You Are The Best Person I Know

I received an email a few hours ago that was short - just one sentence - but it made my entire day. It will probably make my week, too.

It said this: "Dear Anita, you are the best person I know, and you have a nice laugh."

It was from my 10-year-old nephew and godson J., with whom I've forged a bond that, according to my sister (who is his mom), no other adult has. He's a good kid, and like so many other youngsters, is challenged by a few things in life.

J. is adopted, which I mention here not as a familial distinction, as he is in my heart as firmly as every other child in my family. I say so because this poor boy was subjected to some things by his biological mother in utero that affected his ability to learn easily and socialize and manage his emotions. He can be a handful. And he can be vulnerable and sweet and thoughtful, too. It's this side of him, I know, that the one sentence came from. That one sentence that cracked my heart open when I read it on my phone, and that made me sit down and write this as soon as I walked in my front door.

How easy it is to make someone feel great just by telling them something we see about them. We need more of that in this world! We need to give it to each other! So even if I don't know you well, and even if I've never heard you chuckle, I know you must be a good egg with a sense of humor, because you've read this far. That's why this one's for you: right now, you are the best person I know, and you have a nice laugh. Oh, and you have great taste in blogs, too.



© 2014 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

Easter, With a Needle in My Arm

It's Easter morning, and I'm ready to walk out the door, but I'm not going to a sunrise service or to an egg hunt. In about 90 minutes, I'll be hooked up to a machine that pulls the platelets and plasma out of my most vital fluid, and then cycles the blood back in.

A constant supply of platelets is needed every day for cancer, surgery and transplant patients, and those with blood diseases. One platelet donation delivers what would take five whole blood donations to produce. And for people like me, who have dense platelets...well, I've been told that one of my donations can yield up to three times the usual amount. So I feel honored, since I have so much, to share what comes easily to me with someone else who needs it.

Before I got the call last Thursday, I was expecting that I'd have my usual early Sunday walk with a friend.  Before I got the call, I was planning to go to church with my family and listen to my sister sing with her choir at 10:00 today. Before I got the call, I didn't have to take so many iron supplements to raise my hemoglobin that - well, I'll spare you the earthy details on that one.

But I did get the call. And that's when I found out that, as with other holiday weekends, donations were low - dangerously low, in fact. And I knew this about my walking friend, my family and especially my higher power...none of them would mind if I celebrated Easter with a needle in my arm.



If you're able to give platelets or whole blood, please consider making just 4 donations a year - one for every quarter!  If everyone eligible did that, think of how easily our supplies could be replenished! U.S. donors can visit www.redcrossblood.org to make an appointment today. 

© 2014 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

Did I Matter?

I went over my dad's last night. I've been trying to see him almost every day, even if it's just for a short visit, because I can see him slipping. He's 89 and still living on his own, by choice: the last bastion of his independence. We sit in the living room with the TV on, and he often is sleeping in his recliner while I'm there, so I tidy up and clean things when he snoozes.

Because of some of the things he says, I know he's examining his life so often these days, wondering if he's made a difference, if he mattered. He's had such a hard life - financial struggles, the death of my brother at 21, dealing with my mom's emotional issues and passing, cancer, kidney disease, major hearing loss...he hasn't caught many breaks. But he's always pushed ahead, and he frequently looks for the single ray of light to make himself feel better about a situation. From time to time, I write letters to my father about what he's meant to us, and how I've learned from watching him, and how he's been the best father we could have wished for. He loves that, and because I can't be sure he can hear all that I say anymore, it's a good way for me to communicate with him, so he takes in every word I want to say.

He grew up in a home that was always short on resources: to a certain extent, money equaled success.  I remember the first time I brought over some Amstel light, he said, "This is the kind of beer rich people drink." (You've got to love that!) Like many parents, he wants to leave his kids something of value. He keeps giving me things, like coins he's saved that he thinks will be worth something someday, or silver serving pieces that have been in his basement for years. He buys lottery tickets twice a week - has for years - because he so desperately wants to leave us all something significant. Of course that doesn't matter to me and my sisters. We just wish he would win, any amount, so that he would feel lucky. 

The older I get, the more I see how much like my dad I am. I never used to think so, because I was always such a bleeding heart, and he was pretty gruff for most of my "formative years." But it's so clear now that I get my own temper (and temperament) mostly from my father. I got the quickly rising anger, the impatience, the nagging feeling of inferiority, the somewhat wary nature, the pride that goeth before a fall. But I also inherited the ability to multi-task with amazing results, the strong work ethic, the dedication to family, the delight in efficiency, the desire to make others' journeys a little easier, the need to prepare and be ready for whatever might come, the generosity...and the love. 

