I Told a Stranger About my Promotion

“I got a new job!” I said to the man. He looked at me blankly. “I’m a Creative Director now!” I said, pointing to the press release on my phone featuring my picture. I thought at least with a visual aid, it might help hit home what a big freakin’ deal this was. “Oh” he said nonchalantly.

Then he waved his fork in a circular motion toward his beef stroganoff.  “Well, this… this work. I’ve got to work on these things…“ he said, pointing now at little mound of baby carrots nearby. “And then the work, it…” he trailed off.

My dad, patiently posing for photos with friendly strangers who resemble him.

The man isn’t a stranger to me, but, I am mostly, to him. That man is my dad. And he has Alzheimer’s. The reason I even tried telling him the news was because I had told my husband that it really stung not to be able to share something I knew would make him so proud. Feeling my pain, his own dad gone for many years, my sweet husband encouraged me. “Tell him! Maybe he’ll understand.” And so I did.

I didn’t really expect him to light up with a hearty congratulations. Or to shout about how proud he was of me to his “friends” who were sitting in chairs, staring blankly at a National Geographic special about baby water buffalos getting eaten by crocodiles. I guess I was just hoping for a glimmer of recognition. A sign, that deep down, even though he doesn’t even know who I am most days, he was proud of his little girl.

I don’t spend a lot of time being sad about my dad. Despite my easy emotions at everything else in life, I am have a certain stoic calm about the whole thing. (Which I'm sure will unravel someday.) Maybe it’s because my grandmother had the same disease and followed the same patterns, and I watched my dad handle it with a certain resignation and a healthy sense of humor. Maybe it’s because it’s such a slow process and I find solace in the fact that he’s not in pain, not an active mind trapped in a body that’s failing him. In fact, it’s the opposite. I swear the man still has a 6-pack under that shirt I’m pretty sure he took from someone else’s closet.

Mostly, our family deals with my dad’s Alzheimer’s with laughter. In the 2/12 years since he’s been in memory care facilities, he has told us in broken sentences how he’s played for the Mariners, reffed a Seahawks game, done some casual welding and gone “up North” for projects multiple times. He escaped (for real) once, which was terrifying for a few hours, but now we retell the story about how my daughter and I came upon him, 3 miles from his care facility, carrying a huge, wire dog cage. I calmly convinced him to put the cage down and get in the car, and we drove him back to his home without incident. But I bet the people who lived in the house where I found him are still wondering where that cage came from.

Increasingly, words are difficult for him. But he’s still polite as can be, offering bites of his stroganoff, smiling when we say his name as if he recognizes us on some level. All the nurses and caretakers tell me what a kind, polite guy he is. And in that way, he’s still my dad.

As usual, when I left, I gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He smiled kindly, which is something else that hasn’t changed. But you could almost see him thinking.  “Wow. That lady with the new job is nice, but a kiss? We just met!”  Or maybe he was thinking about stroganoff. I’ll never know.

'Tis the Season

Guess what, everybody! It’s horse show season! Yaaay, right? 

Oh...you're getting paged for a fake meeting? Okay cool.

For those of you still here, you’re in luck! Because I've answered some of the most common/dumb/adorable horse-show related questions I’ve gotten over the years right here. So you’ll soon have knowledge about my obscure hobby that could literally SAVE YOUR LIFE.  If you’re ever in a life-or-death game of Jeopardy, where the topic is "Horse Shows."

Giddyup! (Nobody actually says that while riding a horse, BTW.)

Q: DON'T GIRLS OUTGROW BEING HORSE CRAZY?                                                                                                                          A: Nope. Once it’s in your blood, you never get over it. It’s like a really fun kind of malaria.

Q: DO YOU RACE?                                                                                                                                                                                     A: No. Only jockeys race. And jockeys are toddler-sized humans made entirely of brass balls and muscle fiber. I am not that. Also, Thoroughbred racehorses cost approximately a billion dollars, and people voluntarily pay real money to go watch them. That also doesn’t apply to me.

Q: DO YOU JUMP?                                                                                                                                                                                    A: No. It’s exciting and fun to watch, but my horse isn’t trained to do that. I did it when I was younger and bounced better.

Q: SO, WHAT IS SHOWING?                                                                                                                                                                     A: Showing is competing. Either in an arena or on a course. It means you pay an entry fee to ride in front of a judge who will rate you and your horse based on a set of very specific, objective criteria. And whether or not they like the color of your riding pants.

Q: DO YOU WEAR THE LITTLE OUTFITS?                                                                                                                                               A: If by “little outfits,” you mean larger versions of the riding clothes your daughter puts on her American Girl doll, pretty much yes.

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The sickness is commonly passed down through generations.

Q: DO YOU WEAR CHAPS AND A COWBOY HAT, LIKE A COWBOY?
A: If you ride Western, yes. I ride English, so I wear English-style riding clothes.

Q: SO YOU WEAR TIGHT PANTS AND TALL BOOTS?                                                                                                                          A: Yes. And the pants are called “breeches.”

Q: WHEN YOU WEAR THE TIGHT PANTS AND TALL BOOTS AND GLOVES, DO YOU EVER CARRY A LEATHER WHIP AND SLAP YOUR PALM WITH IT?                                                                                                                                                                   A:  You're a perv.

