The 10 Commandments of Travel

1. Thou shalt not walk through security with a fifth of Tanquerey.

I recently flew from L.A. to Portland and had to go through a security line that was a mix of passengers leaving on domestic flights and international flights. I saw a guy walk right by the bin where you pour out the liquids and get busted for having a fifth of Tanquerey in his backpack. He said he thought the ban was on water only.

2. Thou shalt not call your spouse on a cell phone as soon as the plane hits the tarmac.

It never fails The plane touches down, everyone reaches for their phones, and one idiot calls someone and loudly announces, “We just landed.” Have you heard of text messaging? Why do we all have to hear your entire conversation with your spouse about the lack of tasty snacks on the plane? The plane will be at the gate in five minutes. Please don’t torture the rest of us while we are all trapped in the fuselage with you.

3. Thou shalt not stand in line to board the plane if your group or row number has not been called.

Hey you with the roller bag and the boarding pass that says Group 5, go sit down! The flight attendant said First Class, MVP, and Group 1. Trying to get on board before your group is called will not win you a prize, get you more peanuts, or even get you space in the overhead bin, because the gate agent is going to call you out when you get to the podium. The gate agent comes on the PA and says, “We have a gate crasher at Gate 87. Someone isn’t listening. I’m sorry sir, but you will now go to the end of the line and board last,” as she takes out a ruler and slaps the back of your hand.

4. Thou shalt not bring stinky food on the plane.

Smart travelers know to bring their own food on the plane unless they want to be stuck with a “picnic pack” for dinner. Smart travelers also realize the air in the plane is circulated around and around, and if you bring a stinky curry on the plane you aren’t the only one who has to smell it for the remainder of the flight. Sandwich good. Curry not good.

5. Thou shalt not walk through the metal detector with metal.

It’s called a metal detector for a reason! Why do you have five dollars in change in your pocket? A smart traveler will keep her eyes and ears open for people wearing belts, jingling change in their pockets, and carrying a raft of TSA infractions, and will avoid going through the same scan line.

6. Thou shalt not block the jetway with three children and a stroller.

You managed to get your kids on the plane and check the stroller at the jetway. Why must you block the jetway for everyone while you try to organize your stroller, your diaper bag and three cranky kids? The courteous thing to do is to allow everyone else to exit the plane first so you can take your time with your kids.

7. Thou shalt be prepared if you are traveling with children.

I can’t tell you how many times I have seen parents get on a plane with their kids and have nothing for them to eat, and nothing for them to do. The key is distraction people. No kid wants to sit in a seat with a seatbelt on for hours on end with nothing to do. If you don’t entertain them they will entertain themselves, which usually involves flipping the tray up and down and kicking the seat in front of them.

8. Though shalt not stand sideways in the aisle.

Remember that blog I wrote a long time ago called “Crotches and Asses?” The next time you’re standing sideways in the aisle of a plane, take a look at the view you’re giving the passengers on either side of you. Yep. Everything below the belt is right at eye level with that poor sap who chose the aisle seat.

9. Thou shalt not bring reading material into the lavatory.

I was recently on a flight where a passenger picked up a book off the flight attendant’s jump seat and brought it into the lavatory. That is disturbing on two levels. First off, that book belonged to a flight attendant, and I’m sure she was really grossed out with the fact that a passenger brought it into the lavatory in the first place. And second, the flight was less than two hours. Why does anyone need to spend time in “the library” on a short flight? Do your business before you board. Note: passengers on flights coming back from Mexico are exempt from this rule.

10. Thou shalt not hog armrest real estate.

What is it with people, especially businessmen, who sit down and spread out like they’re in an easy chair in their living room. Don’t give me the flight elbow! That armrest is a mere two inches wide, and one inch of that is mine!