My father's asking so many of the same questions I ask myself these days as I travel on the flip side of fifty years: Have I mattered? Did I make a difference? Did I do the right things with my life? Some days I don't think so, and other days I think I did, and am doing, exactly what I was supposed to. I hope, when all is said and done, my father thinks he did, too.

© 2014 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

It's All About The Steps (70K, to be exact)

Hey, Fats Domino! I'm walkin', yes indeed; and I'm talkin'...(about the Fitbit). Whether clip-on model or wristband, at the very least it measures steps taken and calories burned - and all of the information is stored to see on a mobile app or a full dashboard online.

My niece got me into it, and she and two of her twenty-something friends were my first Fitbit friends - happy are the days I pull ahead of them. One week, and I was hooked!  (But I waited for a full month to write about it to see if it was true love, because 1.] I have a habit of sabotaging myself at the three-week point; and 2.] I sort of believe in the concept that if you do something for 30 days, it's a habit. Unless you sabotage yourself at four weeks. So far, so good.)

What makes Fitbit such a no-brainer (and probably all of the other trackers out there, though I don't have first-hand experience with anything else) is this: IT DOESN'T RELY ON YOUR BRAIN! It removes a lot of the worry about not exercising, about making sure you get your minimum 30 minutes or more of high activity a day, about feeling guilty every morning...you get the picture. Some smarty pants figured out that if you create a gadget that makes it fun to walk at least 10,000 steps a day and 70,000 a week, that's a concept most people can get their minds around. Depending on your stride, that could be just under five miles a day, right on the nose, or over it. This small doo-dad takes movement to the lowest denominator and serves it up with some generous helpings of competition and engagement. In fact, if it were a book, it would be called "Movement for Dummies."

I like knowing what I've accomplished every day. And if I've not reached my quota toward the end of a day, I've dutifully gotten up and walked another two or three thousand steps on the treadmill to complete the cycle. I like "competing" with other Fitbit users, although once, when I thought I was totally beating my niece, she informed me that she'd lost her Fitbit for two days. And I like getting badges! Yes, y'all, you get badges at various points: for the first 5K steps you log; then 10K, 20K, 25K, 30K... I  believe they reward up to 50K steps in a day and then they don't have any more to send you. Because if you walk or run that much in a day they figure you don't need encouragement from them. You just need some Gatorade and ice packs.

In January 2014, a report from consumer market research analyst NPD Group said that Fitbit shipped 67 percent of all activity tracking devices in 2013, and also accounted for 77 percent of the “full body activity trackers” shipped during the five weeks leading up to Christmas. Flabbergasting! (Or, more accurately, flabberbusting.)  That's a lot of measured walking and running and calorie-counting going on out there. Well, let me correct myself. That's a lot of trackers being sold - whether they're being used is another story. But something tells me there's a little bit of magic in this tiny contraption.

Maybe I'll take a page from Noel Coward's book and start sending Fitbits to anyone who gets on my nerves. He's the one who said “I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.”



  © 2014 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

I Fell in Love...And Doggone It, I Can't Forget Him

Rocco in repose.

Full disclosure: I and my family members have never been dog people. Growing up, my sibs and I had one cat, Max (named after the Get Smart character) who ate when he wanted to, took care of his own ablutions, fertilized the flower beds so we didn't have to "do the doo," and slept on our backs when we did our homework tummy-down on the living room floor. More of a fixture than a pet, really.

As an adult, I traveled a fair amount in my early and mid-career, so continuing the cat tradition just made practical sense. And I've had one incredibly sweet calico and a few other independent tabbies along the way. Low-maintenance love.

But a month ago, I was (bow)wowed when I visited my sister and she'd just caved to her kids' request for a dog. OH. MY. GOSH. It took me two minutes to lose my heart to my new "nephew." Rocco is a rescue, part-chihuahua-part-something-else-really-cute, eight pounds of adorable who still has that puppy smell (which is mighty appealing—kind of like how that new car smell is so much better than old car smell).

A friend suggested this caption: "You want it WHEN?"

He rolled and quivered and jackrabbit-jumped and licked and skidded and teethed and tugged and begged and fake-growled and then, exhausted, napped before starting it all over again...and I couldn't keep my eyes or my hands off of him.

