Promise-ary Note: Prankin'

This is Cheilsey.

Cheilsey is a nice girl.  A hard-working, studious undergraduate with a mischievous streak.  I work with Cheilsey, and I have often been the brunt of this young lady's shenanigans.  Whether it is falling prey to phone stunts, or begin scared out of my wits as she sneaks up on me in the back office, Cheilsey has had the upper hand in the prank war.

This week's promise was this:

Cheilsey was my first thought, the obvious choice.  The only question remained...how?

I thought for days.  I researched practical jokes on the internet, but a lot of what I found was either messy, dangerous, costly/time-consuming, or just plain mean.  So, I was on my own.

I thought about contacting my friend Jeremy and asking him to save all the popcorn from his movie theater so I could fill her car with old popcorn, but then I worried about the oils and things ruining the upholstery of her car.  Finally, I settled on biodegradable packing peanuts.  I knew Cheilsey's schedule, so I went to two local Uhaul companies and bought them out of packing peanuts.  In all, I scored 8 bags of them.

The only thing left to do was to enlist some co-workers' help in scoring her keys and keeping her busy.  On Saturday, that's just what I did.  After getting one of the fellow servers to grab her keys, I began the process of filling her car.

The eight bags didn't get the car as full as I wanted, but they definitely covered some good area of her car.  The picture above is when I am almost done filling it.  I've filled both the passenger seat and the driver's seat with enough peanuts to fill the areas below the windows.  This will allow Cheilsey to get close enough to the car without realizing immediately what has happened.

I tagged the dishwasher with the task of making sure he snaps a picture of her when she goes out to her car.  Lucky me, she went out shortly after I left in order to fetch some chapstick.  The dishwasher snapped this video.

There is really no rhyme or reason to this week's promise.  It's simply an excuse to go out and have some fun.  To relax and enjoy my friendships.  I had a ball thinking of ways I could get little Cheilsey.  She was a great sport about it.

Although her last words to me that day were, "Prank war initiated."  I may have updates on that front later.

For this next week?  The promises continue to be about hanging out and having a good time.

It's Memorial Day weekend, and we are headed to the beach!  Looks like Tracy and I are going to sneak away for a bit and cut a rug.  Can't wait.

Father Notes: The Serenity Prayer

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In the age of 12 step programs and reality shows that focus on addiction, most people are familiar with the Serenity Prayer in one form or another.  In the last couple of days, it has popped into my head for an entirely different purpose.  It has popped into my head as a father.

As many of my readers know, my daughter had a stroke when she was born, which caused some mobility/agility issues in her left side.  She toe walks on the left and likes to keep her left hand clenched, which makes fine motor skills like those dealing with buttons difficult for her.  For the most part though, Shea is a happy and well-adjusted little girl who doesn't have to deal with too much push back from her "difference."

That is until recently.

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Over the past couple of weeks, my daughter has been coming home from school saying that she is playing by herself at recess.  The first thoughts that struck Tracy and I was that there must be some drama in between her and the other girls at school, some childhood snafu that would dissipate in a couple of days.  I talked to her about it a little bit more and I realized we were wrong.

Her issues do not arise from some emotional/psychological drama with her fellow classmates, but it originates and grows out of her sometimes limited mobility.  The sun has been out and all recesses have been outside in the playground and field surrounding her school, which is exactly as it should be.  Since the kids have a lot of room to run, all the games they've been playing involve chasing each other down, playing tag, etc.  Shea has been feeling left out of those games, or at least frustrated with them, because she is only able to run fast for short distances.  In her words, "I can only run zoom, zoom for a little while."

Because of her stroke, her body fatigues quickly.  It is not a mental issue, it is not a lack of desire to play with the other children, but it is a lack of physical conditioning and ability that holds her back from these games.  After a couple of minutes, the game of tag or chase moves on without her and she is left standing alone in a field or a playground and, at times, she feels abandoned, alone, like her friends don't want to play with her.

This breaks my heart.

It isn't the physical reality that breaks my heart, the need to focus more on Shea's strength and endurance.  That part is the easy part.  We'll build a plan with her physical therapist and start to work on exercises that will both increase her flexibility in the left leg, but also build strength and endurance so that she can run better, longer, faster.

