers to suit you and pass it on.

•Answers may be one word only.

•Once you have filled it out be sure to pass it on to 6 of your favorite bloggers.

•Alert them that they have been awarded!

•Have fun!

1. Where is your cell phone? Buried

Yes. It does weigh 50 lbs.

Yes. It does weigh 50 lbs.

I normally do not carry a purse purse, but something so big as to veer toward satchel status. Last spring I decided once again to try the Small Purse Experiment. It’s lasted longer than ever, but due to recent events, I gave in and returned to the Briefcase Disguised as a purse. HMOKeefe and I scoured Boston in search of it – primarily as a means to get home the laptop he gave me for my birthday in 2008.

I’ve always been a big purse person. As a teenager, my first purse was a giant carpetbag tapestry kind of thing. While I never use 99% of it, I’m not comfortable unless I’m carrying everything I own with me. Chief of these is my agenda – a large binder containing all the paper of my life – bills, calendars, cards, fortunes, amusing horoscopes, and a medicine bag that detached just yesterday.

Though there is a designated pocket, I most never use it. Without fail, the cell phone migrates to the bottom.

2. Your hair? Flamboyant

My hair. Other than my height, it’s probably my most distinguishing feature. Waist length, dark brown, straight as a devout Christian, and becoming streaked with white and silver. Folks seem to want me to dye it. I, however, love the white and silver. At my temples, I have white streaks that now extend to the very ends of my hair. In the Cherokee tradition, these are termed wisdom locks. In others, they’re witch’s locks. Take your pick.  Note:  I meant straight in the sense of moral, free of really bad vices – you know – the old straight and narrow.  I know several devout Christians of various sexual orientations.  Viva la difference!)

3. Your mother? Resilient

Barefoot in West Virginia

Barefoot in West Virginia

My mom is a marvel. After a miserable childhood, she managed to become a dynamic woman. At 69, she wears pink chucks, kayaks, and plays with power tools. I oscillate between being thrilled and aghast that the older I get the more like my mother I become. (I wear black chucks, but I’ve been pining for red ones – no kayak yet, but it’s more appealing than it once was.)

4. Your father? Amazing

After a childhood even more horrific than Mom’s, Dad is alive and kicking – no mean feat given four tours of Viet Nam. Presently, he’s developed a walking addiction. After two knee replacement surgeries and damage done in a car wreck when he was 8 (and his father was killed), Dad is walking at least 7 miles a day on terrain that is extremely hilly. He expects to make 1500 miles by the end of the year. Did I mention he’s 71? Continue reading →

My hair’s on fire.

/ wvfurandroot / 14 Comments
I'm rootin' tootin' mad.
I’m rootin’ tootin’ mad.

OK, mouseketeers, I’m cranky and trying to shake it off.

I am all for eccentricity, personal quirks, individual phobias and neuroses. I’m accommodating of these things in both myself and people I interact with up to the point where such are not good for me.

When they’re my own, I work to change myself – sometimes unsuccessfully. But I try. And I don’t expect others to put up with my nonsense.

When it’s other people, I develop power and control issues which surprise me.

It’s all the rage in business seminars to adminster mini Meyer Briggs personality tests. I don’t believe I’ve ever taken the full Meyer Briggs, but I’ve taken multiple short form tests.

A combination that doesn't exist in nature.

That would be me - a combination that doesn't exist in nature.

I’m a combination that doesn’t exist in nature. Test administrators always try to tell me that I’ve done something wrong – fudged my answers. In one test, where personalities are color coded, I’m equally green and blue – which translates as analytical/emotional. In another test where participants are labeled as creatures, I’m a chameleon meaning I’m still analytical/emotional, but I possess the tendency to always see both sides of a situation. (Those who know me well will tell you this is my greatest strength and my greatest weakness – it explains my inability to make a decision. It also explains why some of my co-workers thing I’m two-faced.)

In tests designed to reveal which side of your brain is dominant, I always come out as using both sides equally. I’m told, yada yada, that only 10% of the population thinks like this.

All of this conspires to make me a nontraditional worker. Things that motivate most folks, don’t work for me at all. Things that irritate most folks don’t bother me. The flip side is that I get my panties knotted and shredded over stuff that most folks regard as downright ridiculous.

There’s nothing worse than getting all enraged knowing that 90% of the world cannot even begin to understand why. And so, I suppress the anger as much as possible and just try to get on with things.

Michael L. Smith's incomparable Mad Bluebird Photo

Michael L. Smith's fabulous and incomparable Mad Bluebird photo

At this moment, I’d like to go all Dexter.

I’m trying to shake it off.

Years ago, my father told me that his overriding management technique was to treat people as if they were going to do the best job possible with the best possible outcome. I suppose this is the management version of The Secret. He went on to say that if you treat people like they’re incompetent, they will be. If you treat them as if they’re dishonest, they will be. If you treat them as if they don’t have a strong work ethic, they won’t. If you deny them the right to self-direction, they’ll foment rebellion.

I adopted Daddy’s modus operandi years ago. It has served me well

I’ve found these things to be true. I believe that most people want to do a good job. I believe that most people want to love their work. I believe that most people want to behave ethically and with good principles. I believe that most people know how to best complete a task based on their own personality type. – the corollary to that is that I believe that the people who actually do the task know best how to do it. And if they don’t, it’s a result of bad management in the past.

But by the elastic in Great Aunt Gertrude’s girdle, I get wound up, infuriated, and my hair bursts into flame when I’m treated as if I don’t know what I’m doing when nothing in my work history supports such a conclusion. This becomes apocalyptical if the treatment is such that it is witnessed by co-workers or consumers. Apparently, one of my peccadilloes is the right to be right. (I’m working on it. Really, I have no idea why it bugs me so much to be “corrected” when it’s my opinion that nothing is in need of correction. I’m quick to admit when I don’t know. And I’m quick to ask for help when I don’t know. I was always that kid in class that asked questions. I don’t have that “fear of looking stupid” gene. And in terms of customer service, I practically coined the “I don’t know, but I’ll find out” response.)

Maybe some chammomile tea will return me to my reasonably cheerful eccentric self.

Maybe some chammomile tea will help return me to my cheerful eccentric self.

The only other thing that rips off my safety-sealed-for-your-protection lid is being treated as if I’m dishonest.

We all have power and control issues, but in keeping with my unusual brain, mine are eccentric. If I’ve been given authority for something, I don’t like having my decisions questioned with a view to changing them. As such, I have an on/off switch. Rather than protest my innocence, explain my rationale, or ask why I’m being interrogated when there is no problem, I’m apt to wash my hands of the whole mess. You don’t like what I did or how I’m going about it? Fine. Do it yourself.

This is not an adult response. I’ve been working on it for years. I’ve got to figure out an appropriately assertive, but nonthreatening way to get across the idea that just because I’m not doing something the way you would do it doesn’t mean I’m doing it wrong.

So? What makes you go all purple prose postal?