Q: SO YOU JUST SIT UP THERE AND THE HORSE KNOWS WHAT TO DO?                                                                                     A: Um no. Imagine you control your car with only your hands, voice, and tiny movements of specific muscles. Also, imagine your car is afraid of mountain lions, plastic bags and the occasional light breeze. Sometimes, your car doesn’t get along with other cars on the road, and sometimes it’s tired and really just wants to go back to the garage. So you have to convince your car to do exactly what you want and not run into other cars, using cues that are undetectable to the human eye. All while a person with a clipboard watches you like you might be shoplifting. It’s kinda like that.

Q: YOU MUST BE REALLY STRONG.                                                                                                                                                      A: Riding is more about finesse than strength. But I could crush you with my inner thighs if I had to.

Q: DOES IT COST A LOT?                                                                                                                                                                        A: It can. But so do boats, time-share condos in Aruba, and Microdermabrasion. And none of those things whinny at you when you walk in the barn.

Q: DO YOU EVER WIN MONEY?                                                                                                                                                              A: Sometimes, but usually only enough to cover some entry fees and a small bag of Peanut M&Ms from the concession stand.

Q: DO YOU EVER WIN STUFF?                                                                                                                                                                A: Yes! Ribbons, trophies, coffee mugs, large, decorative keys. Even the occasional silver-plated tea set. It’s like going to an expensive, time-consuming garage sale.

Behold, my Championship Bread Basket and other assorted Major Awards.

Q: SO WAIT...WHY DO YOU DO IT?                                                                                                                                                        A: Because I love it. Because it’s hard work. Because the sense of accomplishment is great and the friendships are greater. Because I’d choose horse shit on my boots over red soles on my designer stilettos any day. Because winning always feels great, but winning with a 1000+ pound partner (who could just as easily freak out and trample the photographer) is like nothing else.

Q: ARE HORSE PEOPLE CRAZY?                                                                                                                                                            A: You have no idea.

Q: CAN I COME WATCH YOU SHOW?                                                                                                                                                   A: Just kidding! Nobody ever asks this.

Tears of Everything

I have leaky faucets. I also have a tendency to say things that sound unintentionally dirty, so just to clarify, I’m talking about my eyes. Get your mind out of the gutter.

It seems like tears are my body’s natural way of reacting to just about any strong emotion, including HGTV. See elaborate chart below.

Clearly, I am a deep and complicated individual. With killer Excel skillz.

Of course I get misty over the usual stuff - a soldier reuniting with his family, random acts of kindness, an abandoned baby porcupine getting adopted by a three-legged, surrogate goat mom. Don’t think I’m alone there.

But where it gets annoying is my inescapable waterworks around everything else. I’ve always been sappy, but since I’ve had kids, I’m a full-on tear factory. It’s not that I go around sobbing all the time, I just well up stupidly easy at unexpected, inopportune times. Like seeing my daughter make s'mores at Girl Scout camp or watching House Hunter’s International, the Arctic Circle Tiny House Identical Twins episode.

Here are a few more random things that can get me experiencing sudden and uncontrollable allergies, only in my eyeball region:

The part of Nemo when the mom gets eaten. An upset toddler on a plane. A capella singing. Two guinea pigs sharing a single piece of grass in slow motion. All-staff meetings where heartfelt words are spoken. Seeing someone else cry. Talking about crying. Remembering that time when someone cried. Putting a donation in the can. Highlights Magazine. Coaches being supportive when their teams lose. People crossing finish lines. 4th Grade xylophone and recorder concerts. Motivational speakers. New parents. My own 10th grade poetry. Sunrises. Sunsets. John Denver. Gift exchanges. The Muppets. Two or more glasses of wine combined with the right/wrong words out of my husband’s mouth. Budweiser Clydesdale ads. Horses, period. Touchdowns. Kindergartners. Friendship.

A have a friend at work who gets teary even more than I do. But when she does, she looks like an adorably sad Disney princess. Her big brown eyes well up and her eyelashes clump together and giant, heartfelt tears roll down her freckled cheeks and we all love her for it. It’s so damn cute, it’s irritating. (Hi Steph!)

This does not happen to me. Sure, my eyes well up, but then my nose turns red and blotchy, my lower lip quivers and my voice shifts into this shaky transgender version of myself. I don’t want to brag, but I may have inspired the term “Ugly Crying.”

As a result I’ve learned several ways to combat the Weeps, or at least hide them. Because a trembling lower lip and face blotches are not good for inspiring confidence at work or sexy times at home. Here are a few:

• Pretend you’re yawning

• Take frequent sips of water.

• Fake a coughing fit like you just inhaled the flavored powder from Fun Dipps.

• Look up and breathe in through your nose, while simultaneously thinking of Spongebob SquarePants. (Don’t know why this works, other than he annoys the crap out of me.)

• Adjust your real or fake contacts. Bonus points if you touch your eyeballs!

Or, if you’re cute like my friend Steph, just go with it. It’s endearing to see someone who so genuinely wears their heart on their sleeve. Even thinking about it makes me... hang on. There's something in my pretend contact.