Common Sense

Most of the commandments are just common sense. If you’re going to fly I suggest you do the following:

• Review the rules of your chosen airline on their website. Check to see what the cut off is for baggage check-in, fees for checked bags, and whether or not there will be food for purchase on the flight.
• Review the TSA website, because you never know what they will ban next. Their website even has tips for how to gett hrough the line faster. http://www.tsa.gov/
• Review the 10 Commandments of Travel, because you never know when you might run into me on a flight!

Enjoy your trip!

• Sing karaoke in Tokyo while wearing a pink wig like Scarlett Johnasson in Lost in Translation.
• Hot air balloon ride over Napa with someone I’m madly in love with.
• Win an Academy Award.
• Win an Emmy® award.

Well, okay, those last two aren’t very specific at all when you think about it. I never specified what kind of Academy Award or what kind of Emmy® I wanted to win. I just put it out there for the universe to chew on.

I spent last weekend in Hollywood: at the 62nd Annual Primetime Engineering Emmy® Awards, as the recipient of an Emmy®. Yes, really.

There are three  types of Engineering Emmys, and these are the definitions:

The Engineering Emmy®: This award is presented to an individual, a company, or an organization for developments in engineering that are either so extensive an improvement on existing methods or so innovative in nature that they materially affect the transmission, recording or reception of television.

The Engineering Emmy® Plaque: This award is presented to those achievements that exhibit a high level of engineering and are important to the progress of the industry.

The Philo T. Farnsworth Award: This award honors an agency, company or institution whose contributions over a long period of time have significantly affected the state of television technology and engineering.

This year they awarded ONE Engineering Emmy®, TWO Farnsworth Awards (one went to Desilu Studios if that gives you an idea of how prestigious this award is), and FOUR Engineering Emmy® Plaques.

Ensequence and Showtime were awarded the Emmy® Plaque for Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Development for the Showtime Sports Interactive project, which I have been the technical operations lead on for the past 18 months.

I have submitted my application to become a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. You either have to win an Emmy® or get signatures from two sponsors in your peer group (mine is Interactive Media) to get approved. I did both just to hedge my bets!

I am still on Cloud 9.

Right before I walked in.

Accepting the award with Showtime.

Standing on the stage after it was all over.

Our hosts for the evening, Kunal Nayyar and Simon Helberg of Big Bang Theory.

The Emmy Nomination…

A few weeks ago I wrote in a Cheers and Jeers blog that a project I’m on had been nominated for an Engineering Emmy. The category we were in was tough, and the enthusiasm was tempered because of this. Nobody expected us to win.

And the Emmy goes to…

Well, we won! Ensequence (the company I work for) won a joint Engineering Emmy with Showtime for “Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Development” for Showtime Sports Interactive. I have been the technical lead on this project for the past 18 months so this is what I have been living and breathing for over a year.

Word in the hallways was that we would probably only get a few seats at the awards ceremony, so there was no way I was expecting to go. I assumed the CEO would go with the project manager or something.

Fast forward to last Thursday.

L.A. Bound…

I get an email (from someone I won’t name) asking if I’m available on August 14th to go to L.A. and attend the 62nd Primetime Emmy® Engineering Awards. Holy sh*t! It took me less than five seconds to reply, “YES!” And I spent the next three hours bouncing off the walls like a 5-year old on a sugar high, and texting all of my friends.

My company got two seats at the awards. TWO. And they decided to send me and the project manager, who is also a woman. That is so cool.

The 62nd Primetime Emmy® Engineering Awards will be hosted by none other than Simon Helberg And Kunal Nayyar of Big Bang Theory. It doesn’t get much cooler than that.

The Super Secret Silversun Pickups Concert…

Oh, I almost forgot about the second reason Thursday was so surreal. My friend Peter sent me a text asking me if I was going to the secret Silversun Pickups show, and he forwarded me the email with the clues from 94.7 KNRK. I had received the same email but hadn’t had any time to even open it. I read the clues, “Take the trolley to the Pearl…lips that are hot…” I immediately knew it was Hot Lips Pizza in the Pearl. So, I recruited my friend Joe to walk over there with me at 5pm to see if the Silversun pickups were really going to play a concert in the parking lot of the Ecotrust Building (where Hot Lips Pizza is located).

