Guest Bloggers – Page 33 – Disney Leadership Keynote Speaker

Let The Rat Race Begin, By Guest Blogger Lorie Sheffer

Let the rat race begin! Yes, folks, it’s that time of year. Officially known as “The Holidays”. No sooner do you have your jack-o-lantern carved than you have to start thinking about your Thanksgiving menu, while listening to Christmas carols and thinking about your New Years resolutions. It’s time to think of spending time with family, some of whom we don’t get along with that well. It’s the stuff that movies like Christmas Vacation and Home for the Holidays are made of. It’s funny when we see it on the big screen, but not so pleasant should cousin Ed’s dilapidated RV pull into our own driveway.

We are fed mixed messages this time of year. On one hand we are told that the over-commercialization of the season is largely responsible for us feeling overwhelmed, and that we should step back and try for quiet time that reflects on the true meaning of the day. Then we start hearing angry stories and receive chain emails filled with accusations of plots to take the Christ out of Christmas or take Christmas away entirely, based on people giving one another the wrong holiday- excuse me- CHRISTMAS greetings. There is ranting about stores having the audacity not to decorate properly or to recognize non-traditional beliefs or to sell more cards featuring Santa or pinecones than Mary and her newborn. There is hateful vitriol aimed at anyone who is not doing Christmas the way Christmas should be done.

Did you know that Colonial Americans considered Christmas trees a pagan mockery of Christmas? In fact, in 1851 a pastor decorated a tree in his church and had his life threatened by parishioners? It wasn’t until Victorian times that Christmas trees became widely accepted in this country. Now, if we don’t have a tree we are considered to be a Scrooge of sorts. My daughter, who has asthma attacks from pine, had a few nasty comments thrown her way about “ruining Christmas” for my grandson due to her lack of a tree. Maybe watching his mother gasping for breath would have upset him more than the lack of said tree?

With the economy recovering at a slow pace, many of us are stressed out about the financial impact the holidays will have on our already strained budgets. Try this little experiment: Ask your family to tell you what they received from you for Christmas last year. You may be surprised to learn they don’t remember. I was stunned the year I decided not to spend days polishing my grandmother’s antique silverware and setting the table with her heirloom china. Instead I used biodegradable paper plates. And NOBODY CARED! We still had fun. Christmas still happened! It was like a page straight from Dr Suess: “Every Who down in Whoville, the tall and the small, was singing- without any presents at all! He hadn’t stopped Christmas from coming, it came! Somehow or other…. it came just the same.

Lost Boys, By Guest Blogger Lorie Sheffer

I live in Pennsylvania. This week the newspapers, Internet, television and radio have been discussing one topic. It is horrifying and it is embarrassing. It also offers us an opportunity, as human beings, to ask ourselves some hard questions.

When does image become secondary to real integrity?

If we see a child being harmed, do we step in or do we leave the scene and tell someone about it after the fact? If we don’t immediately intervene, does that make us an accomplice of sorts?

Is a hero someone who is talented in a sport; a gifted musician; a beautiful or handsome actor? Or is a hero someone who, in spite of the cost to his or her own well-being, does what is morally right?

I can never forget about those faceless, nameless young children who seem to be secondary to football in this whole sordid mess. For them, my heart breaks. I can’t waste a tear on the consequences that are now being faced by the adults who were supposed to protect them. My son is now grown, but my grandson is the same age as these lost boys. I look at him and see their little faces; I cannot wrap my brain around the fact that someone intentionally harmed them, while people knew of the monster but kept quiet and allowed it to continue.

In the words of Nelson Mandella, “Safety and security don’t just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear.”

Break On Through To The Other Side, By Guest Blogger, Lorie Sheffer

Sometimes all you can do is just stay in your lane, watch your speed and go through the tunnel to what lies on the other side. After speaking to my same age female friends, I am realizing that midlife for women can be just like leaving Manhattan en route to New Jersey. We’re entering The Holland Tunnel and there’s no turning back.

My friends and I used to have boundless energy. We would stay out until the city closed down, then go out for breakfast, and then sleep until well into the next day. Now we stay up all night, too. Only difference is we are home in our well-worn PJs, listening to our men snore the night away while we suffer yet another bout of hormone induced insomnia. Sleep deprivation does strange things to people. I wouldn’t say we are having mood swings, but just because I wouldn’t say it doesn’t mean there isn’t evidence to the contrary. One of my friends told of how she sobbed her heart out watching a documentary about salmon. Oh, how those fish struggle to spawn. Knowing just how she felt, I shared with her how I cried my eyes out because Dust finally found true love when the Swiffer Duster came by and swept her up into its fluffy, flexible fibers. I have also cried over Sandals Resorts commercials, SPCA ads featuring unwanted and abused animals and most recently commercial where, right before her father’s eyes, a little girl suddenly morphs into a teenager while sitting behind the wheel of a car.

Sometimes my husband looks at me with a mixture of amusement, worry and pure, raw fear. (Google Dr Oz: 4 signs of perimenopausal rage). Bless his heart, some nights he gets a four course gourmet meal and the next night he has to sort through the pile of take out menus that are thrown in his general direction. Easy for him to judge; he sleeps through the night and he doesn’t sweat profusely in the middle of a blizzard. My advice for him is to just stay in his own damned lane, not even think about hitting the horn, and keep looking straight ahead until he sees sunlight on the other side of the tunnel.

