The Campaign

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When drivers angry-honk at other drivers in New York City, they’re simply saying, “You’re an idiot. Move,” or “Grow a brain.” (I’m sure they’re thinking more than this, but I try to keep it G-rated, yo.)

In L.A., an angry honk leaves you wondering if a bullet is about to find its way into your car…or so it feels. Yikes.

Communication has a funny way of changing from coast to coast, and from country to country. Even tonight at dinner with clients, our discussion at one point turned to campaigns intended for air in other countries. Would the takeaway be the same? Probably not. The nuances may be missed, the subtleties may be misinterpreted. A local or regional agency well-versed in a nation’s ways is a must, lest a serious faux pas be committed. Never good for a brand.

What’s your brand? What does it say to others? Is it considerate and aware, or oblivious and rude? If you were unaware of a country’s history and your message fell upon offended ears, would you make amends or pass it off as their problem instead of yours?

Accommodating others is one of the easiest things to do, yet we often stand our ground to prove a point; we frequently find ourselves in an unbending position to show others we’re right — but all we’re doing is demonstrating how wrong we are.

Tonight I am thankful for the lessons and truths that are sometimes clear as day, and other times hidden in the day to day, in the mundane or in the 9-to-5. Here’s to making our personal campaigns respectful ones, and ones whose credits we’re proud to be included in.

Deep Thoughts

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Who remembers Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey? My favorite went something like this: “If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let ’em go — because man…they’re gone.”

I was standing in the TSA line this morning at LAX. Terminal 3, to be exact — the same place where the TSA agent was killed back on November 1. Two of four lines were open and the TSA agents were many. Nobody seemed to mind, except for the older and, might I say, incredibly crotchety woman behind me.

She let out a loud sigh, scoffed and then said in my general direction, “Can somebody tell me why we’re standing in this line?”

I was appalled that she seemed appalled. “What’s your question, exactly?” I asked.

“Well, why are we just standing here?” she demanded to know.

“We’re not ‘just standing here.’ We’re making our way to the TSA officer,” I replied.

“But why are we going so slowly?!” she fumed.

Oh, let me count the ways. “Because it’s LAX. Because there are only two lines open instead of four. Because people from downstairs are coming upstairs and merging with us. Because –” I was about to continue.

“OK, alright. I get it,” she said. “I just wanted to know if I was in the right place.”

“Oh,” I said. “You should’ve said so. If you want to get on a plane, then yes, you’re in the right place,” I confirmed.

She scoffed again, this time at me. I can’t say that I wasn’t amused by the situation. If it had been any earlier, I may not have been.

Deep thought #1: If waiting irritates you, don’t go to an airport — or a theme park when lines or throngs of people irk you. It’s also right up there with never wanting to experience an earthquake while choosing to live in California. You’re in the wrong spot, plain and simple. If you want to be here, zip it.

After settling into my seat on the plane, we departed and I ordered an unhealthy-disguised-as-healthy meal onboard. I found myself wondering the following (with our agency’s holiday party just around the corner): if black is supposedly slimming, would wearing black Spanx prove to be extra slimming?

Deep thought #2 free of charge, ladies and gents. Enjoy.

Today I’m thankful for safe travels, for good comedy in the TSA line and for tastebud-titillating vittles onboard my Virgin America flight to JFK. Side note: if you happen to encounter the Flight Bites on their menu, two thumbs up. Partake if you have the opportunity.

The Good Hiccup

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This was the first night in a few weeks’ time that I went for my nightly walk. I made the mistake of downloading a crime app a couple of months back, and since the time change there has been an unsettling number of robberies in the area — during normal (non-wee) hours.

Only one of them occurred on my actual route (and at 6:40 in the evening, no less), but it’s enough to make a single girl stay in. Darkness + crime = not my cup of tea. Tonight, however, I couldn’t help myself. My feet were getting bored. Besides, Christmas lights are beginning to blanket the neighborhood.