I think the pictures below speak for themselves. They came, they played, they jumped in a tinted-windows van immediately afterwards and headed to the Crystal Ballroom for sound check (they were playing a regular sold-out show there that night).

So let’s recap:

1. I woke up and found out I was going to the Engineering Emmys.
2. The day ended with a free concert by the Silversun Pickups,who played in a parking lot in the Pearl District.

SSPU take the stage in the Ecotrust parking lot.

Three cyclists powered the show.

Cheers: to all of the Portland food carts downtown for providing me with ample lunchtime choices. My favorite by far is Rick’s Wild Seafood.

Cheers: to summer for finally showing up in Portland.

Cheers: to my friend Veanne who has kept her brilliant sense of humor throughout her battle with breast cancer.

Jeers: to the breast cancer and chemo that is making my friend Veanne feel like crap!

Cheers: to my friend Al in St. Petersburg, Florida for hosting me for a fun weekend in Florida. The Salvador Dali museum was the highlight of my trip.

Jeers: to the people two rows behind me on my red eye flight to Tampa who decided it was a good idea to watch a movie on their laptop without wearing headphones.

Jeers: to Hurricane Alex who made it rain the entire time I was in Florida!

Cheers: to Beth for taking me to see The Wailers at the KINK Live Performance Lounge on Tuesday.

Jeers: to BP for being so greedy.

Cheers: to Eleanor Reese Morse, who, together with her late husband A. Reynolds Morse, founded the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. Mrs. Morse passed away the day before I toured the museum. Fantastic collection of Dali art. I took home a print of my favorite piece Nature Morte Vivanteb (Still Life–Fast Moving).

Cheers: to all of the people who will be walking the Survivor Lap at Relay for Life in Lake Oswego this weekend.

But there are some things that I can blog about, and one of them is dead cows. That’s right, dead cows. I was out for a lunchtime run along the Eastside Esplanade in downtown Portland last week, and being that I don’t run at the speed of sound (or light for that matter) I had plenty of time to take in the sights along the way. I was running along, enjoying the one sunny day we’ve had since last October, when I saw a group of seagulls having what looked to be an organized Teamsters meeting in a small marina off the Esplanade.

I can just imagine the conversation they were having…

What are we going to do with him now?

I don’t know. This was your idea!

I said “cow tipping” not cow dipping!

As I got closer I noticed why all of the seagulls were hanging out in the marina. Dead cow floating.

We’ve had a lot of rain in Portland over the past month and the river is running really high. I figure it swamped some farmland somewhere along the way, and this cow just got trapped and eventually carried away.

I posted the following status to Facebook:

“I went for a lunchtime run on the waterfront and saw a dead cow floating in the Willamette River. The End.”

I have since been back to that spot and the dead cow and the seagulls are gone. I posted the following status update to Facebook:

“I thought you’d like to know that the dead cow that was floating in the Willamette last week has either: a) Been consumed by the local wildlife (the seagulls looked awfully fat and happy), b) Been taken away by some official agency, or c) Has floated downriver to the Columbia and is now docked behind Salty’s restaurant.”

I still run along the Esplanade at lunch a few times a week, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to pass that spot again without thinking about that dead cow floating.

If I tell my kids that I have errands to run, and then ask them if they’d like to join me, their normal reaction is to just pretend they didn’t hear me, which is exactly what happened on Saturday.

“Okay then. I’ll just see you guys when I get back from Fry’s,” I said casually as I grabbed for my purse and started heading for the door, knowing full well what their reaction would be.

You would have thought I yelled “Fire!”

“Fry’s?! Wait! Hold on! Just let me finish this level. I want to go,” said both of my previously deaf children.

We drove down to Wilsonville and pulled into the crowded Fry’s parking lot to find…red white and blue streamers and…a petting zoo. WTF?

“Is that a llama in the parking lot?” my daughter exclaimed.