And just when I thought I'd seen all the charm and winsomeness in his puppy portfolio, he cocked his head and flipped his ears all around and did a great impression of a cartoon dog.

So yes, I'm in love. My dear departed Italian mom would approve of a guy named Rocco. And though I'm not yet in the right place for a dog, and I know my sister's kids would never hand him over, I bet there's a Rocco out there for me when I'm ready. Because I'm starting to think I might be a dog person after all.

© 2014 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

She Twerks Hard for the Money

She growled, she scowled, she yowled. She vibrated and gyrated. She rolled her eyes and swiveled her hips and smacked her lips and threw back her waist-length orange braid extensions and told us all to twerk under the surface of the pool. And in between she did a few Arsenio "whoop-whoops" and spanked her behind while she rode an imaginary horse to Bow Wow Wow's "I Want Candy" and at least two Red Hot Chile Pepper songs.

I'm talking about my new Aqua Zumba teacher. She's ten pounds of crazy in a five-pound can! She's got a tummy that must be holding a few boxes of Mallomars (which made the rest of us feel pretty normal) and a rather, um, macho physique. In fact, until she showed us how she wanted us to jump up in the water by holding herself up on the bars of the pool ladder, raising her knees, and positioning her feet 24 inches apart, I wasn't completely certain she was a girl. (I'm still wavering on that point.)

But I must say, this morning I was taken to school in the water! We churned it up. If that pool were filled with cream, we would have had butter at the end of the class. And then we added water weights! And my arms hurt afterward!

Yes, I like this teacher. She is a circus act in the best possible way, and a tough drill sergeant. This class is not for sissies - it's for people who can wear hair extensions like a weapon, and channel their inner horse.

Tomorrow, I'm going to see about getting some orange braids. Right after I get fitted for a saddle.

© 2014 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

My "Go-to" Wisdom

This squeaky-clean 2014 calls out for a do-over! It's a chance to be the person we wanted to start being on January 1 last year, without baggage...woo-hoo! Shed those regrets and put a fresh coat of excellence on your inner walls!

Most of the people I know have abandoned resolutions, and for good reason - they're not built for the long stretch; in fact, most resolutions seem to imply "I wish..." (I wish I were thinner, smarter, richer) instead of "I am." So I'm going to share just a few things I've incorporated in my life that help me find my way when my own GPS is shaky. Most of it is not my wisdom...I have had some bright friends and mentors along the way, and have picked these gems from conversations and advice. Some of the "authors" may not even know what an impact they've made on me!

From T.W., when I was adrift this summer after making big changes to my work and personal life, this simple thought: "Just be productive." I learned to keep busy no matter what, so if my creative juices weren't at full flow, or the incoming work was uneven, I did something to improve myself, my home, or someone else's life. It keeps me moving and gives me my "accomplishment fix."

From my own experience, this one: "Listen to what people say, but always watch what they do." It's taken me most of my life to get this one into my head, and I still slip up! What I'm really saying is that people may have strong intentions to undertake something, to finish something, to give you what you want...but they may not be able to fulfill it. So I'm able to avoid some frustration by watching what is unfolding, no matter what the conversation around it is. And I can frequently help the other person move in the direction they really want to go, without the tension that comes from divergent intentions.

From C.C., a benevolence reminder. I naturally lean toward indulgent generosity (it's a blessing and a curse!), but I liked this comment from C. when he way overtipped a car valet: "What's a little bit of money to us is a lot of money to someone else." I think of this when I have an opportunity to surprise someone with a crazy generous tip...and it's what made me start my own Christmas tradition a few years ago. Every year, I keep a $100 bill in my wallet until I come across someone - a stranger - who touched my heart in some fashion with their kindness and/or gracious service, whom I know it was meant for, and it's such a joy to give it away.

From K.N., who helped me so much right after 9/11, when the world was in pain and riddled with fear: "What can you do to feel safe and in control?" Fear comes in all forms, big and small, so I use this one a lot as well. We don't have influence over much of what's happening around us, but finding the spots where we do is pretty powerful.  

I'm closing with the go-to I go to at least once a day! K.N. also gave me my favorite question; one that always sets me straight: "What's the most important thing?" These five words, whether applied to my personal issues or business, always help me cut through the non-essentials and figure out what I need to be focusing on.

What's the most important thing today? Seize this year and make it your own, my friends. Be brave, try something new, love harder, learn an instrument or a language, wag more and bark less! I love seeing how amazing you are. Now go out and show everyone else.

© 2014 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie