What's in a fortune?

Today my mom came over to help me do some cleaning and organizing—the cellar, my bedroom and the kitchen. In my bedroom, we removed everything from under the bed to be able to vacuum  (it was gross). In  a box full of memories, there were items of my dad's, my great-uncle's and even my childhood. In one little box belonging to my dad I found fortunes from fortune cookies. When I was in my 20's I used to save mine too, putting the date on them and taping them to my bedroom mirror. No matter how many times, I had rifled through the box, I had failed to notice the fortunes and just one more thing my dad and I had in common. Now everytime I get a fortune cookie, I will think of him.

A networking lesson

When my father started at a new law firm, after 26 years at the first and only law firm he worked for, he took every other partner out to lunch to get to know them and how they practice their specialty of law, I carry this lesson with me whenever I am networking—really get to know a person (Coffee, anyone?) and most of all work at it (hence, my joining BNI for their weekly meetings).

A mother'w work is never done (I know a cliche, but.....)

Happy Mother's Day!

While my daughter and her friend that slept over made me waffles this morning, it is still a Sunday which means laundry, general house clean-up and grocery shopping and thankfully my husband cleaned up the kitchen (after two 9 year olds made waffles) and took them to the park, so the house is empty and I can clean as I want without feeling like I am rebelling against mother's day.

In perspective...

This morning my daughter was looking at her new book, 101 Baby Animals and said to her father and I, "Do you know that male seahorses if they think their wife is ugly eat the young so they won't turn out ugly" and this put every martial spat we've had in perspective for me—I am lucky to be in a species that doesn't eat its young for any reason.

Counting to sleep (and not sheep)....

Lat night my daughter had trouble falling sleep based on an ad she saw on an animal themed cable station, so my husband said to count backwards from 100 and it took counting backwards and forwards with my daughter being silent for her to calm down enough to go to sleep and I thought I should try this stress relieving technique more often (especially with Thanksgiving next week), so I owe a big thank you to my husband with reservations, since three don't fit in a queen sized bed.

All in the family....

I was at my mom's apartment the other day where I noticed that she already had Halloween cards for her grandchildren and her 2014 calendar (with a note to enter in birthdays) and I realized that my organization and planner skills (which I use in my new business), I got genetically from my mom and  my dad (he was organized and she is a planner).

Being nice goes a long way....

Today I had to make a customer service call and since I was nice, the gentleman was nice back and over the weekend my daughter dumped her father's mail pile on the floor in an attempt to make him clean through it and I realized that we need to do a better job teaching her that if you are nice, people are nice back (I tried explaining this to her, but she was in no mood to listen).

(Eventually I sorted my husbands mail to make going trough it easier and to get it off the floor and he was appreciative—take that dear daughter.)

What throw pillow shopping taught me...

Yesterday I went with my HGTV loving daughter to buy new throw pillows for our couch and she nearly melted down when she couldn't find any that went with the couch and our rug (a Turkish Kiln) and so we called her father who to her mind was not understanding and I leaned the keys to a relationship is listening and then understanding.

(P.S. She recovered when she was allowed to revamp a book shelf in our living room which now has an Architectural Digest flair to it.)

Wednesday's words: In honor of father's day

"When I was a boy of fouteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was atonished at how much he had learned in seven years." -- Mark Twain

Mark Twain Biography