O Lord, why are we Americans so suspicious of siestas? You recall that even as a young office worker, I sneaked to a back room at noon and closed the drapes to conceal my catching a few winks. Why did I have to hide as if conducting lunchtime drug deals? You’ve never considered napping a sin. OMG, You even advocated a whole day of rest! Amen, Father.
And power to the nappers!
Does blueberry picking sound like a Fun Time to you?
Bribery convinced my small children: “If we don’t get thrown out of the patch, we’ll hit the bakery later.”
Often, they were too full of berries to finish doughnuts, so Mom obliged them.
I also considered it a rare productive activity, defined as: we made it to a potty in time; no one went to the ER; and I wasn’t nominated for Bad Mother of the Year. Plus, some berries came home.
Years later, our son invited Hubby and me to pick blueberries with his family.
Five-year-old Jonathan bragged, “I’ll pick 35 times 72 pounds!”
Ty the Little Guy wore the world’s cutest sun hat, appropriate for the world’s cutest toddler.
Arriving at the farm, we walked past fields of blueberry bushes. And walked. And walked.
Soon, both boys would need naps. Or Grandma would.
A guide finally assigned us a row abounding in big, juicy berries.
Our tall son and Hubby handled top branches. I covered the bushes’ midsections. I also resigned myself to picking lower branches — and sleeping on a heating pad that night. The boys will grab just enough blueberries to eat and dye their skins.
Jonathan disagreed. “I’m little, but I can pick lots!”
Ty, however, had a beef. Everyone but him received a white bucket. Fill someone else’s? A fate worse than death.
Eventually, he decided Daddy’s bucket would do. Ty dragged it up and down rows, popping through bushes and batting long-lashed, brown eyes at other pickers.
Above flirting, Jonathan picked continuously for more than an hour!
Grandma’s feet gave out. We adjourned to weigh and pay. Ty allowed Daddy to tote his bucket and carry him on his shoulders.
“You’re heavy, Ty. How many berries did you eat?”
Little Guy’s smeary face somehow looked innocent.
“I’ll pay extra.” Daddy sighed. “Next time, I’ll weigh him before and after.”
Jonathan didn’t accumulate 2,520 pounds of berries (35 x 72), but the five pounds he and Daddy picked made him happy.
A productive day. Even Grandma and Grandpa made it to a clean potty in time. Nobody went to the ER. Daddy wasn’t nominated for Bad Parent of the Year, though he forgot to give Ty a bucket.
We had a berry Fun Time.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Do you have a favorite fruit-picking memory?
In the small town where our children grew up, Plymouth, Indiana, 500,000 people attend the Blueberry Festival every year–the setting for a book I wrote several years ago.
“We are all of us from birth to death guests at a table we did not spread.”
—Rebecca H. Davis
Has an uninvited guest ever brought suitcases to your house? Plus, a hostile pet named Lovey?
When I was growing up in a pastor’s home, uninvited guests were the norm. Many brought suitcases and — if not Loveys — equally mean kids.
A penniless evangelist, his wife and five children spent several weeks. Again, my siblings and I slept on the floor. I worked overnight at Denny’s. Once, during a rare nap, a kid poised a pipe at my window and bellowed like a mastodon.
Another incident involved a lady preacher named Bunny who often stayed with us. One night, Dad, who also worked construction, arrived home after everyone had retired. He climbed into bed beside Mom.
One thought, though, struck like lightning. Hadn’t Mom said Bunny was staying overnight?
His pastor’s heart stopped. Dad yanked covers from the huddled heap beside him.
Mom glared. “Bunny’s coming Friday, not tonight!”
I could hardly wait until college, where I’d take control of my life.
One weekend, an unknown force roused me from sleep, swinging me in circles. Surely, a nightmare. …
No. The girl — half my size! — swinging me was real. So was my roommate, giggling up and down the scale.
I gasped to the stranger, “Who are you?”
“I’m Vicky!”
“Vicky, please put me down.”
She deposited me on my bed, singing, “O Lord, Won’t You Buy Me a Color TV?”
Other giggling, melodious strangers gathered. I took refuge in another party pooper’s room. Unfortunately, my discussion with my roommate afterward was not the last.
So … uninvited-weird-people incidents were not confined to parsonages.
That lesson has been confirmed again and again. Unlike our late parents, though, my siblings and I have placed gated fences around our lives.
Recently, I reflected on hospitality as I watered uninvited cosmos, seeded from last year’s planting. Volunteer zinnias inundate marigold borders. I never planted those petunias, yet they invade our premises, looking wild … and wonderful.
