For Better Living...

0 empty calories/processed foods
1 hour of exercise/reading
2 liters of water
3 cups of green tea/green juice
4 mental and stretch breaks
5 things you are grateful for 
6 am meditation
7 minutes of laughter
8 hours of sleep
9 thousand steps daily

I came across this countdown on Instagram the other day.  With a little bit of research, I traced it back to Brenda Strong, who is a yoga teacher, fertility expert, and actress, best known for portraying Mary Alice Young on Desperate Housewives.  It's a little self-help ish and a little New Agey, and I don't usually have much tolerance for such things. But this list, for some reason, kind of stood out to me and made me think.  It's been a stressful few weeks and it doesn't look like life is going to get much less stressful.  The main contributing factor is my stress is how so many things are out of my control right now.  I can't control certain things going on at work and I can't control how fast my house sells. But I can control me, and it seems like lately other things are controlling me, as opposed to me controlling me. This countdown (count up?) seems like a way that I can take back some control, and maybe make myself feel better in the process.

0 empty calories/processed foods 

I swear, I have the best of intentions with food.  I do.  I know what is good for me and what is not.  I also know that at 7:00 at night after a full day of work and an evening of taking care of my kids, food takes a backseat. It's way too easy to just eat a bowl of cereal or frozen french bread pizza.  Definitely something that I can plan better and work on this summer.

1 hour of exercise/reading

Easy.  I'm almost always on the treadmill first thing, and I love reading.  Just have to keep it up.

2 liters of water

I'm really good at drinking water at work.  Not so much when I get home and my 6:00 Diet Coke just sounds soooooooo good. Something else that needs improvement.

3 cups green tea/green juice

In an effort to get myself to stop drinking a pot of coffee every day, I had already started drinking green tea.  I'm not crazy, I still have my two cups of black coffee first thing, but I switched to tea after that.  Green juice is harder because this is Ohio and the only place I can find it is on Chagrin Boulevard and I refuse to go there. But I will look into it a little more and see if I can find a way to make it work.

4 mental and stretch breaks

Easy to do, hard to remember to do. Thankfully it is summer and if it ever stops raining I can grab a friend to take a lap around the parking lot a few times a day.

5 things you are grateful for

My family, my friends, the fact that I have a job, the fact that I have a house to sell, the fact that I have the means to purchase another one, and the weekly Farmers Market where I can buy non-processed healthy ish cookies.  Look, I found 6 things!

6am meditation

I was quite the yoga person for a long time and I will admit that I have never gotten the hang of meditation.  If I sat quietly on the floor with my eyes closed at 6 am I would fall asleep.  Couple that with the fact that I tend to get lost inside my own head if things are too quiet for too long.  However, I have a commute to and from work everyday, and that is time that I can use to kind of think and straighten myself out, or just listen to music and not think about anything.  I'm going to read up on meditation though, it might be something I just need to figure out.

7 minutes of laughter

That's why God invented Youtube.

8 hours of sleep

Um, I have children.  But I guess there are ways I can do better.  I can go to sleep earlier, I can keep working on the whole sleep training thing with the little guy.  Progress, not perfection right?

9 thousand steps daily

Time to fire up the FitBit.  I wonder if this is in addition to my hour of exercise.  I'm guilty of sometimes being really lazy for the rest of the day if I have a good morning workout. But I have children to chase and a house to take care of and co workers who are always up for a quick walk, so maybe it is just a matter of putting forth a little more effort into moving around.

It looked like there was a #10, but it was cut off from the image and Google has not helped me find it, so I guess this is where I leave you.  Like I said, this is a little self help ish.  But maybe I need a little bit of that now, more than I would like to admit. I'm glad I found this and it's nice to have a list to work from in order to work on myself a little bit.  And maybe I can help someone else find some inspiration too :)

Decision 2016

Now here is my disclaimer.  The following is my opinion based on my own personal knowledge and experiences. If you disagree with me, that's fine.  Everyone has to do what they feel is right for their own family, and I am in no way judging anyone for what they did/plan to do.