A Little Rain Must Fall, By Guest Blogger, Lorie Sheffer

Chronic complainers don’t really want solutions to their problems. They seem to feel that life handed them lemons and they bask in their victim status. Make lemonade? Have you seen the price of sugar? And where would they find a pitcher? None of their knives are sharp enough to cut all of those lemons, and even if they were, their carpal tunnel/arthritis/chapped skin would make it impossible. Besides, they couldn’t drink lemonade anyway, as it would certainly give them heartburn; or worse yet, diarrhea. The chronic complainer can’t take those lemons and make anything out of them, because if they do then they are left with nothing to complain about.

Chronic complainers don’t KNOW they are chronic complainers. They truly feel that they are victims. Nobody has it worse than they do. If you try to make them see that there are others worse off than they are, they will just rattle off a longer list of woes they have to deal with every day. Clearly you must not have all the information. If you really understood how bad they had it, you wouldn’t try to convince them that there could possibly be someone who has a tougher life.

What can you do when you encounter these people? What if you have to work with them, or worse yet what if they are family? Rule #1 is, do NOT fix their problem. Do NOT try to give them advice, no matter how well intentioned. To do so would only enable them to continue to spin their wheels until someone pulls them out of their latest ditch.

This sounds harsh. It goes against our desire to help people. There really ARE people out there who need our help. There are folks who are overwhelmed, who may have hit bad times, or who just need a hand up. We’ve all been there. There ARE people who have been dealt a horribly bad hand.

Your neighbor just broke his leg. His wife is recovering from surgery. Their yard is full of leaves. You decide to get a few other neighbors to pitch in for an afternoon of raking. You never know when you may be the one who needs help. Then you go to your brother’s house. His yard is also full of leaves. He is sitting on his porch, clearly distressed by the situation.

“I hate these trees”, he says. “Well, they sure are nice in the summertime, when you want shade from the sun,” you reply.
“They keep the breeze from blowing through.”
“Have you considered having at least some of them cut down?”
“Do you know what those tree companies charge?!”
“Why don’t you mulch the leaves with your mower?”
“There are too many for that! It would kill the grass.”
“Guess you’ll have to rake them, then.”
“That should be great for my back! I can’t sleep at night from back pain so as it is.”
“Maybe you need to move to a house with less yard…..”
“In this market I wouldn’t be able to get what the house is worth. Besides, I hate those condos.”
“Well, what about hiring a few neighbor kids to rake it for you?”
“KIDS! Kids don’t want to work these days.”

At the end of the conversation, you are worn out and your brother can’t understand how you could be so selfish. After all, he’s tried everything to solve his problem.

Oh For The Love Of Gilles, By Guest Blogger, Lorie Sheffer

Nothing screams “You’re middle aged!” like the week I’ve had. As I type these words, I do so with an ice pack on my lower back. Why? Because I lifted a few boxes and carried them to the trunk of my car. My two friends, women who are almost my exact same age and who helped me in my endeavor, are popping ibuprofen and taking it easy for a few days. One of us is awaiting hip replacement surgery. Yes, kids, we’re There now. Our fun day out was cleaning out my deceased friends house in preparation for a public auction.

As a woman, pathetic as it sounds- as shallow and pre-feminism as the idea is- I used to appreciate the occasional glance from the males of the species. Nothing gross or crude, but just that lingering glance that meant I was still somewhat attractive to the opposite sex. Well, my friends and I got just that as we walked into a Hardees for what we now refer to as a “pee break”. It seems that I am not the only woman of a certain age who knows the location of every single public restroom with a 100-mile radius of her home. On this day, it had been raining. Not a soft drizzle mind you, but a cloud-draining downpour. Because the terms “brain fart” and “menopause” seem to be one in the same, SOMEONE forgot to close the car windows. We realized this after all sitting, simultaneously, on the saturated car seats. We walked into the fast food joint, hands to our lower backs, bent at the waist and grimacing in pain from lifting such heavy objects as old magazines and winter coats. Our hair had either flattened horribly or frizzed from the rain, and our wet behinds made it looks as if we were about 5 minutes too late for that pee break. We decided that while we were there, we might as well get a cold drink. And maybe split an order of fries. And perhaps some chicken fingers, because when you work that hard protein is important. And then IT happened. The confirmation of our eternal youth awaited us! There was a man sitting alone in a booth, eating a cheeseburger. He was at least 85 years old, and bless his heart he had apparently left his teeth in the glass by his bed. He stopped mid chew and pivoted in his seat to get a better view of us. Then he smiled. “Well, Hell-OOOOOO, ladies!” he said, looking us up and down. So much for our dreams of Cougardom with a man like Gilles Marini, for now it’s official: the only men who appreciate our aged-like-fine-wine appeal are men who can no longer drive after dark.

When I got home I took a long hot shower. Didn’t even bother to shave my legs. Does it really matter anymore? I was going to blow dry my hair, but I decided not to bother wasting the electricity. I wasn’t going anywhere but to the couch. As my husband and I sat down to the dinner I had made, he told me that he loves my cooking. He poured me a glass of wine and gave me a smile. I noticed how much I love the silver that is taking over his dark brown hair. Later that night I sat down to watch my favorite TV show, and sure enough the guest star was none other than Gilles Marini. Sure, he’s impossibly handsome, but there’s not a single silver hair on his head. Personally, I think he’ll look even better in about 25 years. If I happen to run into him at Hardees, I’ll be sure to let him know.