How did Mom and Dad’s uninvited guests ultimately respond to kindness? Perhaps some, like disruptive flowers, are blooming in the place God — not people — prepared for them.
Most humans need fences to ensure safety and well-being.
But maybe I’ll leave my gate open more often.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: How do you react to the uninvited?
This post first appeared on February 7, 2018.
They soften woes, absorb frustrations without complaint and support us.
Our mothers?
No, our pillows.
I’d sleep with a dozen, but my spouse considers extras speed bumps in the night. So, I heap dozens of decorative pillows on our bed. When Hubby makes it, he sometimes forgets the universe will implode if the green pillow’s placed in the middle rather than the white.
Fear not. I continue to rescue the cosmos.
I also help him regarding sofa cushions. Our geometric pillow must always be matched with the sage green cushion. Never the red.
No one should desecrate them with actual use. Both Hubby and grand-dog must understand that only the aged, ameba-shaped cushion, stashed under a throw, is reserved for naps.
“OC, aren’t you?” chorus a hundred voices.
Sure, I hear voices. That doesn’t negate my point, which is: pillow power.
We must respect a product that upsets an entire continent. Australian health alerts demand pillows be replaced every two years or frozen to kill dust mites. One manufacturer even conducted a free pillow exchange.
Pillows can exert power in positive ways, e.g., the OSTRICHPILLOW®. The owner inserts his head into a soft, closed tube on his desk. Supposedly, a 20-minute nap using the OSTRICHPILLOW® increases work productivity 37 percent.
Any nap might accomplish this. Still, who am I to deny the combined force of capitalism and catnap?
However, pillows cause complications. Sleepers lose hours of rest, constantly awakening to refresh their pillows. For only $100, a sufferer can buy one filled with cool gel that reshapes itself. He should, however, take care not to drop it on his toe. It weighs 14 pounds.
Or, for only $400, one can purchase an intelliPillow. Why so expensive? Because its name starts with a lowercase letter, with a capital in the middle. It also uses an air compressor for automatic adjustment.
Ultimate power, however, is evidenced in the classic pillow fight. Taking this ancient concept to a higher level, devotees use pillows shaped like scimitars, battle axes and hand grenades.
Airline cushions sufficed, however, for passengers on one economy flight who took out lack-of-leg-room frustrations in a mass pillow fight.
Perhaps if world leaders engaged in a day-long pillow fight, we all might sleep better at night.
A powerful idea.
As long as they don’t use my sofa cushions.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Are you picky about your pillows?
This post first appeared on April 18, 2018.
This radical confession could create cultural schisms the size of the Grand Canyon. But I believe in honesty when dealing with my readers, so here goes:
I take naps.
Oh, I know some confess to sneaky snoozes on weekends. I mean daily naps during the week, when employees buzz around workloads like frantic worker bees.
“No wonder you take naps. You’re a writer,” critics point out. “What else could we expect of a degenerate who talks to imaginary people and spends half her waking hours in jammies?”
I resemble that remark. But in defense of jammies, real waistbands stifle creativity.
Back to the nap issue. Is it so difficult to believe a short rest empowers workers? In a word, yes. Anti-nap propaganda has programmed us for decades. As a college student, I never considered naps an option, not even when my then-boyfriend, now-husband, claimed I’d turned 200 pages of my zoology book, my eyes closed.
As a young office worker, I sneaked to a back room at noon and closed the drapes so no one knew I was sleeping. You would have thought I was conducting drug deals. Naps, even during breaks, make supervisors nervous. Just because my boss once tripped over my prostrate form … He recovered nicely after cardio rehab.
Like others, I have fought illegal slumber with coffees, colas and energy drinks that could substitute for rocket fuel. Some misguided souls believe noontime exercise generates energy. Since when does energy output increase energy input? They obviously have never chased after two-year-olds.
Efficient work policies include power naps, which promote employee health and safety. Alert employees are less likely to fall out of their chairs, catch their noses in machinery or flush themselves. They provide faster, friendlier service and make fewer mistakes. Studies have shown that teachers permitted a brief daily collapse are less likely to leave the country after the second day of school. Only three percent of air flight controllers who nap direct pilots to park behind McDonald’s.
Still, old attitudes are difficult to change. Decades passed before my breakthrough. One day, having dozed off, I awoke at my laptop to discover my fingers had purchased 307 Pampered Chef ice cream dippers.
I ejected from the computer, set my cell phone alarm and crashed.
A 45-minute, preventative nap could have saved my relatives the prospect of ice cream dipper gifts every Christmas until 2037.