The part that hurts me is the fact that I can't really do much about the emotional pain she feels.  Yes, I can nurture her and tell her she is fine.  I can support her and tout her other gifts.  I can make time for her and soothe her when she is sad, but I can't really change the reality of the playground.

This is where the Serenity Prayer has been coming to mind.  For those of you who don't know it, it goes like this:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference. (Source)

My daughter's life is going to contain moments like this, moments where things seem unfair and hurtful.  I will do anything in my power, not to defend her from those moments, but to shore her up in ways that she will be able to navigate them.  My job is not to eradicate the situation.  I can't, for another just like it will arise down the road.  I can't eliminate unintentional emotional slights any more than I can prevent her from feeling bad when she encounters them.  In fact, I can't even call this situation an error.  I can't blame the kids for carrying on with their game of tag. I can't blame them for running around in a field full of sunshine.  I can't blame Shea for feeling bad about it.  There's a whole lot of "can't" in this situation.

But I am haunted by the image of a raucous playground full of screaming kids, bolting around as the sun glints from the frame of eyeglasses, their squeals of delight ringing in the air, and, in the foreground, a single figure.  A single figure who looks left and right, finding a gap between herself and the others, and realizing, maybe for the first time, that she is different in a way that makes her feel isolated.  A tiny figure standing in the midst of an early spring heat and wondering why.

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There is little I can do for this, and so I turn to the Serenity Prayer.  I turn to the things I can do, the ways I can make that isolated figure feel powerful and strong, happy and connected.  I can organize play dates and individual time with the boys and girls.  I can begin to work with the therapist to strengthen the organism of the body.  I can organize "You and Me" days where she feels like the center of attention and connected to her father.  I can give myself to my family and be present when we have family time together.  I can allow her to follow her interests and enroll her in sports, dance, horseback riding.  I can do all of these things, but I can't save her from that hurt, and I ache with the futility of that realization.  Instead, I turn to another line of thinking in the hopes that it will shore me up in this situation.

Happy Little Girl!

I think that this too will make her stronger.  That it will make her wiser.  That it will make her want to work harder in physical therapy.  That is will make her be inventive in how to engage her fellow students in ways that seem fun and exciting.  That she will grow up as an adult who knows both joy and sorrow, the yin and yang of life, and she'll have all the skills she needs in order to navigate what every adult knows is coming, the bittersweet complexity of adulthood.

Promise-ary Note: Revising a Promise

My promise this week was to "tell someone a hard truth."  I don't know what mindset I was in when I created this promise, but I am now kind of aghast at the ego I possessed when I wrote it.  Who am I to assume that I possess some form of truth that someone else "needs" to hear.  I know myself well enough to know that it was an exercise in honesty more than any innate desire to be bossy, but the promise still makes me shiver a bit with shame at my hubris.

As the week unfolded though, I came to understand my promise a bit differently.  So, in the method of an English teacher, I revised the promise, but this wasn't an intentional move until the moment presented itself and I realized that what I wanted to do was to confess something, to reveal something about myself more so than directing advice toward another.  As such, my weekly promise now reads like this:

I had a difficult conversation this week with a loved one.  Due to the personal nature of the conversation, I am forced to talk about it in the abstract, omitting the person's name and the nature of the conversation, but I will be able to get at the root of the promise I made and why it changed.

In the course of a phone call to check up on a loved one, things got deep.  Real deep.  Unexpectedly deep.  And heated.  I found myself locked in a verbal skirmish with this person, and I could tell that they were on the defensive.  I was on the offensive, so I can't really blame them for their reaction.  I took it upon myself to tell this person how their life was, how they should operate, and things they should do in order to "be ok."  As I typed out that list, I am again struck by how large my ego must be if I believe I can tell someone that kind of thing.

In the midst of the conversation, the other person turned it back on me.  They began pointing out how egotistical I was (not in those exact words, but the sentiment was the same).  I backpedaled in an effort to correct my loved one's impression of what I was doing.  I was trying to get them out of a funk, to light a fire of joy, to get them out in the world to try new things, but I had framed my "argument" in all the worst ways.  I was getting nowhere.