I attended a birthday party with Amelia on Saturday. It was the first time I have ever gone to one with her.  Between the baby and being sick, Bill has been the one on the birthday party circuit. I don't know the parents of the kids in her class and I hadn't met most of them before. Despite my original dread of having to go to one of those bouncy places, it actually wasn't so bad.  I had prepared myself for all kinds of drama and mayhem, but thankfully nothing happened.

What I had not prepared myself for was every parent asking me when A's birthday was, and what I was planning to do about kindergarten. I didn't give it much thought at first, and actually I thought what they meant was "Are you sending her somewhere else, or are you keeping her at Lippman?". Since we are planning on moving but I have no clue where, I just responded that we weren't sure, since we were shortly selling our house and there was quite a bit up in the air.

I did not realize, until maybe the fourth person had asked me, the real question.  The real question was would I be sending her off to kindergarten after the next year of preschool.  I was stumped.  Now, I am not an educator, I know almost nothing about the education system or how things work, and Amelia is my oldest child.  I thought that things still worked the way they did when I was a kid. You went to preschool when you were 3 and 4, and after you turned 5 you went to kindergarten. If you were too close to some cutoff line, which I thought I remembered as being in September, you had to wait.  Case closed.

Oh how wrong I am.  I can sent A to "Transitional Kindergarten".  This is a class sort of in limbo between preschool and kindergarten.  I can send her to kindergarten at Lippman for a year, then I can send her somewhere else for a year of kindergarten.  Yup, two years of kindergarten.  Or I can just keep her home for a year, getting bored out of her mind while Bill and I, who are utterly unqualified to do so, try to homeschool her in some sort of way.  I'm sure there are other options too, but this is just what I picked up from the parents that I talked to on Saturday.

Again, I am no educator. I am no expert in early childhood education or child development. But these kids are just starting to turn 4. Kids change a lot in a month, let alone a year.  How can  you make a decision like that so far in advance? Why should you have to? A kid who is a little behind today can catch up in a heartbeat.  I shall use my own child as an example. My daughter was probably the last person in her class to be potty trained.  It was a nightmare. Nothing we tried worked. I was convinced that she was behind developmentally and was considering bringing in the experts.  Until one day she just decided she was going to do it, and that was that.  Period. Done.  I think ultimately it was a combination of her just deciding she was ready, and peer pressure.

So what do I plan on doing? Honestly, I'm going to let her ride out her last year of preschool. I'm going to have her take the kindergarten readiness test, and talk to her teachers, and if they say she is ready for kindergarten I am sending the kid to kindergarten.  She is smart, she likes school, she likes being around other kids. She can count, she knows her letters, she recognizes certain words. She listens to directions and sits still when she is told to sit still. Where remains to be seen, but unless a professional advises me otherwise, at that time, I'm not holding her back.  But the real answer is, she's not even 4.  There is plenty of time for me to decide that. I have a lot of things to stress out about right now, and my kid's kindergarten plans are not among them.

It's A Small World After All. Or The House That Built Me. Or The Houses That Didn't.

We're getting ready to put our house on the market.  A little new carpet, a little new paint, and a horrifyingly expensive retaining wall are all that stand between us being able to sell the old homestead and look for something better.  Much thanks is owed to our good friend and realtor, Jess, who has been a help in so many ways.  She's really gone above and beyond, and we aren't even listed yet.  I was very happy to be able to help her a little bit last week, and like so many other random things, the experience got me thinking.

A week or so ago, Jess came by to take a good look at the house, make some staging suggestions, and discuss the pricing and listing.  We got to talking, and she mentioned a listing that she is going to have shortly in Seven Hills.  Naturally, since I grew up there, I asked her where the house was in Seven Hills.  And naturally, when she told me Pleasant Valley Road, I asked her to be more specific.  And when she told me, I realized that it was a house I was very familiar with! The previous owners' daughter had gone to grade school and high school with me, and I had been to the house many, many times.  Jess asked me if I knew anything about the house, which is a really neat turn of the century farmhouse. Unfortunately all that I could tell her was that the house and grounds were really cool, which was not particularly helpful.  It had been a few years since I had talked to her, but I offered to try and get in touch with my old friend and see what she could tell us about the house.