“No, I believe that’s a miniature donkey,” I said, wondering what the connection was between the petting zoo and the anniversary.

We skipped the petting zoo, and walked through the front door to be greeted by a Fry’s employee who handed me a raffle ticket to win some huge TV, and pointed me in the direction of the live music and free popcorn.

I had my list. I was on a mission. How dare they try to distract me with live music, free popcorn and mutant animals in the parking lot. I put on my blinders and headed straight to the cell phone kiosk with my daughter, while my son headed straight to the game aisle. We all had our priorities.

My daughter’s phone contract had expired with AT&T, and I had been pretty stealth about making sure the mailers that showed up in my mailbox weekly made it to the recycle bin before she had a chance to see them.  I was enjoying the fact that the contract was expired and I wasn’t beholden to AT&T at the moment. But, one day she went to the mailbox before I got home, and there it was: the AT&T mailer showing the latest touch screen phone that could be hers if I just signed a new 2-year contract.

So, here we were at the AT&T kiosk, two weeks before her birthday, Mom caving in. She walked right up to the AT&T display and said, “I want that one.”

We were quickly approached by a Fry’s employee who’s name rhymes with Bill.

“Listen,” I said. “Is this phone really free or do I have to sign up for some data package or messaging package to get it? Because when I went into the AT&T store they said this required a data package if I wanted it for free.”

Bill informed me that the AT&T stores operate under different rules than resellers like Fry’s, and that Fry’s did not require a data package, and by the way this particular phone was part of the 25th anniversary special and was indeed free.

Score.

“Great,” I said. “We’ll take it. And do you have a replacement battery for this Blackberry Bold? I know it’s considered ancient by your standards since it’s an older model.”

Bill walked us to the battery aisle, found a replacement battery and walked us back to the phone kiosk so we could complete our phone upgrade.

“I need this phone battery, because I’m leaving for Italy on Tuesday and I don’t want my phone to die every two hours,” I said.

“I’m going to Finland in a week,” he answered, and then explained that his brother had been signed to play on a professional football team in Finland, and he was going to visit him in some city that started with a “J”  and was a couple of hours north of Helsinki. “Oh, Jyväskylä?” I said, because it was the first city I thought of that started with a J. He said he thought that was the place, but I think he may have been thinking of the word “jalkopallon” which means football in Finnish.

Back to business. He started trying to upgrade my phone, and noticed the AT&T plan I had. “Wow. I’ve never seen this plan before.” He called his colleagues over to take a look at it, and they were all scratching their heads.

You see, I have a plan that AT&T doesn’t have listed on their website, doesn’t advertise, and would probably deny its existence if you called and ask for it. It’s $19.99 a month. I got it because I called AT&T to try to reduce my daughter’s monthly phone bill somehow, and I just kept pushing and pushing until I had whittled down the phone plan to the bare minimum. My daughter wants to text her friends. They all live in the 503 area code. That’s it. She can call and text anyone she wants in the 503 area code for $19.99 a month. Excellent.

Because this plan doesn’t actually exist in their upgrade screen it required some manual intervention, which gave Bill and I some time to chat. Turns out Bill is going to law school, and judging from the way he finagled that free phone upgrade I’d say he’ll make a fine lawyer.

We swapped out the battery in my Bold, moved the SIM chip from my daughter’s old phone to the new phone, said our goodbyes and went on our merry way.

Next stop, laptop accessories. I needed a power adapter for the airplane. No, not because I want to work the whole way. I have Rosetta Stone on my laptop, and I want to practice my Italian.

Need an extra storage card for my camera. Check.

Time to head to the check out counter, which as you know requires you to walk the gauntlet of temptation. Fry’s knows geeks and their children well. You came to buy a wireless router, but they know you have a weakness for peanut M&Ms while you install that router. They know you’re going to take that new XBox 360 game home and play it for hours, and you will need sustinence. And they make you wait in that aisle for the next available register, giving your will power ample time to crumble.