At one point, this person questioned my motives, and I found myself saying this, "I guess I'm just in mourning myself.  Mourning the old you, the person I want you to be, which is my own baggage."  The moment I said these words I knew them to be true.  I knew that I had just gotten to the heart of an issue I didn't know I had.  In pushing the person to embrace the things I wanted them to embrace, I was trying to mold them into something they were not.  A person they were not.  That is my fault.  That is my emotional work.  This person does not have to be the person they were, for they have had big experiences in the past couple of years that has fundamentally changed who they are.  My responsibility is to love them for who they are now, without caveats.

I'm actually still reeling from the confession, reeling from an epiphany about myself that has forced me to look inward in order to understand my own relationship with this person, and I realize now that my relationship is broken.  Not irreparably, maybe not even drastically, but it shows me that I have work to do.

Relationships are a two way street, and I was asking my loved one to shoulder all the responsibility for it.  The load would be too much for anyone to bear, and so I am left puzzling through my place in it, sorting through the mutual baggage and checking I.D. tags for which ones are mine.  I can't ask this person to carry everything, and so I sift and sift through my own responsibility here, looking for a porter to help me.

That's how the conversation ended.  I sought a porter, outside help, and I offered to go to counseling a couple of times a month in order to improve the current conditions I find myself in.  That was my olive branch.  That was my solution.  That is me carrying the load.  Now it is time for the other person to debate whether or not that is a working solution for them.  I hope it is, for my ego is humbled enough now to admit that I don't have the answer.  I don't have the magic bullet that is going to "fix" things, and I now realize that the problem doesn't lie outside of myself.  I am implicated.

Telling someone a hard truth was a misstep in my promises in that I didn't phrase it right.  I hadn't captured the exact meaning of what I needed to do this week, but I was observant enough to catch the error in the sentence, and so I set about revising.  I confessed a truth this week, and while the other person was present for the confession, I was both confessor and recipient of the confession.  This week found me being honest with myself in a way I hadn't expected.  My promise changed me, which, at its heart, is the entire reason the promises exist.

Next week's promise should be a little "lighter" in tone.

Bar Notes: Eastside Distilling

For my birthday, my brother Kerry hooked me up with a tour of Eastside Distilling.  I had almost forgotten about it until Tracy found the gift certificate in our office the other day.  With our reservation set, Tracy and I set off to discover a local craft distiller who would only come to exceed our expectations.

Day drinking.  I'm normally not a huge fan of it, but what can you do?  We had a 1 p.m. reservation, so it looked like we were set to get our buzz on early.  Located on SE 7th Street in Portland, Oregon, Eastside Distilling is an unassuming storefront that one could easily slide by as it is in the middle of the block.

Eastside's Storefront

 Their industrial sign is a perfect match for the neighborhood that surrounds it.  Mostly commercial/industrial, the distillery cozies right on in to its environment.  Upon entering, we were greeted with the tiny retail storefront that displays Eastside's good as well as other locally made products that any home bar could use.  They carry locally made mixers, chocolates, pepper additives for Bloody Mary's, etc.  Amongst all the local goods, one can find the regular paraphernalia: t-shirts, flasks, glassware, etc.  Yet, it is what lies four steps below that makes this distillery special.

The distillery's tasting room is a modest cordoned off section of their retail space, but the experience one can have there transcends their modesty.  As part of a scheduled tasting, Tracy and I joined about eight other people in a sampling of spirits from vodka to flavored rum to specialty bourbons.

The Tasting Room

Our tasting bartender was a funny young woman from the south, so, of course, the Kentucky Derby was playing in the next room.  While she occasionally allowed her attention to drift to the screen, she brought the Derby into the tasting, hinting at the chance for fresh Mint Juleps after we sampled her wares.

We began with their potato vodka, a lovely example of this neutral spirit, but we were soon gallivanting our way through spiced rum, ginger rum, and coffee rums.  Each taste of these specialty liquors evoked a drink recipe in both my mind and Tracy's.

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The rums almost called to their mixers, their flavor counterparts, and we whispered ideas to ourselves as the group commented on their tasting notes.  The coffee rum called to me particularly, although you would have to be careful with this as the bartender noted that an ounce and a half of the rum was equal to the caffeine of a cup of coffee.