While my walk was pleasant and much-needed, I couldn’t help but shake a nagging feeling once I got home. It’s funny, this feeling — because on one hand, it speaks to a routine that I so enjoy at times. Wake up, shower, work, come home, change, walk, shower, sleep. Grounding, yet maddening.

Sort of like the lights that I saw.

Orange, green, red, yellow, blue. Orange, green, red, yellow, blue. Orange, green, red, yellow, blue. Orange, green, red, yellow, blue. Orange, green, red, yellow, blue. Lovely at first — mesmerizing, even — then it’s gone. The magic is gone. Where seconds before one could see beauty in the expected pattern of holiday warmth, I was quickly left wanting more — but exactly what, I wasn’t quite sure. Perhaps something not so predictable?

As my walk continued, I found out what I didn’t need. I didn’t need an inflatable Christmas lawn decoration — and certainly not one of a mischievous reindeer driving a bulldozer with a flattened Mrs. Claus underneath. I didn’t need driveways lined with fake miniature pine trees, oversized ornaments hanging off the eaves of homes and I definitely wasn’t in the mood for red and white striped candy canes lining walkways. I’ve seen them all before — on last year’s walks, to be exact. I thought I’d head out tonight and feel as though I was embracing a long-lost friend, but I didn’t. Instead, I felt like another year had slipped away.

It might be OK if I felt like I was going somewhere, too. Wherever all the time went, I’d also like to visit. Wherever my cherished moments ended up, I’d like to also be. How do I get it all back? Why can’t we rewind or — at the very least — hit the pause button? In the meantime, I suppose I’ll continue searching for ways to slow down the year (and next), and to mix it up a bit — without getting too crazy and ditching the routine entirely, naturally. On one hand, routine is where we inevitably find ourselves, it seems. But once we find it, we might turn it on its head and switch things up — which is a routine in itself, I guess. Whatever our style, tonight I am thankful for knowing that even a burned out bulb or a repeated color on our Christmas lights of life are things we can either choose to frown upon or embrace. One is routine, the other is adventure.

Here’s to finding a burned out bulb, a hiccup in the strand.

Here we go.

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It’s that time of year again. With the beginning of December and all things festive comes the annual year-end trip to New York City. Le sigh.

Each of my three employers over the last eight years has had a reason for such a trip. And while you’d think I’d enjoy the The Empire State around the holidays, the truth is that it only makes the city slightly more enjoyable to me. If I normally give it one out of 10 stars, it gets a whopping two stars around Christmas…and only because of the myriad twinkle lights.

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with NYC for the last ten years. I wanted to love it, but it didn’t love me back. I might’ve asked too much of it too soon after 9/11 — I’m really not sure. But when you’re in the mood to put yourself out there only to not be met by the open arms that so many others have experienced, it stings.

When I see pictures of the city, I fondly recall tea and decadent desserts with a friend at a quaint establishment near MoMA.

I remember formal events, fantastic food and exciting cocktails.

I remember the endearing, rickety-sounding cabs which groaned of being beat up by pothole-laden streets.

I remember ice skating at Rockefeller Center.

I remember riding the double-decker red tour bus around the city with my mom when she visited me during my stint in Connecticut.

And while these are all great moments in my memory, I’d just as soon never see the city again. From above, it’s beautiful. Magical. Sparkly. Flying over it isn’t a problem.

Down below, it’s gritty, anything but warm and fuzzy — and it’s definitely not home. It inspires a claustrophobic feeling in me each time I cross into Manhattan, and every breath feels like it could be my last. The pace might just squeeze the life out of me.

Many love it, but it’s not for me — the same way my suburbs and quiet nights in may not be for them. Miles of concrete pave the way for the movers and shakers, the doers and the tireless. I need softness beneath my feet — more softness than a centrally located park can offer, and trees that grow in land larger than a three by three-foot square. I move slowly, and I rarely shake; I do, but I also wear out quickly. The city is not a place where one can hibernate.

And I need to hibernate sometimes.

I wrote a breakup letter to New York City around this time last year, and while the breakup did, in fact, happen, there still are times when we need to peacefully coexist. We need to find a way to tolerate each other, to live and let live.

Though I can think of other places I’d rather be, tonight I’m thankful that my time in The Big Apple will be limited to about 36 hours once I’m on the ground and that the clients with whom I’ll be meeting are among the nicest in the industry.

It may not be at the top of my destination list, but I’ll play New York’s game, smile, stick to my script, play by the rules, snap some photos of its twinkly offerings and will hope that next holiday season the journey may be a bit easier to make.

Keep the Peace

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I started looking online for solutions more than a month ago. Nothing seemed like it would work.

The holidays are magical to me. I love putting the tree up right after Thanksgiving and coming home to it each evening. With all the lights on a timer, it would greet me through the plantation shutters when I arrived home from work; tiny bulbs twinkled and reflected off ornaments, metallic ribbon and decorations drenched in glitter. It was a peaceful sight.

But not this year. Two rescue kitties took up the first part of my year, and during their saving process I gave nary a thought to how I’d handle a tree come Christmas.

They’re indoor guys, and confining them to one room plus a hallway — just so I could have a tree up for a month — seems cruel. They’re not allowed in my bedroom, and the office is also off-limits. That leaves the large front living room, hallway and guest room for them. Their space isn’t the largest, but it’s far more than the tiny cages they’d been cooped up in. They’ll get more of the house someday, but that’s another story. For now, I imagine their new digs with daily sunlight that comes streaming through the shutters are close to heaven.

But the Christmas tree always goes in the living room. Always. The massive picture window has forever done a spectacular job of properly framing it — until this year.

Visions of coming home to find one or both cats pinned underneath a toppled tree didn’t sit well with me. Nor did shattered ornaments, or them chewing on such things. The word online is that placing citrus fruit peel or spraying a tree with citrus scent works like a charm. With my luck, it wouldn’t. Besides, who wants to smell citrus during a pine and cinnamon time of year? Or hang orange peels from ornament hooks? Or place said peels at the base of the tree while hoping the cats don’t go rogue and decide to snack on them? Surely that would result in yet another vet bill.

I’ll pass.

I wondered if I could rig something protective that would go around a full-size tree. Eight-foot tall baby barricade? Ugh. Besides, the cats would scale it like the tree it was intended to protect. Trellis panels hinged together? Yuck. (Read: unattractive and janky. Yes, janky.) I realized my ideas — all of which were unfit for cats, as well as peddling on crappy late-night infomercials — amounted to one big, giant fail.

But wait! An epiphany.

Realizing that the shutters created a mini jail for about six inches of space between the window itself and its frame, I knew what my option was: use the picture window to my advantage, capitalize on the protection the shutters offered, screw a hook into the top of the window frame and suspend a beautiful wreath from it.

Done.

The wreath would live in safety, the cats’ world wouldn’t be whittled down or citrusified and there’d still be something twinkling at me each night I pull into the driveway. One month of searching the web for cat-be-gone solutions followed by terrible tree-protecting ideas was solved with the notion of a wreath.

It went up today, and it is lovely. The cats are none the wiser, as it’s in its shuttered jail.

Nothing will be climbed.

Or toppled.

Life is good. And safe for all.

Tonight I am thankful for Christmas being able to live on in a familiar way. It may not be the giant tree I’ve come to look forward to each year, but it’s Christmas just the same — not to mention a great solution for keeping the peace. What’s that they say? Adapt or die? Tonight I’m proud to report that through adaptation, the holidays will, indeed, live on here at the casa.

Squirrels.

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There’s a commercial for DirecTV that keeps me cracking up long after its 30-second duration.

The squirrels just aren’t listening to Dave.

In a park setting, a man is unsuccessfully trying to shoo a gang of rodents away. They’re not interested in his pleas and shrieks. In fact, they leap onto his legs, torso — he’s covered with bushy-tailed (and incredibly aggressive) squirrels. The point is that squirrels may not listen to Dave, but DirecTV with voice control will.