I quickly walked through the candy gauntlet, kids behind me saying, “Mom, can I get something,” to which I replied, “No, no and no.”

By the time we got out of Fry’s it was nearly 5pm and the petting zoo was gone, which begs the question, was it really every even there in the first place? Was there really a 25th Anniversary celebration or was that just my alternate reality that day? Was Bill really an adorable law student working at Fry’s for fun while he lived off student loans and got his law degree? Does professional American football really exist in Finland?

If I win that giant TV I got a raffle ticket for I’ll believe it was all real. Until then I’ll believe I was in the Twilight Zone for a few hours that day.

I got up at 5:30am on Saturday morning to do what I thought was going to be a 12-mile run. But when I met my faithful running buddies in the parking lot of the Centerpointe Starbucks, they informed me they had re-mapped the route and it was now well over 13 miles. “Fine,” I said, “Can you spare an Advil?”

It was a beautiful morning, and the route was fairly flat, so who am I to complain. I love my Saturday runs and my girlfriend time.

By 11am I had finished the run, caught up on all of the gossip, showered, and I was in a little private room at La Belle getting the hair ripped out of my legs by my favorite sadist Cindi. We meet for this special event about once every two months or so. I haven’t had to shave my legs since the 80’s. It’s a beautiful thing ladies. And guys, get that hairy back taken care of. Just take a Valium and have a friend drive you.

Two of my girlfriends recently mentioned a women’s clothing store called Barbara Johnson in Lake Oswego. It’s a samples clothing store, and well, it happens to be oh so conveniently located about a block away from La Belle. So after I got off the torture table I headed to check out this supposedly fabulous samples store.

I had heard that this store had samples from Pategonia and other activewear companies, and I was on a mission to get some quick-dry clothes that I could wear sailing. I explained to one of the women working there that I was looking for clothes that would look fabulous even after they had been wadded up in a little ball in a duffle bag and been out to sea all day. She somehow knew exactly what I was talking about and started to bring piles of clothes to the dressing room.

The one thing you need to be aware of at a samples store is the sizes are not true. They are samples after all. I tried on everything from a size 4 to a size 12. The DKNY Golf line size 12 was like a regular size 6. And the Exofficio size 6 was all over the map.

My favorite purchases: a black low-cut hoodie dress from Exofficio, navy quick-dry pants from Exofficio, and shorts and hoodies from Nautica.

As I was paying for my purchases I noticed the clock behind the counter. “Oh crap!” I blurted. “I have people showing up at my house in 15 minutes.”

I raced home and pulled into my driveway just as my friend Beth was pulling up to my house. I quickly got dressed as we waited for the third musketeer (Jim) to show up. We were spending our afternoon at the Sixth Annual Portland Indie Wine festival.

We had decided we would take a cab to be safe, so I called the Lake Oswego taxi service since I figured they’d probably have a driver in the area. Here’s how the conversation went after I dialed the number:

“Hello?”

“Is this Lake Oswego Taxi?”

“Yes. But not today.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m in California visiting my 92-year old mother in the hospital, so I’m not available. But I’ll be back.”

“Okay. But I need a taxi now.”

“Let me give you a tip…”

“No, that’s okay. I’ll just call Radio Cab. Thanks.”

Yes, that was the actually conversation.

We did finally get our cab, and we made our way to the Bison Building in NE Portland for the Sixth Annual Portland Indie Wine Festival. What a perfect venue! Forty wineries and 15 local restaurants providing fabulous food and drink in a light and airy warehouse. The sun was streaming through the skylights and it was just a gorgeous day.

There were 40 wineries and 15 food establishments to sample, and we only had three hours in which to get through them all. It was a daunting task to say the least, but we were up for the challenge.

The more responsible side of me knew we would be in a world of hurt if we actually tried to sample every wine from all 40 wineries, so we picked a few “must-tries” and started with those. I won’t ramble on about every wine we tasted, but I will say we had a most amusing time when we dropped the pretentious wine snobbery adjectives and started to describe the wines like we would describe a man.

