A Book Review on Twilight

Check it out at my new site http://theflogg.com

A Brilliant Idea

my brilliant idea is now posted at http://theflogg.com/uncategorized/brilliant-idea/

Check Out The New Site

Hi Everyone,

I've got a new website at http://theflogg.com/

My blog will be posted on there from now on. Not all the features are working on it, but you can read the blog there and some features will be added over the next couple of weeks.

Thank you to my Uncle John for his art work. Thank you to Deena McCormack for her web design capabilities. You can check her out at http://freebird-media.com

Thanks,

Frank

Cleaning For The Cleaning Lady

My mother grew up with seven brothers and sisters. This means my grandmother was pregnant for 63 months. Wow! I have three children myself and cannot imagine what it would be like to have four additional children in the house. I have a whole appreciation for my grandparents that you cannot achieve until you get older and wiser. I can vaguely remember being a toddler over at my grandmother's house. She had a full time cleaning lady! Wouldn't that be awesome if we could all have a full time cleaning lady? If your pregnant for five straight years and then breastfeeding for another five straight years, you are going to need some help. The laundry is piling up right next to me as we speak. Laundry for nine people in a house would be a full time job. I'm surprised they didn't have a full time cook. These were the days before take out existed. Feeding nine people breakfast, lunch and dinner without a dishwasher, forget about it.

Let's advance one generation to me. We never had a cleaning lady. Heck, I was the cleaning lady. Alright, I won't go that far. My mom, sister and I were the cleaning ladies. I am very adept at cleaning toilets, kitchen counters, dishes, vacuuming and mopping the floor. We didn't need a cleaning lady because it was all manageable with only four people. Different time, different way of life and a different economy.

Let's fast forward to present day. Today is the day our cleaning ladies arrive. This is our special thing that happens ever other Thursday. You would think that with five people in 2,000 square feet that we could get this done. It just doesn't seem to happen. After Karen and I complete our first day(the work day), our second day(parenting) starts about 3:00pm in the afternoon. It's hard to clean a toilet when you're in the car for three hours every afternoon. We need to eat, so I'm usually the chef. Time for homework. Who wants to scrub toilets after 8:00pm? Nobody.

The funny thing is we have to clean for the cleaning ladies. There is usually a mad dash Wednesday night or Thursday morning. Picking up scrunchies and bobby pins off the floor. Emptying all the little trash cans in all the rooms. Make sure every dish is clean. Picking up clothes off the floor. See we don't want to pay them to wash the dishes. We need the heavy stuff done every two weeks. The scrubbing and bleaching and polishing.

Who can afford a full time cleaning lady these days? Aren't we all leveraged to the hilt? We can afford four hours of clean time every other week. It's a different time for the maids, also. One maid can't afford to spend one entire day on one house. They hit our house with 3-4 ladies and bust it out in less than four hours. They do three houses a day. How's that for an economy of scale? Time to buy that maid franchise.

I'm going to enjoy the house being clean tonight. Tomorrow when I get home from work it will look like they were never here.

The Obstacle is Me

The obstacle is me.
Nose to the grindstone,
Only seeing the wheel.
Round and round,
The same thing.
Looking up,
Awakening or illusion?
The haze is unclear,
So many thoughts, so many possibilities.
Foolish choices, wonderful choices.
Awakening or rock bottom?
Seed hits the quarry,
But so does the earth.
A seedling of clarity,
Will it survive?
Good choices, wonderful choices.
A new grindstone, a new wheel.
Finish the job.
The obstacle is gone.
The future is me.

Luke Skywalker, Who's Your Yoda?

I have a good friend, Lisa, who always says we're like brother and sister. She's also good friends with my wife and we've known her for eighteen years. Lisa is always talking about her Yoda. Since I really didn't get into Star Wars too much after the first one, I wasn't sure what she was talking about. Lisa explained the whole Jedi Knight training to me and how Yoda is the mentor/confidant/wise one. You know, the little funny looking guy with the pointy ears. She was single and lived by herself for a long time so I thought maybe she had a stuffed animal or an invisible friend. The good news is that she's not crazy and actually has a real life Yoda. Her Yoda is a good friend that she can turn to whenever she needs some advice or wisdom bestowed upon her. I keep asking her how her Yogi is doing. It's not a yogi, it's Yoda. It's all very confusing because her Yoda also turns out to be a yogi. Now, that we have that all sorted out, let's get to the point.