Like the squirrels, our subconscious also doesn’t care what we have to say at times, either.

I wrote a song in high school that I’ve never done anything with. It came to me easily and it’s simple, but it soars in just the right places; it gives me chills when I play it.

After Thanksgiving had come and gone, my mom asked me last night what I’d do for a living — anything — if I could get paid for it. I said I’d be a writer.

My subconscious had other plans.

Sometime during the wee hours this morning, I dreamt that I was about to take the stage along with many others. Everyone was going to sing something, so I was preparing to do the same.

I can do one or two songs somewhat decently when I karaoke, so maybe I’ll sing one of those. But I won’t have any accompaniment, so that cuts down my options. What’s a good a capella song? The national anthem? Amazing Grace?

It was an intense dream. Oh, the pressure. I didn’t want to flop, but I knew I had other talents that far outweighed singing. So I changed my mind.

I’ll play my song — the one I wrote in high school.

The scene beneath my hands was so clear and vivid. My fingers rested above the very black and white keys that would lead off the song. The audience was still and quiet, each person anticipating my musical offering. I wasn’t nervous, as I knew the song like the back of my hand. It’s a part of me.

I awoke and knew I’d answered last night’s question incorrectly.

The truth is that both are fairly neck and neck, though music edges out writing ever so slightly — like 51/49. If the split wasn’t clear before, it was this morning.

Any squirrels in your life? What are they up to, and why? What do you think you know? Better yet, would your subconscious agree? When you speak, is it the truth?

Tonight I’m thankful for a dream that illuminated the truth and for fake squirrels that spawned this little story. Sometimes connecting the dots can be tricky in the light of day, but once we adjust to the dark, we might be surprised how clearly we can see.

What’s the deal?

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It’s a crazy time of year. One day we’re enjoying family, loved ones and giving thanks for all that we have, and the next (or maybe even same-day) we’re off and shopping, grabbing and buying, getting and gifting — seemingly as if to say that what we or others have isn’t enough to be thankful for after all.

Don’t get me wrong — I love a good bargain as much as the next person, but the seasonal whiplash of give-thanks-then-buy-buy-buy is a bit much. For me, anyway.

In between football games peppered with Black Friday commercials, I got to thinking about the retail tug-of-war as I was battling a serious food coma. My thoughts weren’t the clearest, but here’s my what-if.

What if Black Friday and Cyber Monday purchases were all for charities? What if everything was for a complete stranger truly in need? What if the price of every get-it-while-it-lasts deal was the amount of a direct person to person donation? What if all our bargain- hunting skills were for the greatest game imaginable — the game of seeing how full our hearts can become as a result of pure selflessness? Maybe — just maybe — seeing a single mom open her wallet and magically finding the exact amount of cash that you were thinking about spending on a new bag or tablet would be the best Christmas ever…clearly for her, but also for you — for your soul. Because if we’re talking profit and loss here, there would be no losers. Only two people profiting.

There are a lot of deals this time of year, but the best deals in my eyes are the ones that have an element of giving back: purchasing this means X-percent is given to this charity. Buying that ensures a portion is given to a specific cause. That’s my kind of deal, and for them I am thankful.

What’s yours?

Tayo’s Lesson

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He’s getting up there in age. He usually doesn’t sleep with me, as he tends to prefer staying out most of the night despite his years. He’s lazy and naps during the day while I slave away. He is soft-spoken but demanding and persistent when he wants something — which is rare, except when it comes to food.

I have an old, black cat named Tayo. He’s going on 18 and I swear he still thinks he’s a kitten some days. He has arthritis and sometimes forgets to retract his claws — occasionally funny when he’s jumping up onto or off of a fabric couch or chair, but hardly funny when he’s trying to get into my lap. Ouch.