There were the wines we didn’t care for: “Bag over the head.”

And the wines we did like: “Ooh, he’s still wearing pants, but I want to take them off.”

And the wines that were a bit too young yet: “I don’t want to date him right now, but he has potential.”

A wine with a stinky nose: “This one is like a software engineer who has been wearing the same shirt for five days.”

And the wine that just blows your mind: “Wow. This is 9 1/2 Weeks in front of the fridge with the fruit.”

We ran into some old friends, some new acquaintances and some people who just defy description in this blog.

And did you know that no one liked Mike Erickson’s previous girlfriend, and that he’s getting married to Nurse Katie over Labor Day weekend? And , wow that’s a big piece of meat! These are the kinds of conversations you will either overhear or be directly involved in when you are shoulder to shoulder in a room with a few hundred people with a wine buzz. Okay I confess, I was the one who made the comment about the big piece of meat, but get your mind out of the gutter. I was referring to a big hunk of meat that was being carved up on a carving board.

At 10 minutes before six we realized we only had a few minutes to get one last taste of a favorite before we would get kicked out. I opted for the Barking Frog Syrah.

We finally called a cab—Radio Cab not Lake Oswego Taxi—and when they finally answered the phone I said, “I need a cab at NE 10th and Flanders,” to which the dispatcher answered, “You’re at the Bison Building aren’t you. I’ve already sent all of my available cabs to that location. Just go outside and flag one down.”

Sure enough the first cab came down the street about two minutes after we walked out.

Beth and Jim and I climbed into the cab and reviewed the afternoon:

• No one knew it was Jim’s birthday until right before we left, so I admit to being a lame friend when it comes to remembering birthdays.
• Beth and I decided that the wineries need to hire hot guys to pour the wine.
• Stiletto heels are not the best choice in a warehouse with a cracked concrete floor. We both opted for wedges.
• It’s not against the rules to go back to the Moonstruck chocolate booth multiple times to “clear your palette.”
• Not all men and women are like wine. Some age better than others.
• The Cattail Creek lamb ragout, Bob’s Red Mill polenta and salsa verde at the Wildwood booth was heaven.
• We want Phresh Organic chef Rob Leon to open a late-night food cart that serves nothing but the Griddled brioche, wild Oregon mushrooms, vintage extra sharp white cheddar and fresh goat cheese sandwich.

Take my advice and attend this fantastic event next year. And don’t make evening plans because you will probably too wiped out to keep them.

Inside the Portland Indie Wine Festival at the Bison Building

Beth and I about halfway through the tastings.

Hydrating at the end of the day. Kelly, Beth and Kevin (a work colleague of Beth’s whom we ran into).

Always take a cab.

Birthday boy Jim, who preferred kisses to spankings once we found out it was his birthday.

I thought we had a deal. When I joined Facebook a few years ago you promised me privacy.  When I first arrived on the scene I could keep my entire profile private, create my own little Facebook world if you will. I liked the fact that every status I ever posted didn’t show up on Google when I searched on my name. I appreciated the fact that I had control over my audience. Now you’ve changed the rules without consulting me and I’m not happy about it.

When I originally clicked Accept on your privacy policy when I joined Facebook, it said nothing about sharing my personal information on Facebook pages and partner websites outside of Facebook. You call this new feature “Instant Personalization.” I call it a complete violation of my privacy.

You falsely give the impression that I actually have the ability to opt out of this program, yet you continue to force me into the program even though I’ve opted out. As you can see by my Privacy settings I have unchecked the box that allows you to take my private wall postings and publicly display them on your partner websites:

When I try to opt out of your Instant Personalization program you threaten to share my information via my friends anyway!

I have opted out of this Instant Personalization program yet you continue to threaten me if I don’t opt in. When you pop up a dialog that asks me if I’d like to link to 37 other pages on Facebook, and I refuse, you threaten to wipe out the personal information from my profile.

