Two Below Without The Wind Shield!

I'm pretty sure Jeffrey said "two [degrees] below [zero] without the wind chill" as we pulled up to Longfellow Elementary this morning where I dropped Sarah and Jeffrey off for their day. For snow is carpeting the ground again, even though we're getting nowhere near the ten inches I heard last week we would be. More like two. Martha and I brushed the snow off our cars and cleared the sidewalk some as well. I was supposed to go to Dr. Albertson for my six-month checkup but right as I got back to the house I got a phone call from her office saying she wouldn't be in until noon today, so could I reschedule then. Because I have to be at work by eleven it's inconvenient for me, so I asked for the next 9 AM opening which is this Thursday. What stuck with me was when I thanked the person who called for helping me reschedule they kind of brushed it off as it just being their job.


Something nips at me about that.


I mean, I like to think no matter how many people call or show up that I am doing more that "just" my job. That it's something that makes a difference for people, and maybe even for me. So it's a good idea to be as outgoing as I can and say yes as much as I possibly can. Dale Carnegie in How to Win Friends and Influence People (I must schedule a month to re-read that this year) has one principle worded: Get the other person to say 'yes, yes' immediately. Which means that if I can't do something for you I want to refer you to someone who can. The place I refer people to who want to get car title loans ought to send me a referral fee, I send them so much business! The information I have to collect on an application I hope would be obvious, but I try not to sound that way when I'm starting with a person -- I don't want to deliberately do anything that leaves bad tastes in people's mouths.

Sometimes coming in here is hard enough.

If I Were in Charge of The World ... and other worries. Written by Judith Viorst and illustrated by Lynne Cherry, this collection of forty-one poems I finished this weekend (ISBN 0689308639) reminds me, really, how thankful I am that I'm not. For a small part of me has never quite outgrown my fear of the dark. But the kid in me really appreciates the poems penned by the author of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day particularly looking on them as an adult and a parent and finding myself laughing out loud. So Mom doesn't want a dog for a pet? It's very likely she will want far less this snake! As for all 007 movies being rated G ... I've had a hard time with them since Tomorrow Never Dies. And the advice for modern mermaids in a poem based on the original Andersen story "The Little Mermaid" is spot on.


Don't give up who you are for the love of princes. (Or in my case, princesses.)

David