With the drop in temperatures lately, he’s taken to sleeping on a beige blanket at the corner of my bed. Unlike most pet parents, I’m sure I’m in the minority when I say that I tend to keep my bedroom off limits to my pets. But when an arthritic bruiser who’s quickly turning into skin and bones needs a soft, warm place to rest his head, I oblige.

I passed through my bedroom this evening and could’ve sworn he’d been in there sleeping for hours, but I didn’t see him — until something stirred. Upon closer inspection, I found him up toward my pillow, his dark form blending into my dark brown comforter.

I’m not sure why his usual place on the blanket was passed up, but he wanted more. He was in need of more.

When we’re in need of more, we’re sometimes at the mercy of others — what they can give, what they can understand and how willing they are to share their worlds with us. We might hope for a helping hand, but there are times when we simply need to show others what we need and hope they fit us in. When we see a display of need, we can accommodate it, limit it or allow just a fraction of it — but, at the end of the day, it all boils down to acceptance.

Tonight I am thankful for Tayo’s reminder to look closely at one’s surroundings and to accept a need when one is obvious. During this season of giving thanks, it may be easy to be grateful for all that we have, but we can also give thanks for that which we can give to others.

The Yardstick

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My mom used to sew when I was little.

I remember her sewing machine, its color, the smell, the sound. I tried a couple of times and can’t say my efforts were a complete failure, but I much preferred sewing small things by hand: scrunchies (it was, after all, the ’80s), maybe a doll dress here and there — but I’d always sew on my parents’ bed, and I had a bad habit of leaving needles and pins behind when I’d tidy up. My dad always “found” them (sorry, dad).

I have a few of her leftover yardsticks here at the house. The cats think one in particular is their personal toy. Who am I to argue? They chew on it, attack it when it’s perfectly still — it’s good, old-fashioned, low-tech entertainment.

Tonight I was looking at it and noticed a mess of doodles I’d tattooed on its surface decades ago; I had a thing for hearts, daisies and goofy smiley faces. The same shapes also managed to end up on Trapper Keepers, JanSport backpacks and Bibles (apologies are now in order for God).

Looking at the yardstick, the thought that came to mind was this: “I’m surprised my mom wasn’t upset I drew on it.”

I didn’t think this because she was prone to anger — no, quite the opposite. She was slow to anger. She was patient. In my mind, she was a true parent.

I also didn’t think this because it’s something I would’ve been upset over. I simply thought it because it was one person’s possession — and aren’t most people protective of things?

The yardstick wouldn’t perform any less with its new markings. It wouldn’t be rendered useless, less than or less valuable. It could still do its job. It was still worthy.

The yardstick made me realize that the measure of a parent isn’t how their children behave and whether they stay within the lines — it’s also about the parents’ reactions to things big and small. In this case the yardstick was a measurement of my mother’s patience, her fuse, her priorities and her knowledge of what’s really important. She was protective of people instead of things, and for that I am thankful. Forever thankful.

Unlikely.

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It was somewhat of a surprise that the baby rhino had been orphaned. But it was an even bigger shock when it befriended a warthog.

In Ireland, Doogie the lone dolphin befriends Ben the Lab. Both swim for hours, though one will never tire. The other will draw from the dolphin’s energy, occasionally getting a helping hand (fin?) when swimming takes its toll.

In yet another corner of the globe, a young wild boar separated from its mother finds comfort and belonging among cows. The farmer is amazed.

Odd pairings, yes. But so interesting.

We’re conditioned to think that some things are truth, that certain things are meant for other things only. Animals with similar animals. Certain types of people with others who are a likely, obvious fit.

Yet every day we are met with examples of things that don’t fit. Things that don’t seem to work. Things that aren’t a match.

Each time an unlikely pair takes shape, however, there is amazement — just like the farmer had. There is appreciation for what a union can teach us…others…the world. Opposites are unlikely, but opposites can, in fact, attract.

Tonight I am thankful for what unlikely pairings can teach us, for what they open our eyes to and for the adventure they inherently hold.