This Yoda topic comes up from time to time over the years. This past year it seems to keep popping up over and over again. Laying in bed one night, I asked my wife, "Who's your Yoda?" I was surprised when she said it was me. I felt honored to be some one's Yoda. She continued to tell me how I tell her things that keep her grounded and help to keep her life and what she's doing on a daily basis in perspective.

This got me thinking. Who's my Yoda? It used to be my dad, but he's not around anymore. My mom? Kinda sorta, somethings you just can't tell your mom about. Yesterday, I figured it out. My Yoda isn't just one person. I can't believe how lucky I am. I happen to have about fifteen different Yodas. They're not Star Wars collectibles and they're not invisible either. I happen to be a member of Vistage International. Vistage is an organization that provides peer groups for ceo's, business owners and key executives. Vistage members are split up into groups of 12 to 18 members. We meet once a month from 8am to 5pm. No cell phones allowed. We discuss our businesses, lives, careers and life's journey with other members. It's an amazing experience and one I look forward to every month.

Yesterday, I met with my Vistage group. We usually have a talented speaker in the mornings and in the afternoons we do issue processing. It was my turn to bring a "wheelspin" issue. This is where I present something that's going on in my life or my business that I'm mentally wrestling with and don't quite know what to do. After I present my issue, I get to sit back and listen to all my Yoda's. It's both enlightening and uncomfortable at the same time. Some Yoda's will tell you what's wrong with your thinking and what you're doing. Some Yoda's will confirm and solidify your thinking. Some Yoda's will tell you things about yourself and what you're doing that you never saw or thought of your own. I'm lucky to have so many Yoda's in my life.

So, Luke Skywalker, who's your Yoda?

Then and Now

A typical statistic that you always here recited is fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce. I remember growing up in the 70's and 80's a lot of my friends' parents were divorced. On my neighborhood block in elementary school, all of my friends had divorced parents. Even looking at my own family history, about fifty percent of my aunts and uncles are divorced and even my in-laws our divorced. How did we get to such a state?

I used to not understand how so many people could end up divorced. Karen and I often talked about this subject and about how we could keep our marriage strong. Life was easy. We were college educated, had great jobs, were making good money, and living in a one bedroom condo. We had lots of disposable income. After going to college full time and working part time for five years straight with no money, life seemed very good and it was.

What was a typical day like? Go to the office. Work out at the gym on lunch break. Work the afternoon. Come home and take a nap! Dress and go to dinner, a movie or even a night club. I'm not talking Friday or Saturday night. This could be any night of the week. Weekends were a whole other story. Road trips to Vegas, Mexico or Santa Barbara. Scuba diving and spear fishing. You name it, we did it.

After a couple of years of this, you end up on a Saturday morning and hear this, "Honey, I don't feel so well. I'm nauseous." No problem, we'll just relax around the condo and rent a couple of movies today. After she throws up twice and tells you the tuna fish sandwich you made for lunch smells like dog crap, you're driving to the drugstore for a pregnancy test. Life has changed forever.

Things are a little different these days. You're lucky to get to the gym three times a week. Work sucks. I never get to nap. Going out to dinner is Souplantation. Going to the movies is too expensive and the only place I go on a weeknight is in a carpool and it's someplace I really don't want to go to anyways. I have to plan a weekend get away three months in advance and check the school, football, dance and soccer schedules before I book a room somewhere. The only scuba diving I do is at the bottom of the swimming pool with a stainless steel brush scrubbing algae off the plaster. My only excitement is watching Saturday Night Live on Sunday morning. You heard me right. Nothing like a few laughs at 6:30 am Sunday with a cup of coffee before we head to church.

For a lot of us, these changes take place incrementally over a twenty year period. Some of us handle it well and some of us don't. For Karen and I, it's about making each other laugh. We find that being able to laugh at ourselves keeps us from not getting too pampered or too entitled or too lazy or too cynical. For some reason I can't help but think our generation has done a lot better job staying married than a lot of the baby boomers. I hardly know anyone who is divorced.

Really, you're still that same person you were twenty years ago. I'm still that same guy living in that one bedroom condo, I'm just older and have a lot more stuff.