The email address that I had didn't seem to get through, but I asked around among our mutual grade school and high school friends and I was able to get in touch. It was really great to reconnect.   She could not have been more excited to share the extensive history of her childhood home, as well as all of the renovations that her parents had done to house.  She also told me how much she loved that house, how much the house meant to her, and asked if it would be possible to bring her husband and children to see it.

That gave me what my sister would call "the warm fuzzies." I'm not particularly attached to the house we live in right now.  The neighborhood maybe, but not the house.  We didn't pick it out together and though we renovated it top to bottom, it was a stressful, expensive process that caused a lot of arguing and a lot of very quiet nights. It ran way over budget and way over the timeline. And a lot of stupid things went wrong that weren't even in our renovation plans. (Though the buyer of the house is going to be blessed with a lovely new hot water tank, furnace, and air conditioner.) The finished product is beautiful, but to me it's still just a house and I'm not sad to part with it.

I'm not attached to any house that I've lived in.  My last few years of living in my first Akron home were painful and traumatic and I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I still own it (thanks 2008) but I can't bear to be inside it.  I never cared for my childhood home in Seven Hills. That's nothing against my family, but the house itself just wasn't my style.  We moved to Seven Hills just before I started the first grade and I never really felt like I fit in there. Plus, it's been redone so many times that even though my parents still live there, it doesn't feel like the house I grew up in.  And I guess I was just too young to be attached to the house we lived in before that.

It's something to think about as we start seriously looking for our next house.  Do houses help shape who we are?  Is there something about them that is intangible, that can make a difference? Should I be looking at more than kitchens and dining rooms and whether or not there is wallpaper that I have to tear down? Do people build houses, or do houses, as Miranda Lambert says, build us?

Feel

I'm not a very openly emotional person.  I don't burst into tears when I fight with my husband.  I don't cry at movies and most of the time I don't even cry at funerals. Despite my tendency towards nostalgia, which many people would say indicates that  I am an emotional person, I tend to disagree.  When an intense emotional situation presents itself, I tend to think more along the lines of "What can I do here?" Most times, the answer is nothing.  And if there is nothing I can do, I move on.

That's not to say that I don't feel or get upset.  What I have always done in most emotionally intense circumstances is tell myself "Kate, you can be upset.  For one day." (Or hour or week, depending on the situation.)  A good example of this is a work conflict I had with someone a couple years back.  It escalated to the point that no matter what, there was nothing I could do to change the situation.  I could only change how I reacted to that situation. Basically what I did was I allowed myself that weekend to be angry, to hurt, to sort of let it all fester.  Monday morning I shut it off, blocked it out, and went out into the world like nothing happened.  I've done this kind of thing a lot throughout my life. But something happened yesterday that made me think that maybe this isn't the best way to handle the situation.

Another "emotional flaw" of mine (along with getting the giggles in serious situations and crying hysterically when I am angry at someone) is that on the rare occasion that the emotional floodgates open, it all comes out.  Kind of like on The Walking Dead, when the fence got weak at the prison and the zombies all pushed and pushed and knocked it over, flooding the yard.  On the rare day that it rains, it pours.

That happened yesterday.

I had a fantastic weekend in Orlando, which most of you know is my most favorite city in the world.  Through some bad planning, I was the last of our group to leave.  As the day wore on, I started to feel the letdown that happens whenever I leave Orlando.  I was on my way to Target with Tera (who lives there) and Dianna (who was staying the week, and had her family flying in just before I flew out.) Dianna glanced at me from the driver's seat and commented that I hadn't been this quiet in my whole life.  She asked if I was okay.  To which I replied, "Always am."  I started remembering all the times I had flown back to Ohio, leaving my sister behind.  As we unpacked groceries in her rented condo I was thinking how sad it was that we were all kind of trickling out of Orlando.  A bummer, but okay.

Then we drove to the airport, where I maintained my silence thinking about other things.  Before you all get appalled that I wasn't excited to get home to my kids, let me share that they weren't even going to be there.  They were snowed in at my sister in law's in Columbus.  So not only am I being separated from my favorite city, and leaving behind some of my favorite people, my own family isn't even going to be there when I get home.  Cue the tears, but I held them back.

When we got to the airport, I checked my bag and went with Tera and Dianna to meet her family.  Now, with the exception of my own family and a small handful of you Columbkille kids, no one has known me longer than Dianna and her family.  It was a happy reunion of hugs.  I was sad, but I was good. After they got their bags the goodbyes started, and I was okay until my 9 year old godson hugged me and asked, confused, "Where are you going?"Dianna jumped in and explained, freeing me to rush off to my gate in tears.

Thankfully Maureen was delayed getting out to Dulles, so she was able to more or less sort me out before she left. By this point all I want to do is get to my gate, get on the plane, and get home.  But that would have been too easy.  I had to fight my way through a pack of soccer hooligans and go through security a second time.  I forced myself to eat something so I wouldn't be starving when I got home and sat at my gate.  Remember what I said about my emotional floodgates? Here is where is really all went crazy.  I'm alone in the Orlando airport, appropriately upset, but then things that have absolutely nothing to do with the current situation start popping into my head and making things worse.

It's Lent.  During Lent in 1996, my grandmother died. A few days before I was going to show her my prom dress.  During Lent in 2005, my grandfather died, a few days before I was going to bring him pictures of my dog.  During Lent of 2007 my uncle died, before reading a very important letter from his daughter.  There were a few other things that popped into my head that are a little too personal to even write here, but they were losses and situations that tore me up inside. Think back to the beginning of this painfully long blog.  Are these things that still upset me because I only allowed myself to hurt from them for a few days? Is it impossible for the heart to heal from things like this if you put a time constraint on it?

Thankfully I got on the plane, and between my peanut M&Ms and my perky, Bible reading seatmate, I was able to pull it together.  I dug out my car, got myself home and swam through the snow into the house.  I fell into an exhausted sleep.

I'm not a mess right now, even after flooding my bathroom this morning. I feel pretty stable, compared to the hot mess I was yesterday, but as I was sitting in traffic this morning I decided that maybe the next time something happens that really hurts, breaks my heart or makes me really sad, I'm going to try feeling it all the way through.  Because if I don't lock it in a box after a weekend, maybe I don't ever have to worry about it breaking out and  ambushing me at Gate 110 of the Orlando airport.

Random Thoughts for a Friday

I was scrolling though Facebook this morning and came across a post that tagged a friend of mine.  I don't know the person that wrote the post and I don't know what his relationship is to my friend exactly, but it struck me as personal.  Deeply personal. Like "why the hell is he saying this on Facebook for the entire world to see?" personal. I'm surprised she allowed it, being one of the more quiet, private people that I know.  I don't get the feeling that he posted it with the intention of upsetting her, and I definitely think that he meant well, but damn.  If there was any question what he was feeling, we all have the answer now.

Controversy over what people post on Facebook is nothing new, it's been around as long as Facebook has existed.  My mom doesn't understand why my sister and I share pictures and my sister doesn't understand why I share my struggles with my children. (But believe me, someday she is going to be happy that there is a Lynette and a Dana and a Nicole and a Cheri and a Kelly to say, "Yeah, I totally get that!") What one person thinks is an intimate detail of their life might be common knowledge to someone else.  If you don't like someone's post, you always have the option of "hiding" it and if it truly offends you then you can report it. Post away, who am I to judge.

Facebook, when it's all said and done, is stupid.  I mean, it's fun a lot of the time.  I like pictures of kids being funny and seeing my friends on vacation and hearing about what is going on in their lives. It's neat to see what my grade school friends have grown up to become and to reconnect with my old roommates.   But when you stand back and look at it, it's silly.

But maybe some of the sharing isn't.  While I thought it was a little "TMI" to see the post that triggered this entire rambling, maybe the actual act of sharing isn't.  I hate not knowing things and if someone felt strongly about me, I would want to hear it from them.  Whether they thought I was an amazing friend, the most beautiful woman in the world, or a gigantic asshole, I would want to know.  Even though maybe we shouldn't be saying these things on Facebook for the entire world to hear,we should make sure that we tell people how we feel about them.