“But I can’t fall asleep in 45 minutes!” some protest. Soothing music, accompanied by fake waterfalls and synthesized bird twitters, often proves effective. Other daytime insomniacs use power-of-suggestion downloads. I, however, find nothing works like the Lacrosse Channel or Bonanza reruns.
Speaking of Bonanza, the opening music has begun. Grab your blanky. Take a stand — er, sofa. Snuggle down, close your eyes and join the power nap revolution that … will change the … world … zzzzzzzzz.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Are you a rest revolutionary?
Yes, it’s true. Without bribery, I listen to Muzak®, aka elevator music, aka easy listening.
Writers who discuss music of any kind may as well bungee jump into a volcano. Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Barry learned this when he dissed singer Neil Diamond. When a flabbergasted Barry received piles of hate mail, his delighted publisher commissioned Barry to write an entire book about music he loathed. And hired an army of lawyers.
No one’s hired even one for me, so I’ll stick to easy listening’s positive aspects — though nobody admits to liking Muzak®. Like scorn for gluten, happy endings and the Pledge of Allegiance, disdain for elevator music has become fashionable.
Critics dismiss it as simple — God protect us from simplicity! — and even happy.
Everyone knows happiness is for lightweights like Jane Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, who flunked Mr. Darcy’s standards: “Miss Bennet he admitted to be pretty, but she smiled too much.”
Contemporary Mr. Darcys believe Muzak® should be banished to avoid annoying unhappy people who want to stay that way.
Still, I don’t rubber-stamp all easy listening songs, Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s hit, “Somethin’ Stupid,” sounded stupid in 1967 and still does. When I am put on hold with “Send in the Clowns,” I can grind my teeth with any Muzak® hater.
Still, is it fair to label all elevator music as unworthy of elevators? Many arrangements, instrumentalists, and vocalists are superior to the originals.
While you writhe in shock, allow me to mention other Muzak® positives:
I imagine Dave Barry, my fellow bungee-volcano jumper, would agree this discussion is worth it.
“Sweet Caroline,” anyone?
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Do you secretly like Muzak®?
This radical confession could create cultural schisms the size of the Grand Canyon. But I believe in honesty when dealing with my readers, so here goes:
I take naps.
Oh, I know some confess to sneaky snoozes on weekends. I mean daily naps during the week, when employees buzz around workloads like frantic worker bees.
“No wonder you take naps. You’re a writer,” critics point out. “What else could we expect of a degenerate who talks to imaginary people and spends half her waking hours in jammies?”
I resemble that remark. But in defense of jammies, real waistbands stifle creativity.
Back to the nap issue. Is it so difficult to believe a short rest empowers workers? In a word, yes. Anti-nap propaganda has programmed us for decades. As a college student, I never considered naps an option, not even when my then-boyfriend, now-husband, claimed I’d turned 200 pages of my zoology book, my eyes closed.
As a young office worker, I sneaked to a back room at noon and closed the drapes so no one knew I was sleeping. You would have thought I was conducting drug deals. Naps, even during breaks, make supervisors nervous. Just because my boss once tripped over my prostrate form … He recovered nicely after cardio rehab.
Like others, I have fought illegal slumber with coffees, colas and energy drinks that could substitute for rocket fuel. Some misguided souls believe noontime exercise generates energy. Since when does energy output increase energy input? They obviously have never chased after two-year-olds.
Efficient work policies include power naps, which promote employee health and safety. Alert employees are less likely to fall out of their chairs, catch their noses in machinery or flush themselves. They provide faster, friendlier service and make fewer mistakes. Studies have shown that teachers permitted a brief daily collapse are less likely to leave the country after the second day of school. Only three percent of air flight controllers who nap direct pilots to park behind McDonald’s.
Still, old attitudes are difficult to change. Decades passed before my breakthrough. One day, having dozed off, I awoke at my laptop to discover my fingers had purchased 307 Pampered Chef ice cream dippers.
I ejected from the computer, set my cell phone alarm and crashed.
A 45-minute, preventative nap could have saved my relatives the prospect of ice cream dipper gifts every Christmas until 2037.
“But I can’t fall asleep in 45 minutes!” some protest. Soothing music, accompanied by fake waterfalls and synthesized bird twitters, often prove effective. Other daytime insomniacs use power-of-suggestion downloads. I, however, find nothing works like the Lacrosse Channel or Bonanza reruns.
Speaking of Bonanza, the opening music has begun. Grab your blanky. Take a stand — er, sofa. Snuggle down, close your eyes and join the power nap revolution that … will change the … world … zzzzzzzzz.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Are you a rest revolutionary?