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Once we finished our trip through rum land, we moved on to the whiskeys.  Tracy is normally not a fan of whiskey in any form, but she was a good sport about it and tasted her way through some of the infused whiskeys.  Eastside offers the solid Burnside Bourbon, which, if I remember right, is made in small batches and aged for four years.  It isn't your old bourbon and Coke type of bourbon. This whiskey is sipping whiskey, and it holds up remarkably well on the palate.

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The bartender, a true saleswoman, pointed out that they have an Oregon Oaked Bourbon which was unavailable for tasting due to its limited quantities.  This bourbon is aged especially in Oregon oak which is said to be a touch more porous and so infuses the whiskey with greater notes of vanilla, caramel, cinnamon, and maple.  Just as the bartender intended, I was tempted by this specialty bourbon, but, alas, didn't walk away with one.  Next time!

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The last two bourbons we tried are infused with local fruit.  The Cherry Bomb is a fun way to mix up your old Manhattan recipe.  No need to keep a jar of cherries around with this unique whiskey.

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In addition to Eastside's Cherry Bomb whiskey, they produce a new Marionberry Whiskey that stood out to me immediately.  The fruit is readily apparent in the whiskey, but, for me, it didn't take away from the overall flavors that I crave from a good whiskey.

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With the tasting over, it was time for a cocktail.  Tracy wound up having a ginger rum drink, while I opted for the Marionberry Whiskey with Cock and Bull Ginger Beer.  I wasn't disappointed.  The ginger beer brought a sharpness and fizz to the Marionberry Whiskey that had me craving the second cocktail before I had even finished the first, the sign of a winning cocktail recipe in my house!

The whole experience was rounded out by our tour of the distillery, a one room operation guided by Brian Cooper (an apt name for someone working with barrels).  He gave us a peek behind the science of distilling and answered all of our groups questions about the process of making whiskey.  We were lucky that only four people decided to take the tour because it freed Brian up to really answer the questions without missing out on the chance to showcase their operations.

Discovered this mad scientist in the tasting room at Eastside

The whole experience was a wonderful one, one highlighted by the friendly staff, the top notch customer service, and quality products that didn't need a sales pitch.  The people at Eastside Distilling know what they are about and that is a philosophy of product-first while making the sometimes mysterious world of specialty liquor seem approachable and fun.

Tracy and I wound up walking away with a bottle of the Marionberry Whiskey and the Below Deck Ginger Rum, which added up to us receiving another free tasting for two.  The only next question is: Who's coming with us?

All in all, Eastside Distilling was a great experience for Tracy and I.  We had a blast talking cocktails with all of the staff.  I recommend those in the Portland area with even a slight interest in the science of cocktails make their way down. For reservations, connect with them here or click here for private party reservations.

Writer's Notes: Kate Messner

In thinking about my novel project, I've had to consider a lot about "world-building."  This process of inventing a world from scratch using defined principles and rules is a daunting one, and it is a large part of why it is taking me so long to formulate the rough draft.  I've sketched in some scenes and some characters, but I can't put the larger clockwork of the novel together until I have the exact nature of my world figured out.  In order to facilitate this work, I've been using tools in book form and web form.  One of my favorite resources on the web has been Kate Messner.

Kate Messner is the author of "Sugar and Ice", "The Brilliant Fall of Brianna Z.", and the Silver Jaguar Societies series.  She is a successful and award winning children's author who was also a presenter at TED2012.  Her presentation was about world building and can be found here.

Now some may ask why I am using a children's author to support the process for writing a book for adults or older youth.  My answer is simple: children's authors are just as rigorous as "adult" authors in terms of their process.  Writers write for their intended audience, but it is my firmly held belief that good children's authors have fictional tapestries that rival their more "grown up" counterparts.  Plus, Kate Messner helped me by giving me a simple questionnaire to answer in terms of framing my fictional world.  It is a baby step, but an initial step in moving forward on my creative project.

Kate's blog posts break up a worksheet for capturing your fictional world on paper.  It is the "scaffolding" that holds the world up and asks the basic questions that need to be answered before beginning to articulate a plot.  It is the pre-writing necessary to building an authentic world, and I appreciate her willingness to share her work so publicly.  You can find her blog posts here.