A few weeks back, somebody told me that they really enjoyed my Facebook posts.  That I made them smile at least twice a day.  I don't really try to make people laugh and I don't think that I am really that funny, but it made me feel good to hear that.  I felt appreciated.

We all know life is short, and nobody is guaranteed tomorrow.  I don't think very many people have ever wished that they hadn't told someone that they loved them.  Don't ever assume that someone knows what you think or how you feel. Whether you shout it from the mountaintops, send a PM, or call in an anonymous tip, let the important people in your life know that they matter to you.

Why Yes, You Can Do Jello Shots In a Bank

A chapter from my unpublished first book.  Enjoy :)

“What are you doing New Year’s…..Neeeewww Yeeeaarrss Eevvee…”  It was Friday morning, December 31.  That stupid old song had been playing in rotation on the Muzak since right after Thanksgiving.  Normally that would have put me in somewhat of a cranky mood.  My mood on this particular New Year’s Eve however, could not have been better.  The day had finally come, that our entire branch had been waiting for with bated breaths.

Yes, today was the day that our fearless leader, after 36 years, was finally retiring from Cardinal National Bank.  Lauren, as I mentioned earlier, was not exactly one of my most favorite people. And most of our office, while we did respect her, we did not particularly like her and were only too happy to see her off to a happy retirement in Naples, Florida.

It was a good day for other reasons too.  I’ve never been a big fan of New Year’s.  Most New Year’s events in our area were prohibitively expensive once you figured in cover charges, hotels, and transportation.  Add to that the fact that I had no significant other, or even a non significant other whom I wished to kiss at midnight.  This year was going to be fun regardless however.  Newly married Avery and Max were throwing a party at their house and were expecting near 50 people.  The two of them, with the help of her contractor father, had taken their 1950s bungalow and retrofitted it to be a pretty amazing party house.  The finished basement had a complete bar that was fully stocked.  They had ample guest bedrooms, so driving home was not an issue.  And I had helped Avery put together a menu that ensured nobody was going to go hungry.  I was actually looking forward to the dreaded New Year’s Eve, and only had to get through a ten hour day at the bank before I could get there.

I’m not sure if it was something specific to the area, something in the water in Unionville that day, or if it was just a fluke, but that was the busiest morning I had ever seen in a bank branch.  I thought I had my schedule planned so that I would have more than enough coverage in the branch.  But even with me running a teller window, customers were lined up to the door.  I frantically cashed checks, ran deposits, and made payments alongside my teller staff all morning, while my “desk staff” chatted with each other, served Lauren’s retirement cake to customers, and basically sat back and enjoyed the confusion.  Adding to the crowd in the lobby were people who did not necessarily have business in the bank, but stopped by to wish Lauren the best in her retirement.  I thrive on chaos and enjoy being busy at work, but this was nuts.  It felt at times like there was money flying everywhere.

Fridays behind the teller line traditionally were myself, Dawn, and Audrey all day, and Lindsay and Christie for part of the day, alternating Fridays.  I got to the point that I was watching the clock, waiting for Christie to get there just to give us some relief. (And that’s saying something.  She was a sweet person, but the world’s slowest bank teller.)  When Christie finally arrived at 1 and got set up in her window, it was like someone locked the doors.  We had gone from the busiest day in the history of banking to the slowest day in the history of banking.  I started the rotation of lunch breaks, baled down all the teller drawers (a fascinating OCD project where you remove all excess cash from teller drawers and stash it in the main vault) and finally had my piece of retirement party cake.  Visitors for Lauren ambled in and out, but for the most part, the bank branch was dead.

You’d think someone who had worked for a company for 36 years would be somewhat emotional about leaving it.  But around 4:00 Lauren’s husband showed up with small buckets of homemade jello shots for everyone. (Apparently at one point in her career Lauren was fun.  She and her husband had thrown a Christmas party some years back, and a handful of my seasoned staff remembered Lauren’s skill at making jello shots).   He and Lauren distributed what she called her “parting gifts”, did one last sweep of her office for her personal stuff, and then she was gone.  And I was in charge.