So, unless I bow to your wishes you will basically empty my profile of all of the information that I originally chose to post. If I link to the 37 pages you suggest, you will replace all of the personal information I have posted in my profile with garbage that you think I should have on my profile, based on your data mining of my status updates and current profile information.

This is not what I signed up for Mr. Zuckerberg. I am a public persona, and even I am appalled by your lack of respect for my privacy. If you Google my name you will find 20 pages worth of links to information on me. This is the information I want you to find. There’s a difference.

I hope your pilot program crashes and burns.

Sincerely,

Kelly Jo Horton

Social Networker

10 Funky Things about Me

This is one of those tag games that I actually like, because it gives me an opportunity to let you all get to know me a little better. I was tagged by Pink Sapphire for this one.

I can’t really think of 10 “Funky” things, so I’ll go for random odd things, and try not to repeat myself from the last two times I did this.

1. I refused to cut my finger nails in order to play on the soccer team in high school, so the referees required me to wear first-aid tape over my long finger nails!



2. I twirl one foot in circles whenever I’m sitting still. Been doing it all of my life. they tell me it’s an ADD thing.
3. I can tie a maraschino cherry stem into a knot with just my tongue (a highly envied bar skill in college).
4. When I was seven years old a doctor told my mother I had Yellow Fever, and that I was going to die. Turns out it was just a bacterial infection from some dried seaweed I ate at a Japanese friend’s house.
5. I got Botox in the sweat glands under my arms so I could wear a borrowed $3000 dress to the HBO After Emmy’s Party a few years back and not ruin the dress! I still do it so I don’t sweat onscreen.
6. I once stopped eating all sugar for six months. My streak was broken when my friend Kim showed up with a bag of frosted animal cookies. It was downhill from there.



7. When I was 24 I bought a 1-way ticket around the world and traveled for six months by myself. I told everyone I was a freelance journalist.
8. I have eaten from roadside stands, and drank from wells all over India and never gotten sick, but I get sick every time I go to Mexico, no matter how careful I am.
9. I was on a technical support call with a customer during the 1989 Loma Prieta quake in the Bay Area. I decided to move to Oregon after that quake (of course now I know we have a huge fault that runs right under the downtown area).
10. The only reason I ran for the office of Pledge Trainer at my sorority in college was so I could get a private room in the house and not go to the weekly meetings.

Weeding My Garden, a Metaphor for Life

I woke up before dawn yesterday and realized I hadn’t yet planted my vegetable garden. Here it is May, and for some reason I hadn’t even started.

I grabbed a cup of coffee and walked out to survey my raised beds as the sun started lighting the morning sky, and realized I hadn’t been paying attention. My main garden bed was overrun with weeds. How did this happen? Where had I been for the last few months? Why didn’t I notice?

Weeds. Everywhere.

I grabbed my gardening gloves and started pulling, grabbing at the root to make sure I could be rid of them forever. At first I pulled at them aggressively, but as I pulled the seeds popped out and tried to replant themselves. I realized that the more angry I was with the weeds, the more they wanted to stay firmly planted in my garden.

I took a breath, slowed down and gently grabbed a weed by the root so as not to disturb the seed pods that would pop at the slightest hint of aggression. One by one I gently removed the weeds, until I came upon what looked like a patch of flowers. I was confused, because I wasn’t sure if they were really flowers or just very clever weeds disguising themselves as flowers.

How could I tell? How could I know for sure that I wasn’t trying to remove flowers when I meant to remove weeds?

Intuition.

I pulled back the flowered vines and noticed how invasive the root system was. A true flower would never do this to my garden.

I said, “I’m sorry to see you go, because you do look like a flower on the outside. But I can see that if I let you stay in my garden you will soon suffocate everything I try to grow, so you must go.”

With that, I gently grabbed at the root and pulled out that last weed, promising myself that I would be more vigilant in the future and never let weeds invade my garden again.

A new start…

© 2008 Kelly Jo Horton
The Muse