I filled out the worksheet the other day, skipping some of the questions because I needed to ruminate more about their answers, but I am beginning to formulate the physical, historical, and social context that will inform my work.  You might not see the worksheet's answers in the final text of the book, but it should be felt in the authenticity of the "uninterrupted dream" John Gardner said was the mark of good fiction.

It felt good to work on the larger project and to put some of my ruminations down on paper.  It felt like a unburdening of sorts.  I don't have to "remember" my ruminations because I can turn to Kate Messner's helpful worksheet and find the answers there.  You are a generous soul, Kate.

Promise-ary Note: Fashion Foibles - Picture Post

The "uniform"

This is how I normally look.  Casual jeans, t-shirt, fleece jacket (hat is optional).

These are some of the looks I tried out this week.

Super layered hot box.

When I was working with casual free time looks, I tried the layered look.  Overdid it by about two layers.  Undershirt, t-shirt, button up, hoodie, sport coat = sweat shop for this kid.  It seems like whenever I look at fashion magazines (which is not often) the models are always layered.  When I talked to my fashion expert, Celina, she told me to lose the frat boy hoodie under the jacket and to try for something a little more age appropriate.  My friend Celina is a model in the big NYC, so she got tapped to serve as my fashion consultant.  I want to thank her for her patience as I sent her an inappropriate amount of selfies this week.

As I thought about how I was going to pull of "dressing up" for the bar, Celina sent me this picture as a suggestion.

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Here's my versions of the look without necessarily adhering to the original.  I liked this look.  It almost reminded me of old-time bartenders with the arm garters.

Mirror selfies.  Really?  Super awkward!

The one interesting thing that resulted from dressing up at the bar is the customer reaction I got.  I had a couple of people thank me for my professionalism, and some regulars comment on how good I looked.  One guy, a business traveler who travels all the time, said it was nice to have a "pro behind the bar" because he himself was a "pro."  While I take all of these comments with a grain of salt, there was something happening outside the norm.  People were responding to me in odd ways.  I had a TON of people shake my hand on the way out the door, something that is outside my normal routine.

Dressing up was changing the way I was treated, and it was changing the way I felt about myself.  Sometimes I feel like I'll get caught in a situation where I'll be woefully under-dressed.  Much of this is because I've been in that situation before and found it uncomfortable.  When I dress up, I don't get caught in that situation.  Instead of feeling stuffy and uncomfortable, I found the opposite to be true.  This surprised me a lot.

In terms of office work, I found a new sport coat at a Goodwill by my house.  It's the one pictured above, but I used it to dress up for school too, which was a good thing as I had an informal meeting with fellow faculty.

Shea and I in our school "uniforms."

I found myself shopping more and more over the course of the week, looking for a way to transform casual into something that went beyond shorts and a t-shirt (the weather was in the mid-80s).  Something that would take me from around town to an informal dinner without feeling under-dressed.  In my exchanges with my fashion expert, Celina, my friend who models in NYC, I found out that socks are a no-no with casual shoes, and she pointed me in the direction of some simple shirts that can work for me.  The end result looked like this...

Finished casual

None of these things are going to set the fashion world ablaze, but they did help me make some changes that felt substantial to the way I dress.  On the way to work today, I had an epiphany about this whole process.  I'm dressing my age.  Not only that, but I'm dressing how I feel more.  I'm slowly abandoning clothes that are part of the younger me, a man I no longer am, and working toward a look that feels natural for where I am now in my life.

It was one of those epiphanies that actually cascaded further into all kinds of other ideas about the self, about my work, about what is the job and what is the career, and a solidification of a creative idea for a writing project that I think I can tackle now.

It's all appearances.  It's all fashion and fickle, but it is also more than that.  It is the way an individual conceives of himself.  It is not just how I appear to others, but how I feel about myself.

This post was actually one of the hardest ones I've had to write in a while because there were so many things that linked into it.  So many different directions I could have taken it.  That's probably why this post feels so incomplete and scattered to me now.  I might have to revisit this topic a couple of times in order to tease out all the threads the grew from it, but that's something I'll have to save for a later date.

In the meantime, here's the next promise.  This one scares me a bit for a lot of different reasons, but I'll log that in later.