Being in charge was something I was evidently not very good at.  Call it excitement for the holiday or excitement at being manager-less, but I decided it was time to live a little.  I cracked open my bucket of jello shots, pulled out a red one, and just went for it.

My staff looked on in what can only be described as awe.  We stood there in silence for a moment, in an empty-of-customers bank branch.  And I kind of decided what the hell.  I pulled a green shot out of my jello bucket, and downed that one as well.  At that point Christie spoke up.  “Does that mean I can bring out the champagne?”

“Excuse me?” I replied.  Christie struck me as the type that wouldn’t even drink champagne at her daughter’s wedding, let alone at work.  “There’s champagne??”

“I got some.  It’s a special occasion right? New Years, new start, no more Lauren….” she trailed off.

I paused a moment and took stock.  The branch was supposed to be open for another two hours.  We hadn’t had a customer walk in for almost 23 minutes. I had a ridiculous number of staff who had, for the most part, had a hell of a day, not to mention a hell of a year.  I made an executive decision.

“Christie, pour out the champagne, we are going to do a toast.  Then I am going to start sending everyone home.  We are going to lose one teller and one desk person every fifteen minutes til closing, by seniority,” I announced.

Again, I got somewhat blank looks from the staff. “You’re serious?” Dawn asked.

I smiled.

“Really?” asked Julie, already making her way towards her desk.

“Yes,” I replied. “This is dumb. There is no reason for everyone to just be standing around.  You guys have worked so hard and put up with so much.  We’re going to close this year out right.”

And that was exactly what we did.  Christie poured out glasses of cheap champagne, and we all toasted to the end of an era, the end of a year, and the turning over of a new leaf.  I started sending home the staff by seniority.  The occasional random customer filtered in, mainly through the drive up, to cash a check or make a quick deposit, but for the most part the branch was silent.  Finally it was a mere twenty minutes to closing, and the branch was deserted save me and Evan.  He sat in the lobby waiting area, flipping through this week’s Time magazine, while I sat on the customer service counter texting various random friends to see who was going to be coming to Avery’s party.

“Ev, go ahead and get out of here,” I said.  “If anyone comes in here in the next twenty minutes I doubt it’s going to be to refinance their mortgage.  You should go home.”

Evan looked up from his magazine.  “Yeah, I don’t think so,” he replied.

“Seriously.  No one is going to know.  The cops are going to drive by at 6:15 anyway just to make sure we all closed up okay.  Go home,” I insisted.  It’s actually a huge violation of bank policy to have a single employee alone in a branch at any time, let alone closing.  But this was Unionville.  The town only has two traffic lights. “I’m sure you have something awesome to do tonight that you can get a head start on.”

“Not really.  I’m just going to hang out with my girlfriend.  Maybe go to a hotel or something,” Evan replied, unintentionally reminding me that he still lived in his parents’ basement and his girlfriend still lived like she was in college, in a crumbling duplex with four roommates just off campus.

“Evan, really.  You don’t have to stay here.  I’m probably going to shut it down in ten minutes anyways.”

“Then you can shut it down with me here,” he shot back.  And then, he looked at me.  I mean really looked at me.  Straight into my eyes with those huge blue eyes of his.

And right then, that very second, something changed.  I don’t know what and I don’t know how.  Maybe something in the stars or the cosmos or something like that.  Jupiter in line with Saturn, blah blah.  That split second, that moment…The course of events forever changed that New Year’s Eve.

Or maybe it didn’t.  Maybe I was tired. Maybe I'm making excuses.  Maybe it was my imagination.  Maybe it was boredom.  We closed up the bank that Friday night and went to our respective homes.  I don’t know what he did after that.  I went to my best friend’s house.  I drank too much raspberry Stoli and ate too much pizza.  I toasted the New Year with cheap champagne and the guys that worked at the Coke plant.  I spent the night in Avery’s tastefully decorated guest room.  But something nagged at me that night, in the back of my mind where only I could hear, where only I could understand.   Something had changed inside of me that day, underneath my Juicy Couture hoodie and overpriced designer jeans.  At least for me, something was different.

And that’s all I have to say about New Year’s Eve 2004. 

My Bubble

I’ve done a lot of stuff.  I’ve been to New York City to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I’ve been backstage at EPCOT.  I’ve been on the Warner Brothers movie lot.  (Not on the regular tour, mind you.  I had credentials and ate in the commissary and got to stand in the soundstage where they filmed the pirate ship scene in Goonies, just sayin’.) But today I am going to share one thing that I have never done.

I (pause for dramatic effect) have never been high.

That’s right kids. I have never smoked pot.  I have never done a line of cocaine.  I’ve never taken Ecstasy.  I’ve never even taken too many pain pills and gotten a buzz.

I’d never given much thought to it until the other day, when I saw a Dateline rerun about drugs running rampant through college campuses. I remembered the first time that I saw that particular episode. It was in a hotel room in Pittsburgh.  A friend, whom I shall call Suzette, and I had driven in the night before to attend a concert and spent the night after at the Marriott downtown.  We were getting dressed and ready to leave and head home. (Okay, we were going to IKEA.  But focus.) Because she and I must always have background noise, we had the TV on and were listening to Chris Hansen give his special report about hard drugs being everywhere on college campuses.  Suzette put down her mascara wand, looked at me, and said “Why weren't we offered any?”

She said it sarcastically, but it apparently stuck in my head somewhere underneath Net Present Value and The War of 1812.  I thought of Suzette’s words the other night and thought to myself, “Yeah.  Why weren't we?”

Because the fact that I have never been high is not the result of triumphantly and defiantly “Just Saying No.” Not only have I never been high, I have never found myself in a situation where doing illegal drugs was even an option.  I have never stood up for myself and walked out of a party due to my principles. I've never had to.  And truthfully I don’t know that I would have done that.  I’m destructive when I’m bored and I have an addictive personality.  And I love, really love, to have a good time.

But now I’m wondering, is my situation that unique?  According to Dateline, it is.  How did I manage this?

One could make the argument that the opportunity just never presented itself. The neighborhood I grew up in was nice, but bad things happen in nice neighborhoods all the time.  Did my neighborhood just not have troublemakers for me to be influenced by? I didn't like high school and I didn't have a lot of friends there, so was it just my exposure to a very small, limited group of people that prevented me from ever finding myself in a bad situation?

Maybe, but fast forward to college.  I knew how to have a good time.  I went out. I drank, both underage and once I was of age. I went to fraternity parties. During breaks I went out in Cleveland, first in the Flats and then later to the Warehouse District. My weekends started on Wednesday night and a lot of times didn't end until Chapter on Sunday night.  Still no drugs.

Fast forward a few years more, and now I’m a banker. According to Wolf of Wall Street and Margin Call, the financial industry is full of drugs. If that is in fact true, I never saw any of it. My early to middle 20’s were just like college.  The fact that my liver survived my time at Bank One is shocking. Weekends started on Wednesday and ended after Desperate Housewives on Sunday night.   There was a lot of shady stuff in the banking industry back then, but none of it involved drugs.

Life settled down for me a bit after 30. But I’m still a social butterfly. I jump at almost any opportunity to go out and do something fun.  And I know a lot of people and I've made a lot of new friends over the years. I've traveled a lot and seen a lot of places. Party at Tao Las Vegas?  Bottle service and bachelors, but no drugs. Hollywood Boulevard? Things you can't un-see, but still no drugs.

It makes me wonder then. I've been in so many situations where I should have come across drugs, and I didn't.  I can’t explain to you why. I can only say that it has been a really good thing.  I have some social anxiety issues and mediocre confidence, the kind of thing that is quickly remedied by a glass of wine. I don’t want to think about what could have happened if I had access to something stronger. Has it been luck? Always being surrounded by good people, even if I’m not in the best places? Some kind of divine intervention? Regardless of the reason, I've been fortunate enough to be shielded from something that destroys so many lives.

And for that, I’ll be grateful.